Title: Plurality of Religious Community Life in Bali: A Case Study of Interaction Patterns between Islamic Community and Hindu’s in the Village of Pemogan, Denpasar
Author: I Gede Suwindia (CRCS, 2005)
Keywords: harmony; multiculturalism; dialogue; and local wisdom.
Abstract:
The word Harmony is the key terms used in all discussions and analyses of this thesis. The spirit of establishing harmony is absolutely wished by most people and this is always found in an each religious holy scripture. This is the believers’ responsibility to investigate and analyze what is contained in the scripture and implement it in the real conducts to strengthen the harmonious condition. There are a lot of slogans or terms used to invite, support and pursue people to build the interfaith harmony. In fact, this is the main pillar that ties Indonesian nation having multi ethnic and cultural backgrounds. In this research ethnicity and multiculturalism settings are considered as one of the empowerment factors; thus the ethnicities and the multiculturalisms are not the handicaps in the establishment of interfaith interaction. In these terms appreciation of one ethnic group to the others is very needed to create the significant harmony.
This research tries to investigate one of the local wisdoms in Indonesian community, particularly to encounter community differences. The differences cover the ways of performing religious conducts, cultural stereotypes, and ethnicities. Through dialog or conversation, the differences will not become distraction but should become the specific spirit to build interfaith harmony in the concerning community. These unique differences can be one of useful values that can be included into local wisdoms that are observed in this research.
Kampong Islam Kepaon is a sub of Pemogan village that is the so-called Banjar in Pemogan, South Denpasar District, Denpasar. This area becomes the locus of the writer’s research. There are a lot of factors that set him to choose this area as the research field. One of the considerations is since Islamic community in the area has long historical entity with some Kings in Bali Kingdoms so there is a very unique and specific interaction patterns between the two sides. The close interaction process between these two familial kinship communities has been established so far. Frankly speaking, the writer does not mean to keep the raise of the unwanted occasions away in the process of multi ethnic and multi religious assimilations. Through dialog or conversation – inspired by local wisdoms, however, everything can be discussed well. In as much the writer is going to investigate and clarify the actual relation and interaction among Muslim and Hindu communities that have been established from bottom up and not vice versa from up bottom.
