Anang G. Alfian | CRCS | Class Journal 
One of the exciting courses at CRCS is “Religion and Globalization”. Dr. Gregory Vanderbilt, the lecturer, has approached the study in an active and critical manner involving all the students in class activities. According to him, throughout the class students are expected to increase their capability to raise questions concerning the relation between religion and globalization as he himself prefer framing the class in series of discussions with world-wide ranges of topic.
As an American lecturer who has been working with CRCS since 2014 through Eastern Mennonite University, Virginia, he is a very well-experienced educator as he previously spent some years teaching in Japan. Moreover, his interest in following up the up-dated global issues including religious nuances, made him familiar with framing the methods of studying religion and globalization.
Global ethics is one of the topics we discussed in the class, the last material before the end of the class. Previously, we talked a lot about globalization as a phenomenon affecting religions as well as several religious responses toward globalization. Despite the supporters of globalization, many religions seem to fearfully reject it, some even proclaiming their resistance and becoming more radical.
Given the case of the famous forgery the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an issue which is widely spread even in Japan (as well as Indonesia) is that Jews are the scary ghost behind a world conspiracy that can eventually make Japan as its next target. At least, this is what had affected Aum Shinrikyo, a radical religious sect, to declare war on Jews conspiracy and blaming them for brain-washing Japanese people. In 1995, this sect even became more radical and went wild killing tens of people in the Tokyo subway by poisoning them with deadly gas and injuring thousands of victims. Their resistance is, in fact, affected by global issues brought by high velocity of information through media and technology which successfully landed in the minds of traditional society.   In this case, Aum Shinrikyo shows the same fundamentality as that of the terrible bombing of 9/11 in New York City by international terrorist network, Osama Bin Laden. In Rethinking Fundamentalism, a book we discussed in the class, we could see the influences of globalization toward religious community attitudes caused apparently by their fear, and their will for religious purification from distortion they see as brought by globalization.
Therefore, to foster the stabilization of the world order from war and disputes, it is necessary to rethink globalization in ways that are more ethical and friendly to the world. On the topic discussion of global ethics, we learned about attempts by world organizations like the United Nations in generating international agreements including the UN Declaration on Human Rights. Besides, other agreements such as the Cairo and Bangkok Declarations represent local voices which to some points define human rights differently.
The difference in worldviews among international actors is interesting because each organization tries to define a global value within their own relativities. Moreover, some theories think that UN Declaration on Human Right is a Western domination over other cultures without considering cultural relativities, including religions, each of which inherits different theological and structures while at the same time sharing common values like peace, humanity, equality, and justice.
World issues indeed became valuable perspective in this class. Students are meant to not only understand theories but also keep updating their knowledge on what is happening in the recent international world. While negative influences of globalization such as war, religious radicalization, and other world disputes were discussed in the class, there is also a hope for a global agreement and bright future by sharing noble values like cooperation, justice, human dignity, and peace on global scale. The existence of world organizations and religious representatives in fostering global ethics proves the progress made towards creating world peace. The duty of students, in this case, is to contribute academically to spreading such values without neglecting the variety of cultural and religious perspectives.
*The writer is CRCS’s student of the 2016 batch.

Ilham Almujaddidy & A.S. Sudjatna | CRCS | Event Report

Dialog antaragama sebagai upaya penyelesaian konflik bukan hal yang mudah dilakukan. Tidak jarang terjadi, dialog yang dimaksudkan untuk menjembatani perbedaan dan meminimalisasi konflik tidak berjalan sesuai tujuan awal, atau bahkan kontraproduktif dan menimbulkan masalah baru.
Dalam diskusi Forum Umar Kayam, Pusat Kebudayaan Koesnadi Hardjosoemantri (PKKH) UGM, pada Senin 25 Juli 2016, dosen CRCS Dr. Suhadi Cholil membahas persoalan ini. Dalam diskusi bertajuk “Menunda Keyakinan: Refleksi Membangun Pluralisme dari Bawah” itu, pengajar matakuliah Interreligious Dialogue di CRCS ini memberikan identifikasi-identifikasi penyebab dialog gagal mencapai tujuannya.
Pertama, kurangnya pemahaman substantif tentang fungsi dan metode dialog antaragama yang menyaratkan, antara lain, adanya saling percaya. Adanya praduga-praduga negatif terhadap mitra dialog dapat menimbulkan tiadanya saling percaya itu, dan pada gilirannya menjadi hambatan utama bagi efektivitas proses dialog.
Kedua, dialog antaragama yang semestinya menjadi interaksi untuk saling mengakomodasi masing-masing pihak yang terlibat, dalam prosesnya, malah terjebak dalam upaya untuk mendominasi.
Ketiga, dialog antaragama diandaikan sebagai penuntas konflik. Yang jarang dipahami, dialog dalam praksisnya tidak serta merta bisa menyelesaikan konflik. Beberapa konflik, apalagi konflik agama yang melibatkan klaim-klaim teologis yang sulit untuk dijembatani, tidak mudah dimediasi dengan dialog semata, dan karena itu memerlukan alternatif resolusi konflik yang lain. 
Dengan menyadari hal-hal yang menghambat dialog antaragama itu, pemahaman yang tepat mengenai fungsi dan metode dialog antaragama bagi para pihak yang terlibat di dalamnya mutlak diperlukan, termasuk mensinergikan pengetahuan teoretis dan praksis.
Yang kerap menjadi problem di lapangan ialah banyak akademisi yang hanya fokus pada persoalan-persoalan teoretis atau teologis semata, namun abai pada ranah praktis. Sementara di sisi lain, ada banyak aktivis yang kurang reflektif secara teoretis maupun teologis, namun begitu aktif di pelbagai aktivitas dan advokasi perdamaian. Ketika kedua belah pihak ini terlibat dalam sebuah dialog, kerap kali muncul kesalahpahaman yang dapat memicu timbulnya permasalahan baru, dan karena itu kontraproduktif.
Hal lain untuk meminimalisasi hambatan dalam dialog antaragama ialah dengan mendudukkan isu teologis secara tepat. Tidak dapat dimungkiri, isu teologis merupakan isu sensitif, dan karena itu, jika tak hati-hati, justru dapat merusak proses dialog itu sendiri. Dalam proses dialog antaragama, isu teologis berada dalam ketegangan antara klaim eksklusifitas dan kehendak untuk menerima adanya keyakinan yang berbeda.
Dalam persoalan yang terakhir ini, Dr. Suhadi tidak mengusulkan untuk membuang eksklusivitas itu. Baginya, eksklusivitas itu sendiri tidak salah dalam dirinya sendiri. Ia akan menjadi masalah ketika tidak diterjemahkan dengan proporsi yang tepat di ruang publik. Banyak dari yang terlibat dalam proses dialog tidak membedakan antara ruang privat untuk ranah teologis dan ruang publik untuk pencarian titik temu guna menyelesaikan konflik. Karena kurangnya pemahaman untuk melokalisir klaim-klaim teologis pada ranah pikiran dan hati, dialog antaragama, alih-alih menjembatani perbedaan, justru rawan menjadi adu klaim teologis.
Merespons isu eksklusivitas teologis dalam dialog antaragama ini, Dr. Suhadi menawarkan gagasan bahwa untuk mengembangkan dialog antaragama yang lebih produktif, perspektif yang terbaik adalah dengan mendahulukan urusan sivik (kewargaan) dan menunda keyakinan. Hal ini tentu tidak berarti keyakinan ditinggalkan. Keyakinan ditunda, tidak dikedepankan, dan baru ditengok kembali ketika dibutuhkan dalam proses dialog.
*Laporan ini ditulis oleh mahasiswa CRCS, dan disunting oleh pengelola website.

Gregory Vanderbilt | CRCS UGM | Perspective

The kyai switched to English for just one sentence as he joined other village leaders in welcoming CRCS’s Eighth Diversity Management School or Sekolah Pengelolaan Keragaman (SPK) to the village of Mangundadi, 23 km west of Magelang, at the foot of Mt. Sumbing.  Perhaps his choice was to honor the diversity present in this group—or that the chasm from ivory tower to mountain village had been bridged for an afternoon—as we tried to absorb the dance performance based on the carved reliefs of Borobudur we had just experienced. Though the village is 24km away from the 10^th-century sacred site, and Muslim, it and its arts are part of the Ruwat-Rawat Festival movement that seeks to re-sacralize the great Buddhist monument from the disenchantment of the tourism industry and the weight of the busloads that climb it each day to snap selfies and admire in passing the craftsmanship of a millenium ago.
We were there because of the friendship with Ruwat-Rawat founder Pak Sucoro that has developed over the last year thanks to CRCS alumna Wilis Rengganiasih.  Owner of the counter-narrative-producing Warung Info Jagad Cleguk across from the gates to the Borobudur parking lot and instigator of the eight-week festival each April-May, he had arranged an amazing afternoon for the excursion that has become an important change-of-page for SPK members after a week of ideas and passionate discussion.  On the Saturday of the ten-day long school, the twenty-five members of SPK plus facilitators and friends departed by bus the school’s venue at the Disaster Oasis in Kaliurang, heading first to the warung at Borobudur to meet our guides and then heading another hour west from Magelang.    
The road to the village of Mangundadi was too steep for our bus and so we were met at the main road by the pickups and motorcycles of the young men of the village.  Having climbed on board, off we went to Mangundadi, the motorcycles revving their engines in a chorus of welcome.  Afterwards SPK staffer Subandri admitted that he has now a tinge of positive feeling when he hears the youth gangs disrupt the city streets with their noisy machines, because what a welcome it was!  When we reached the village, women lined the lane to shake our hands as we were ushered into one house to catch our breath, and then to process around the village’s new mosque with the genungan ritual mountain of vegetables, followed by the groups of performers, children, youth, adults, already in gorgeous costume and make-up.   By the time we had feasted in another house, the performers were ready and, as the rain fell, they danced scenes from the stone reliefs.  In the end, Pak Sucoro pulled some of us onto the stage to move with them and then they offered their salims and went back to their villages. 
In the evening we returned to the Omah Semar retreat house near the monument-park for a discussion with Pak Sucoro about his vision of Borobudur as a universal spiritual heritage and as a place of spiritual significance for local culture, a place for Indonesian society to make a new choice, to live in harmony with God, nature, and each other.  The Ruwat-Rawat has incorporated and re-ignited local traditions by focusing them on a global question, the question I asked the Advanced Study of Buddhism students who met Pak Sucoro back in May: who owns Borobudur?  The next morning, walking across the lawns where his village once stood, we could see the stupa-monument in a new way. 
This was my third SPK since I came to CRCS in 2014.  For me, it is an opportunity to meet the activists, academics, government workers, and media people who come to participate and see how change is happening across Indonesia.  Each SPK may have its own character—this one, for example, was quicker to start singing than put on a mop of cringe-worthy joke telling—but the greater tone of excitement at being among others as serious of purpose and as ready to be challenged to greater intellectual depth is constant.  The participants are excited by guest insights from Bob Hefner and Dewi Candraningrum but even more by the well-developed program from a core of facilitators devoted to teaching “civic pluralism” as a paradigm for just co-existence in the contexts of Indonesian diversity, one basing access in the three Re-‘s of recognition, representation, and redistribution, combined with thinking systematically about such core CRCS emphases as taking apart religion as lived and governed in Indonesia, digging into research for advocacy and putting into practice the theories and methods of conflict resolution.  Equally important, they stay up late sharing their work, from teaching to preaching to activating NGOs to working conscientiously from inside government.  Some know of the program because they have heard about CRCS while visiting or studying in Yogyakarta; others, following friends and co-workers who applied previously; and others still from searching online for “pluralism school” in order to serve better as religious and social leaders.
Visiting SPK alumni in their homeplaces—Jakarta, Aceh, West Sumatra, and Jambi, so far—has also shown me glimpses of grass-roots possibility across Indonesia.  Trainings and workshops are regular features of Indonesian civil society, but it appears SPK leaves a more lasting impression on its participants.  This is perhaps because of the intensity of their twelve days in the aptly named Disaster Oasis and perhaps because it challenges them more to take an intellectually grounded, hopeful framework to the places they are working and asks them to return with a research project, on how a pluralistically civil society is being made in soccer clubs and local studies movements and activism for gender (five from SPK-VIII work against domestic violence) and ethnic equality and film festivals and women’s economic literacy programs in villages and so on.  In that way, the village kyai is right.
*The writer, Gregory Vanderbilt, is a lecturer at CRCS, teaching courses, among others, on religion and globalization; and advanced study of Christianity.

Jekonia Tarigan | CRCS UGM | SPK News

Meta Ose Ginting | CRCS | Wednesday Forum Report

Abstract
Acknowledged by UNESCO in 2009 as a Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, batik is produced through an introspective creative process in which the artist uncovers a truth and presents local wisdom and beauty.  In this way, it can be an effective means to communicate symbols, ideas and messages about peace, respect and interreligious tolerance in order to counter the growing radicalism in Indonesian society.  Aniek Handajani will present her new book Batik Antiterorisme Sebagai Media Komunikasi Upaya Kontra – Radikalisasi Melalui Pendidikan dan Budaya (co-written with Eri Ratmanto and published by UGM Press, 2016) as well as several works of batik she has commissioned in order to encourage public discussion about terrorism and peace.
Speaker
Aniek Handajani is a staff at the East Java provincial office of the Ministry of Education and an English lecturer at the Faculty of Education, Islamic University, Lamongan. She earned her Masters in Education at Flinders University in Australia and is an educator and activist for inter-religious peace. Currently, she is a Ph.D. candidate at Inter-Religious Studies (ICRS),  UGM, researching terrorism and deradicalization.

Meta Ose Margaretha | CRCS | Thesis Review

Abstract
Tony Albert is a politically-minded artist provoked by stereotypical representations of Aboriginal people and the colonial history that attempts to define him, and what Aboriginality is, in the present. Interrogating contemporary legacies of colonialism that have impacted the lives of Aboriginal peoples in his homeland of Australia, he mines popular culture imagery and art historical source material while drawing upon personal and collective histories. His talk will explore Australian politics in relation to his own art practice. Examining the legacy of racial and cultural misrepresentation, particularly of Australia’s Aboriginal people, Albert has developed a universal language that seeks to rewrite historical mistruths and injustice.
Speaker
Tony Albert has spent the majority of his life in Brisbane, but has strong family connections further north to the Girramay and Kuku Yalanji people of the rainforest region of Australia. In 2004 he completed a degree in Visual Arts, majoring in Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art, at Griffith University. His work has been exhibited and collected by major institutions throughout Australia and he is currently artist-in- residence at Cemeti Art House, Yogyakarta.

Abstract
Indonesian Islam connotes a pluralistic form of faith that is open and deeply engages local-specific cultures that concurrently emphasize a rigorous pursuit of social justice and equality for all. Despite the voluminous scholarship on Indonesian Islam, its correlation with Muhammadiyah’s “Islam Berkemajuan” and Nahdhatul Ulama’s “Islam Nusantara”—each having its own vision for a good society—remains woefully unexplained. This paper explores the interplay between Indonesian Islam and the praxis of democracy within the historical context of overcoming an apparent inferiority complex suffered by some segments of the Muslim community. The authors argue that as much as Indonesian Islam may have proven itself to be distinct from ‘the other Islams’, commonly found in its birthplace in the Middle East, there is still much to be desired for in terms of how to confidently overcome the historical baggage as a once colonized people. Using Said and Foucault’s analytical frameworks, the paper argues for a less humble attitude toward the propagation of Indonesian Islam to the outside world, given the protracted period of instability in the Middle East, ongoing terror attacks in different parts of the world and the politics surrounding Islamophobia.
Speaker
Breanna Bradley is an undergraduate student at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service located in Washington, District of Columbia, USA. Bradley’s studies focus on the relationship between culture and politics in Southeast Asia. She is currently a research assistant at the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies (ICRS), a Ph.D. program in Inter-Religious Studies located at Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. She has previously held positions as an undergraduate research fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs and as a program coordinator for Georgetown University’s D.C. School’s Project, a program aimed to provide English language access for the immigrant community of the Washington DC area. She is interested in the role that Indonesian Islam plays in Indonesian culture and politics and is currently assisting with research surrounding the Tabot festival, a festival with its roots in Shia Islam celebrated by a majority Sunni community every year in Bengkulu, Sumatra.

Judul
Dari Masjid ke Panggung Politik, Melacak Akar-akar Kekerasan Agama Antara Komunitas Sunni dan Syiah di Sampang, Jawa Timur
Penulis
Muhammad Afdillah
Penerbit
CRCS 2016
ISBN
978-602-72686-6-1
Harga
Rp 70.000,-
Beberapa aspek politik dan kekerasan Sunni-Syiah di Sampang dibahas di dalam buku ini. Salah satu di antaranya penyebab konflik antara komunitas Sunni dan Syiah di Sampang. Selain itu, buku ini membahas dinamika konflik Sunni-Syiah, khususnya eskalasi konflik yang terjadi seiring dengan berjalannya waktu dan kegagalan intervensi dan penanganan terhadap konflik tersebut. Buku ini juga membahas usaha – usaha rekonsiliasi kedua komunitas, khususnya setelah kekerasan terbuka yang terjadi di Bulan Desember 2011 dan Agustus 2012.
(Samsu Rizal Panggabean, Pengajar di Magister Perdamaian dan Resolusi Konflik di Fakultas Ilmu Sosial dan Ilmu Politik, Universitas Gadjah Mada).
__________________________
Bagi yang tertarik, bisa menghubungi:
Divisi Marketing CRCS UGM
Gedung Lengkung Lantai 3
Sekolah Pascasarjana Universitas Gadjah Mada
Jl. Teknika Utara, Pogung, Yogyakarta, Indonesia 55281
Telephone/Fax : + 62-274-544976
 

Abstract
Rumors about head-hunting and construction sacrifices have been recorded in Southeast Asia since the beginning of 20th century. My focus is on the present-day form of these rumors on the island Sumba, Eastern Indonesia. First directed especially at the Dutch colonizers, stories about foreigners seeking for body parts have continually absorbed new features. In 1990’s, they focussed on new technologies that were imagined as electronic phantasms.  Nowadays they target tourists and immigrants as well as people deviating from social norms. Following Jean-Nöel Kapferer, who defined rumors as one of the defense mechanisms by which members of communities try to preserve their old ways, I interpret Sumbanese rumors as a way for Sumbanese to define themselves in opposition to outside forces and as a tool for maintaining norms in society.
Speaker
Adriana Kábová earned her Master’s degree in Ethnology from the Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. She is a PhD candidate in Anthropology, also at the Charles University in Prague, and is currently on  an internship in the Pusat Studi Pariwisata at UGM. Her research interests include tourism and contemporary legends in Southeast Asia.
 

Daud Sihombing | CRCS | Article
Wilfred C. Smith in his book “The Meaning and the End of Religion,”  defines reification  as mentally making religion into a thing, gradually coming to conceive of religion as an objective systematic entity. In this process, religions are standardized and institutionalized. For instance, there were no “Hindus” who defined their practice as Hinduism until the term Hindu was established by Muslims and later British colonizers who invaded and sought to know and rule India. It was Muslims and Westerners with their concepts of religion who constructed or reified  Hinduism.

Based on Smith’s insight, I am going to conduct an art exhibition which I  call REIFICATION. In this exhibition I  create an imaginary government institution named the Department of Certification. In my exhibition, this fictional governmental institution issues certificates for beliefs that fulfill the requirements to be recognized as a religion. My goals by conducting this exhibition are framing the religious discourse I learned in the Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies (CRCS), Universitas Gadjah Mada, in a different medium and offering new perspectives for seeing religious life in Indonesia.
This project can be considered a reflection of the past or the prediction for the future. What I mean by the reflection of the past is that I am going to visualize the unseen practice of standardizing the concept of religion and recognizing particular religions that happen in the past, especially in Indonesia. In predicting the future, I argue that this governmental institution can exist in Indonesia when the Bill of Rights protecting all religious people has been finalized.
This method of manipulating, imitating, pretending, or camouflaging in order to document an alternate reality has been used effectively by both Indonesian and foreign artists. An Indonesian artist, Agan Harahap created a photo series entitled The Reminiscence Wall,  a compilation of “fictional novels” based on history that combines various realities of what happened in the past. Another example is Robert Zhao Renhui, a Singaporean multi-disciplinary artist. He constructs and layers each of his subjects with narratives, interweaving the real and the fictional. He focuses on the relation between humans and the natural world. Both Agan and Robert Zhao creates new “facts”based on their own fictional narratives.
This exhibition will be held in:
LIR Space, Yogyakarta, from September 3rd to 17th, 2016.
Open 12 pm – 20 pm, Closed on Monday.
It will be curated by Mira Asriningtyas as part of the ongoing Exhibition Laboratory project organized by Lir Space.

Robina Saha | CRCS | Article
Robina Saha is a Shansi Fellow to Indonesia. She taught english at the Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies, Gadjah Mada University Yogyakarta from August 2014 – to June 2016. 
I first visited the city of Banda Aceh in the spring of 2009. As I stepped out of the airport and drove into town, I was greeted by a quiet Indonesian city framed by a gorgeous vista of mountains to the south, glittering coastline in the north, and tranquil rice paddies in between. Smooth, wide roads and fresh-faced buildings were the most telling signs of the city’s destruction at the hands of the 2004 tsunami and the investment that flowed into Aceh in its wake. The hotel where I stayed displayed photos of boats that had crashed into houses miles away from shore, some of which remain in situ today as memorials and tourist attractions. But it was hard to map these images of debris and desolation onto the clean, quiet little space I traversed between the hotel and the public school where I taught for a week.
At sixteen, I knew little about Aceh apart from its destructive encounter with the tsunami. Although I was born in Indonesia and lived in Jakarta for the first six years of my life, Aceh was geographically, culturally and politically as far removed as any other country. Until 2005, the region had been embroiled in a bloody conflict between the Indonesian military and the separatist Free Aceh Movement; at the time, travel to Aceh was rare and required special permits. Growing up in metropolitan cities where headscarves were rare and the vast majority of Indonesians I knew were from the island of Java, Aceh was something we only heard about on the news in relation to sharia law and ongoing violence. Looking back, I went to Aceh with an image not dissimilar to the one most Americans have of the Middle East, or Indians of Kashmir: Islamic fundamentalism and destruction.
Upon actually arriving in Banda Aceh, I felt a little foolish for being surprised, half-expecting to be accosted by the sharia police at every corner. While all the Indonesian women wore jilbabs (headscarves), I was never made to feel uncomfortable for leaving my frizzy nest of hair exposed. If anything, in a city more accustomed to Western NGO-workers, my face and arms were of interest mainly in order to determine whether I was possibly related to any Bollywood stars (specifically: Kajol; answer: I wish). Like many cities in Indonesia, there are mosques on every street, and I enjoyed seeing the variety of styles and sizes, from simple neighbourhood masjids to the toweringly beautiful Baiturrahman Grand Mosque. At prayer time, the entire city, warungs and all, would shut down, often leaving us to order room service nasi goreng or head to the lone Pizza Hut where we would sip on bottles of Coca Cola and wait it out.
In other words, my prevailing impression of Banda Aceh was of a quiet, conservative, and surprisingly lovely Muslim city populated by Indonesians just as friendly, curious and warmly hospitable as any other I’ve met. Later, upon reflection, I realised that as a visiting foreigner it was easy to glance over the strict policing of moral codes when I wasn’t the target. I never crossed the sharia police in their khaki uniforms, prowling the streets in pick-up trucks and lying in wait at roadblocks in search of unmarried Indonesian couples and uncovered Muslim women. After reading more about the region’s turbulent history, I came to appreciate that I had barely scratched at the surface layer of a city grappling with the process of constructing a contemporary social and political Islamic identity. The after-effects of a natural disaster popularly viewed as a punishment from Allah for decades of civil war had etched themselves far more deeply in the Acehnese psyche than I could have shallowly perceived.
Although I was born in, come from, and grew up in countries with significant Muslim populations, this was in many ways my first conscious confrontation with the blurred convergences between the Islam I saw in the media and what I observed on the ground. At times it can feel like staring at a double-exposure, trying to figure out where one image ends and the other begins. Looking back, although I wouldn’t have said it at the time, many of the decisions I made over the next six years—learning Arabic, studying Islamic culture and politics, writing my senior thesis on the post-9/11 display of Islamic art in Western museums, and ultimately coming back to Indonesia as a Shansi Fellow—could potentially be traced back to this first encounter with contemporary Islam and the questions it sparked in my mind about the representations and realities of Muslims around the world.
When I was first offered the Jogja fellowship in November 2013, I was deep in the process of writing my senior thesis, which was in part a critique of the Islamic art field for its exclusion of most non-Middle Eastern Islamic cultures. Having grown out of European colonial paradigms of Islam, the Middle East and Asia, what we call “Islamic art” is largely limited to the art and architecture of the Arabian Peninsula, Central Asia, Iran, Turkey and India. Islam first arrived in Southeast Asia through trade as early as the 12th century, and today the region makes up a quarter of the world’s Muslim population. It’s also one of many areas that are conspicuously absent from introductory textbooks, museum displays and courses of Islamic art. Specifically in the case of Indonesia, this too can be traced back to the impact of Dutch colonial scholarship, which focused on the archipelago’s Hindu and Buddhist heritage at the expense of its contemporary Islamic culture—partly as a way to delegitimize local Islamic resistance groups. Over time it became an accepted truth that Islamic cultures outside of the European-defined Orient were simply a corruption of the “real” Islam.
In a post-9/11 context where the international image of Islam is largely informed by the puritanical Wahhabism propagated by Saudi Arabia and the fundamentalist extremism carried out by ISIS, I argued in my thesis that the inclusion and visibility of Islamic culture from traditionally peripheral regions like Southeast Asia in displays and discussions of Islamic culture would help challenge the common misconception of a singular Islam located solely in the Middle East. At 200 million and counting, Indonesia has the single largest population of Muslims in the world, and yet most people would struggle to find it on a map. The Islamic culture that developed and spread here in the 15th and 16th centuries is certainly different and more syncretic in character due to its intermixing with pre-existing Hindu and Buddhist religions of the time. But to me this speaks more to the diversity of Islam across the world than the predominance of a single, “original” interpretation that has come to dictate the mainstream international discourse.

Farihatul Qamariyah | CRCS | News
Over the last several years, students from the Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies (CRCS) Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, have been participating in the annual Graduate Student Fellowship Program hosted by Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. Started in 2005, this program offers graduate students working in the Asian topics related to the Humanities and Social Sciences from different universities and countries around Southeast Asia to spend two months based at the Asia Research Institute where they are mentored by ARI researchers and collaborate with other fellows from around the region as well as utilizing the wide range of resources in the libraries of NUS and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute). This fellowship culminates with a conference for the fellows as well as other students from the region to present their research at the end of the program. During the program, the fellow students  are able to participate in any seminars held in ARI and other institutions based in NUS. ARI also arranges a professional mentor, either an NUS lecturer or ARI scholar, for each of the students to offer personal consultation and advise according to each student’s research interest and topic. Since the primary goal of this program is to produce an academic paper that will be presented in the Graduate Forum, ARI organizes a course in Academic English Writing and Communication. These kind of activities effectively support the fellow students to improve their academic expertise as well as enrich the international experiences through the daily interaction and discussion. This year, ARI invited fellows from more diverse  backgrounds compared with the previous year. There are fellows from the following countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam, Philippines, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, China, India and USA.
This year, five students of CRCS are invited to join the Asian Graduate Student Fellowship from May 22nd – July 15th 2016, two from the 2013 batch (Fredy Torang and Yoga Khoiri Ali) and three from the 2014 batch (Abdul Mujib, Aziz Anwar Fachrudin, and Farihatul Qamariyah). Two more (Partigor Daud Sihombing and Subandri Simbolon) have been selected as presenters at the Graduate Forum that will be held in July 2016. The fellows from CRCS bring research projects connected to their thesis projects that are especially related to ARI’s topic clusters including Cultural Studies in Asia and Religion and Globalization. Mujib’s project is entitled “The Relevant of Interreligious Relations in Shaping of Experience in Diversity and Pluralist Attitude” and examines the case of one multi – religious village located in Yogyakarta. Aziz’s research on ISIS discourse is titled “Indonesian Islamist Ideological Responses to the Islamic State”. Qamariyah’s research focuses on the issues of gender, religion and business and is entitled “Women, Islam, and Economic Activity by Examining the Religious Ethics of Muslim Business Women in Indonesia”. Fredy’s topic of research is “Faith Based Organization in Humanitarian Diplomacy: A Case Study of the Jesuit Refugee in Yogyakarta” and Yoga’s research examines “The Spirituality of Rain Water from the South East Slope of Mountain Merapi”. These various topics are expected to contribute significantly to the Asia Research Institute’s interests.
The participation of CRCS’ students in this fellowship for over ten years is a demonstration of the center’s academic track record on the international academic stage. “It is almost a tradition that CRCS UGM students have almost always been in the list of Asian Graduate Student Fellowships ARI – NUS recipient since the first batch”, said Ida Fitri Astuti (Batch 2013) who participated in this program last year. She also testified to the great benefit of this graduate fellowship program for her academic improvement and international network based on her own experiences. “This program is a kind of salad bowl which gathers Asian students to meet up each other, learn and bound together by “academic dressing” produced by the excellent staff and scholars of ARI – NUS.” This testimony was also confirmed by another CRCS’ student who is now experiencing the turn. “This place is like an academic heaven, a lot of literatures and academic sources are available here. ARI NUS provides us a great facility and possibility to explore and utilize the academic prosperity by the services. It is an extremely exciting!” said Fredi Torang through his first excitement living in the new environment.
Based on the documentation, about twenty seven students of CRCS have been Asian Graduate Student Fellows, starting with Ali Burhan in 2006, the program’s second year. Since then,CRCS participants have been Chandra Utama and Maufur in 2007; Akhmad Siddiq, Muhammad Endy Saputro and Ferry Muhammadsyah Siregar in 2008;  Amanah Nurish and Saipul Hamdi in 2009; and Ruby Emy Astuti and Jimmy Immanuel Marcos in 2010. 2011 was the previous record year with four students: Mega Hidayati, Yudith Listiandri, Muhammad Rokib and Dian Maya Safitri. Only one student, Darwin Darmawan, was chosen in 2012. Anwar Masduki and I Made Arsana Dwiputra participated in 2013. Two students, Ida Fitri Astuti and Sulfia Lilin Nurindah Sari, were able to attend in 2015, with another, Hary Widyantoro, joining as a presenter in the Graduate Forum. Thus, when the five fellows are joined by the two presenters, this year of 2016 has the highest number of CRCS students selected as Asian Graduate Student Fellows and Graduate Forum presenters: seven. This is our challenge to the batches that follow us.

The Kosmopolis Platform/Dept. of Globalization and Dialogue Studies of the University of Humanistic Studies (the Netherlands), in cooperation with HIVOS (Humanist Institute for Cooperation with Developing Countries), The Asia Foundation, Azim Premji University, (India), PUSAD-Paramadina and The Centre for Religious and Cross-Cultural Studies of Gadjah Mada University (Indonesia) and the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice of the University of the Free State (South Africa) welcomes applicants for the 2016 International Summer School on Pluralism, Development and Social Change.

Asep A.S | CRCS | News
Gunungkidul ditengarai sebagai kabupaten dengan tingkat intoleransi paling tinggi di Yogyakarta. Setidaknya, itulah salah satu hal yang terungkap dalam acara launching buku sekaligus diskusi mengenai laporan advokasi kebebasan beragama bertajuk “Yogyakarta City of (In)tolerance?,” Senin, 2 Mei 2016, di Sekolah Pascasarjana UGM. Informasi mengenai masih tingginya angka kasus intoleransi di Kabupaten ini diketahui setelah Aliansi Nasional Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (ANBTI) melakukan pendokumentasian atas kasus-kasus pelanggaran kebebasan beragama dan berkepercayaan di kabupaten tersebut yang terjadi selama kurun waktu 2011 hingga 2015. Di dalam laporannya, ANBTI mengkategorikan beragam kasus pelanggaran tersebut ke dalam empat kategori, yakni (1) pelanggaran oleh negara atas keinginan mengontrol ekspresi keagamaan; (2) pelanggaran yang terjadi akibat perilaku intoleran yang dilakukan oleh negara dan non-negara; (3) pelanggaran yang terjadi akibat kegagalan negara di dalam mengatasi baik diskriminasi ataupun pelanggaran sosial atas kelompok-kelompok agama tertentu; serta (4) pelanggaran yang terjadi karena menerapkan kebijakan tertentu yang merugikan agama-agama minoritas.
Pada diskusi yang dihelat oleh Program Studi Agama dan Lintas Budaya atau CRCS melaui  program Sekolah Pengelolaan Keragaman (SPK) dan ANBTI ini pembicara dari ANBTI, Agnes Dwi Rusjiati, menyebutkan beberapa contoh peristiwa pelanggaran yang terjadi di Gunungkidul, seperti pengusiran Pendeta Agustinus, penutupan Gereja Pantekosta di Indonesia (GpdI) Semanu dan Gereja Pantekosta di Indonesia (GpdI) Playen yang telah memiliki IMB, penyerangan dan penutupan atas Gereja Kemah Injili Indonesia (GKII) Widoro, penolakan acara perayaan Paskah Adiyuswo Gereja Kristen Jawa (GKJ) Gunugkidul yang disertai penganiayaan terhadap aktivis lintas iman, serta penolakan pendirian Gua Maria Wahyu Ibuku di wilayah Giriwening. Memang, belakangan ini Yogyakarta yang kerap disebut-sebut sebagai City of Tolerance sedang dirundung banyak problema dalam hal toleransi, baik antar maupun antara umat beragama maupun antar kelompok  ormas. Terbukti, sebagaimana disebutkan oleh Agnes, kasus-kasus intoleransi seperti penyerangan dan pembubaran diskusi, perusakan situs makam, penyerangan terhadap doa rosario, intimidasi terhadap kelompok tertentu seperti Syiah dan LGBT, penghentian ibadah di gereja, serta usaha penutupan rumah ibadah kerap terjadi di provinsi yang berjuluk kota budaya ini.
Di dalam kesempatan tersebut, Agnes juga memaparkan bahwa peristiwa pelanggaran kebebasan beragama yang terjadi di  kerap kali seputar persoalan penolakan pelaksanaan ibadah maupun keberadaan rumah ibadah umat Kristen, baik yang telah dibangun maupun masih dalam proses pembangunan. Selain itu, ia juga mengeluhkan bahwa setiap pertemuan yang difasilitasi oleh Pemda mengenai persoalan rumah ibadah ini akan berujung pada penghentian rumah ibadah, selain juga proses yang berlarut-larut dan kurangnya peran aktif pemerintah dalam menangani kasus-kasus semacam ini. Kerap kali, pemerintah baru bertindak setelah ada inisiasi dari warga. Isu kristenisasi, pemurtadan, dan adanya penolakan dari masyarakat muslim yang kemudian mendesak pemerintah daerah untuk melakukan penghentian rumah ibadah menjadi pola khas dalam kasus kebebasan beragama dan berkepercayaan yang terjadi di  ini.
Senada dengan Agnes, Kristiana Riyadi—pembicara dari Forum Kerukunan Umat Beragama (FKUB)—menyebutkan bahwa peran FKUB di dalam membangun kerukunan dan toleransi antar umat beragama masihlah sangat minim. Bahkan, FKUB  sendiri secara internal masihlah menyisakan konflik, hal ini sangat berbeda dengan kondisi sebelum adanya FKUB yang merupakan keputusan menteri, di mana kala itu forum komunikasi antar agama masih bernama Forum Lintas Iman. Hal ini terjadi, menurut Kristiana, disebabkan oleh penekanan pada proporsionalitas yang diatur dalam SK menteri tahun 2006. Tentu saja, Islam yang mayoritas akan memiliki jumlah wakil yang lebih banyak di dalam FKUB. Sebagai contoh, pimpinan FKUB yang berjumlah lima orang dengan asumsi merupakan wakil dari setiap agama yang diakui oleh negara, tiga di antaranya diduduki oleh wakil dari umat Islam. Sehingga, dengan pertimbangan tertentu, akhirnya khusus FKUB , sesuai dengan keputusan Bupati , memiliki tujuh orang pimpinan agar dapat mengakomodir semua agama.
Persoalan lain yang dihadapi oleh FKUB adalah soal menyerap aspirasi. FKUB semestinya menyerap semua aspirasi masyarakat dan umat beragama. Namun, proses ini menjadi bumerang tersendiri bagi tujuan didirikannya FKUB saat harus berhadapan dengan aspirasi dari kelompok ormas intoleran yang mau tidak mau harus diserap juga. Selain itu, keterpusatan keputusan pada ketua menjadi persoalan tersendiri yang tak dapat dihindari. Sebab, hal ini kerap kali tidak mencerminkan keterwakilan umat beragama yang minoritas. Belum lagi persoalan pengambilan beberapa keputusan terkait persoalan keagamaan ini tidak sepenuhnya berada dalam lingkup FKUB, melainkan pada rapat Muspida, di mana FKUB hanya diwakili oleh satu orang saja, yakni ketua FKUB. Tak heran jika keputusan-keputusan yang dihasilkan kerap kali kontraproduktif dengan visi dan misi didirikannya FKUB itu sendiri. Persoalan lainnya, misalnya, sosialisasi perbedaan peraturan pendirian rumah ibadah sebelum 2006. Sosialisasi mengenai hal ini hampir dapat dikatakan tidak dilakukan. Sehingga  masyarakat menganggap peraturan mengenai pembangunan rumah ibadah setelah 2006 bersifat general, sehingga kerap kali terjadi konflik di lapangan karena adanya ketidakpahaman ini. Biasanya kasus perizinan keberadaan rumah ibadah lama yang muncul sebagai akibatnya. Padahal perizinan rumah ibadah yang telah dibangun sebelum tahun 2006 berbeda dengan perizinan rumah ibadah yang dibangun setelah tahun tersebut.
Mengenai persoalan penolakan rumah ibadah ini, pembicara lainnya yang merupakan alumni SPK, Pendeta Stefanus Iwan Listyanto, menyebutkan bahwa terjadinya hal tersebut juga disebabkan oleh adanya persoalan internal dalam golongan agama tertentu. Tak dapat dipungkiri, menurut pendeta dari Semanu ini, adanya persaingan antar gereja membuat umat Kristen pasif saat ada gereja di luar golongannya yang dipersoalkan keberadaannya oleh umat lain. Hal ini menjadi gejala global yang terjadi sehingga kelompok Kristen yang sedang menghadapi masalah dengan rumah ibadahnya kerap harus berjuang sendiri tanpa adanya bantuan dari sesama pemeluk Kristen lainnya. Menurutnya, belum adanya kesadaran mengenai perspektif HAM dan adanya persaingan antar gereja juga memiliki sumbangsih yang cukup besar terhadap tindakan pelanggaran kebebasan beragama dan penyelesaian konflik. Hal ini menandakan masih adanya persoalan di antara umat beragama secara internal. Dengan nada bercanda dan sindiran, ia berkata bahwa mungkin saja ada golongan seagama yang sorak sorai saat sebuah rumah ibadah ditutup atau dipermasalahkan. Karenanya, ia menekankan pentingnya membangun jejaring baik antara maupun antar umat beragama. Dengan berjejaring, menurutnya, seseorang atau kelompok bisa saling bantu melengkapi data pendokumentasian jika terjadi persoalan yang mungkin akan memudahkan proses penyelesaian masalah. Selain itu, memiliki sudut pandang dari pihak korban juga penting untuk membangun empati, agar persaingan itu dapat tetap berjalan secara sehat.
Sedangkan pembicara terakhir, M. Iqbal Ahnaf dari CRCS, menyebutkan bahwa maraknya tindakan intoleransi yang terjadi di Yogyakarta akhir-akhir ini disebabkan oleh banyak faktor. Namun secara ringkas, Iqbal mengerucutkannya ke dalam tiga faktor yang saling terkait dan berinteraksi satu sama lain, yaitu (1) krisis keistimewaan; (2) industrialisasi; dan (3) penebalan identitas. Walaupun masih berupa hipotesis, menurut Iqbal, namun gejala yang menunjukkan ke arah tersebut cukup jelas adanya. “Saya kira, ini sangat terkait dengan pemegang otoritas tertinggi di Jogjakarta. Saya kira kita ingat belum lama ini RUU keistimewaan Jogjakarta mulai mengusik otoritas yang paling mapan di Jogjakarta.” Ungkapnya mengawali penjelasan mengenai persoalan krisis keistimewaan ini. Menurut Iqbal, perubahan peraturan di tampuk pimpinan Yogyakarta ini mencerminkan proses perubahan sosial yang sedang berlangsung. Hal ini kemudian memicu krisis otoritas keistimewaan yang meniscayakan kebutuhan akan kekuatan basis sumber daya di Yogyakarta. Hal ini bertujuan untuk mempertahankan citra keistimewaan itu. Oleh sebab itu kebutuhan akan sumber daya ini kemudian melibatkan perkembangan industrialisasi sebagai salah satu usaha mendapatkan suplai sumber daya.

Ali Ja’far | CRCS | Artikel
“Perubahan besar-besaran pada Klenteng-Vihara Buddha terjadi setelah peristiwa 1965, dimana semua yang berhubungan dengan China dilarang berkembang di Indonesia. Nama-nama warung atau orang yang dulunya menggunakan nama China, harus berubah dan memakai nama Indonesia” kata Romo Tjoti Surya di Vihara Buddha kepada mahasiswa CRCS-Advanced Study of Buddhism, yang melakukan kunjungan pada selasa 22 Maret 2016. Beliau menjelaskan juga bahwa pada waktu itu, umat Buddha juga harus mengalami masa sulit karena banyaknya pemeluk Buddha yang berasal dari China.
Salah satu dampak anti China ada pada Klenteng-Vihara Buddha Praba dan daerah disekitarnya adalah pada nomenclature. Pada awalnya, toko-toko itu mengunakan nama-nama China, tetapi mereka harus  mengganti nama itu menjadi nama Indonesia. Begitu juga pemeluk Konghucu disini, mereka punya dua nama, nama Indonesia dan nama China. Bahkan bertahun-tahun mereka harus memperjuangkan keyakinan mereka sampai pada akhirnya Presiden Abdurrahman Wahid mencabut pelarangan itu dan Konghucu diakui sebagai salah satu agama resmi di Indonesia.
Tempat pemujaan yang berusia lebih dari 100 tahun ini merupakan gabungan dari Klenteng dan Vihara. Klenteng berada di depan dan Vihara berada di belakang. Penyatuan ini karena adanya kedekatan historis antara pemeluk Buddha dengan orang China di Indonesia. kedekatan Buddha dengan China bisa dilihat dalam rupang Dewi “Kwan Yin” dalam dialek Hokkian yang merujuk pada Avalokitesvara, Buddha yang Welas Asih. Selain itu juga ada kedekatan ajaran, dimana dalam Buddha, label agama tidaklah penting, yang paling penting adalah pengamalan dan pengajaran Dharma. Selama ajaran Dharma itu masih ada, maka perbedaan agama pun tidak masalah.
Vihara Buddha Praba sendiri adalah Buddha dengan aliran Buddhayana, yaitu aliran yang berkembang di Indonesia yang menggabungkan dua unsur aliran besar Buddha, Theravada dan Mahayana. Aliran Mahayana berada di Utara dan Timur Asia yang melintas dari China sampai ke Jepang dan lainya. Sedangkan Theravada menempati kawasan selatan, seperti Thailand, Burma. Namun begitu, Budhayana melihat dua aliran ini sebagai “Yana” atau kendaraan menuju pencerahan seperti yang diajarkan sang Guru Agung. Penggabungan Theravada dan Mahayana dalam aliran Buddhayana awalnya juga dilandasi alasan politis dimana terdapat asimilasi antara agama dan kebudayaan yang ada.
Dalam Kunjungan ini, mahasiswa CRCS diajak untuk keliling Klenteng-Vihara dan mengenal ajaran Buddha lebih dalam, terutama bagaimana Vihara ini bisa bersatu dengan Klenteng, melihat budaya China lebih dekat dan mengenali ajaran Buddha yang lebih menekankan pada penyebaran Dharma dari pada penyebaran agama.
Vihara kedua yang dikunjungi adalah Vihara Karangdjati yang beraliran Theravada. Berbeda dengan sebelumnya, Vihara Karangdjati tidak bernuansakan China, tetapi lebih ke Jawa, dimana terdapat pendopo untuk menerima tamu dan ruang meditasi yang khusus. Pak Tri Widianto menjelaskan bahwa pokok ajaran Buddha bukanlah ajaran eksklusif yang tertentu untuk pemeluk Buddha saja, tetapi untuk seluruh umat manusia. Bahkan di Vihara Karangdjati, ada juga dari agama lain yang datang saat meditasi.
Hal yang sering disalahartikan selama ini adalah meditasi hanya milik umat Buddha, tetapi tidak. Meditasi adalah laku spiritual untuk mengenali gerak gerik otak kita dan mengasah mental menghadapi masalah. Ini adalah latihan mengolah kepekaan yang tidak dibatasi oleh agama tertentu. Pengolahan kepekaan ini penting karena betapapun banyaknya kata bijak yang kita miliki, itu tak ada manfaatnya ketika tidak dipraktikkan.
Didirikan pada tahun 1958, usia Vihara Karang Jati yang juga berlokasi di desa Karang Jati, lebih tua dari pada usia kampung itu. Sehingga, meskipun mayoritas penduduk sekitar beragama Islam, tidak pernah ada keributan atau gesekan antar agama. Hal ini karena Vihara Karang Jati selalu menekankan keharmonisan dan  perasaan kasih (compassion), pada seluruh umat manusia.
Vihara Karang Jati menaungi Puja bakti, pusat pelayanan keagamaan,  dan pendidikan. Khusus untuk meditasi, kegiatan ini dibuka untuk umum. Artinya, siapapun dan dari agama dan golongan manapun boleh mengikutinya. Kegiatan yang dilakukan tiap malam jumat ini bahkan pernah diikuti oleh beberapa turis mancanegara.

Abstract
My thesis is a critical analysis of the galleries of Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) in New York as a case study for contemporary understandings and representations of Islam through the display of Islamic art in a post-9/11 context. I explore the revival of Islamic art exhibitions since the events of September 11, 2001, where museums across the world have found themselves tasked with building and reconfiguring the display of Islamic art objects to provide visitors with a counter-narrative to the widespread fear of Islam propagated by mass media. By tracing the intertwined histories of the Islamic art discipline, colonial and post-colonial collecting practices, Orientalism and the universal survey museum, I situate my critique of the galleries within the complex realities of cultural heritage management in order to address the problematic limitations of this curatorial counter-narrative.
Speaker
Ruby Robina Saha is a Shansi English Language Teaching Fellow at Universitas Gadjah Mada. She divides her time between CRCS, where she co-teaches the Academic English course and the preparatory Summer Intensive course, and the English Language & Literature Department in the Faculty of Cultural Sciences (FIB). Prior to her appointment as a Shansi Fellow, Ruby received her BA(Hons) from Oberlin College, where she majored in Art History and Middle Eastern Studies. In 2013, she was awarded the Laurine Mack Bongiorno Prize for Art History majors, and she studied Art History and Politics at the University of Paris, where she carried out research on the galleries of Islamic art at the Louvre Museum. She wrote her graduating thesis on the politics of displaying Islamic art in Western museums after 9/11. Ruby has worked as an editor and contributing writer for several publications including The Wilder Voice, The Oberlin Review and Jurnal Humaniora. Since returning to Indonesia, her research interests have shifted to the intersection between culture and education policy, contemporary art and alternative media. After her fellowship, she plans to continue working in education and culture and intends to pursue a graduate degree in Arts Education in 2017.

Ribka Ninaris Barus | CRCS | Book Review
Keberagaman merupakan salah satu konteks kehidupan masyarakat Indonesia yang telah disadari sejak awal berdirinya republik ini, sehingga semboyan “Bhineka Tunggal Ika” dijadikan menjadi salah satu falsafah hidup Bangsa Indonesia. Terjadinya konflik-konflik yang berkaitan dengan keberagaman, baik agama dan etnitsitas, memunculkan keresahan sehingga masyarakat tidak merasakan kehidupan aman dan damai. Hal ini dapat dilihat sebagai indikator kurangnya kesadaran dan/atau pemahaman masyarakat akan arti keberagaman. Berkaitan dengan hal tersebut, sekolah merupakan salah satu ruang yang dianggap penting untuk mengakomodir pengetahuan dan pemahaman keberagaman. Sekolah tidak hanya dimaknai sebagai ruang untuk memperoleh pengetahuan untuk mengukur kemampuan kognitif dan prestasi akademis, melainkan sebagai ruang untuk memeroleh nilai-nilai kehidupan bermasyarakat, berbangsa, dan bernegara secara kontekstual.
Buku berjudul “Mengelola Keragaman di Sekolah” yang diterbitkan oleh CRCS pada Februari 2016, merupakan salah satu buku yang berkaitan dengan pengelolaan keberagaman di Indonesia, khususnya di sekolah. Buku ini memuat tiga belas artikel yang ditulis oleh para guru yang berasal dari beberapa sekolah di Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta dan Kabupaten Magelang, Jawa Tengah, melalui Kompetisi Esai Guru yang diselenggarakan oleh penerbit. Ide dalam artikel-artikel tersebut berdasarkan pada pengalaman proses belajar-mengajar yang dialami langsung oleh para penulis.
Secara holistik, keberagaman yang ditampilkan dan dibahas dalam buku ini tidak terbatas pada agama, etnis, budaya/adat-istiadat, bahasa, gender dan status sosial. Keberagaman dalam pengertian yang lebih luas mencangkup keberagaman kecerdasan naradidik, yang dibahas oleh Sangidah Rofiah dalam artikel berjudul “Pembelajaran Berbasis Keragaman Kecerdasan dengan Pendekatan Neuro Linguistik Programming (NLP) pada Mata Pelajaran PAI”, sampai pada keberagaman respon dan metode mengajar yang diterapkan oleh para pendidik. Dengan demikian, buku ini menyediakan pemahaman yang lebih luas pada makna keberagaman itu sendiri.
Buku ini menunjukkan potret pengelolaan keragaman melaui pendidikan formal yang dilaksanakan di sekolah negeri dan swasta baik yang berbasis agama dan bersifat homogen, maupun sekolah inklusi. Ada beberapa sekolah yang secara institusional sudah menerapkan kurikulum dan metode pengelolaan keragaman dalam proses belajar mengajar untuk membangun toleransi peserta didik, seperti yang diterapkan di Sekolah Negeri Satu Muntilan, Sekolah Tumbuh Yogyakarta, dan Yayasan Budi Mulia Yogyakarta. Sementara itu, beberapa penulis masih berupaya mengelola keragaman melalui mata pelajaran yang diampu dengan menerapkan metode pengajaran yang kreatif. Pentingnya pengelolaan keragaman dalam konteks Indonesia dan peran sekolah dalam upaya tersebut diutarakan oleh semua penulis dalam buku ini, meski sebagian menyampaikan secara implisit.
Pengelolaan keragaman dalam lingkup sekolah bukan sesuatu yang mudah dilakukan, dimana hal tersebut menuntut kesadaran banyak pihak, mulai dari naradidik, pendidik, dan para pemangku kepentingan di sekolah. Metode-metode yang telah diterapkan oleh para penulis, seperti debat, fieldtrip, diskusi kelompok, menempatkan naradidik sebagai subjek aktif dalam proses belajar-mengajar dalam upaya menggali nilai-nilai keragaman. Upaya yang demikian diharapkan dapat memperdalam pemahaman naradidik tentang keberagaman yang tidak terfokus hanya pada ranah kognitif dan bersifat normatif, tetapi juga pada ranah afektif dan praksis. Dengan demikian, pemahaman akan makna kebhinakaan diwujudkan dalam hidup yang toleran dan damai. Peran para pendidik dan pemangku kepentingan juga sangat penting dalam upaya pengelolaan keragaman. Wawasan pengetahuan dan kreatifitas para guru serta kebijakan dan peraturan yang ditetapkan oleh stakeholders memiliki peran yang sangat penting dalam upaya tersebut. Imam Mutakhim secara khusus memaparkan hal tersebut dalam artikelnya di bagian akhir buku ini. Mutakhim berpendapat bahwa seluruh unsur meliputi guru, kepala sekolah, karyawan, dll., merupakan elemen yang saling terkait dan penting dalam mengelola keragaman di sekolah (p.178). Jika salah satu pihak bersifat pasif maka kemungkinan hal tersebut sulit terlaksana.
Book Title: Mengelola Keragaman di Sekolah, Gagasan dan Pengalaman Guru | Author: Anis Farikhatin, Arifah Suryaningsih, Dani Bilkis Saida Aminah, dkk | Pubhlisher: CRCS UGM | Year: Februari 2016 | Paperback: xi + 96 pages | ISBN: 978-602-72686-5-4
Download books here

Sembilan mahasiswa CRCS dari dua angkatan yang berbeda berhasil memeroleh gelar Master of Art dari Program Studi Agama dan Lintas Budaya pada prosesi wisuda Pascasarjana Universitas Gadjah Mada, Selasa, 19 April 2016. Sebagian besar dari mereka mendapatkan penghargaan sebagai wisudawati-wisudawan berprestasi dengan predikat cum laude. Tema thesis mereka pun cukup beragam mulai dari etika, budaya lokal, kesehatan, media online, humanitarian, tato, aliran kepercayaan, lingkungan hingga gerakan keagamaan. Berikut nama-nama dan karya thesis mereka:

Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies (CRCS), Graduate School, Gadjah Mada University proudly announces the call for Thesis Award. The Award is aimed to encourage CRCS students of batch 2015 to write a high quality of master thesis and a publishable article out the thesis on “Religious Education in Higher Education.”
The requirements of the Thesis Award are:

Aziz Anwar Fachrudin | CRCS | Article
Among the challenges Muslims face when they are engaged in the recently overwhelming debate on whether Islam is a religion of violence/peace is the fact that the Quran contains many verses which, at least when seen at a glance, promote violence. Indeed, there are verses in the Quran that even encourage fighting and killing, addressed to those considered unbelievers/infidels (kuffar) and/or polytheists (mushrikin); and when they are read and interpreted literally, they can be seen as preaching hatred toward non-Muslims. Moreover, some of those verses have been picked by the Islamic State (of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS) to justify its atrocities toward those having different beliefs. On the other hand, those “violent verses” are often cited by many involved in the debate, particularly by Islamophobias in the West, to discredit Islam and to show that Islam is a religion of violence, instead of peace.
This paper is going to examine those “violent verses’; not all, but some of them that have similar redaction. That is, those verses which read, more or less, “kill them wherever you find them”. There are three verses which are like that: (1) QS. al-Baqarah [2]:191; (2) QS. al-Nisa’ [4]:89; and (3) QS. al-Tawbah [9]:5. It is to examine both the classical and the modern interpretations of those three verses. By classical interpretations I mean the interpretations and commentaries of those verses as in classical books of tafsir written by medieval, pre-modern Muslim scholars of exegesis, to which very often many Muslims today still refer. By modern interpretations I mean the interpretations and commentaries that are written by modern Muslim exegetes. Along this line of elaboration, I shall compare both in order to know to what extent there has been a change in interpretations of the abovementioned verses.
This paper shall therefore be intended to convey three things. First is to show both classical and modern interpretations of those verses. Second is to point out what we will get when we compare those two types of interpretations and how the verses have been interpreted differently. Third, this paper shall be finished by some hermeneutical reflections resulting from the examination of both the classical and the modern interpretations. As for the classical interpretations, the books of tafsir that shall be mostly referred to in this paper are that of al-Tabari (839-923), Al-Razi (1149-1209), al-Qurtubi (1214-1273), and Ibn Kathir (1301-1373). While for the modern interpretations, the books of tafsir that shall be referred to are that of Rashid Rida (1865-1935), al-Sha‘rawi (1911-1998), Al-Zuhayli (1932-2015), and Quraish Shihab (1944-…). All these books of tafsir contains exegeses that are elaborated in chronological, chapter-based way, or verse by verse conforming to the way the verses are serially organized in the Quran. (This way is technically known as al-tafsir al-tajzi‘i or tafsir based on chapters or partitions of the Quran, as compared to al-tafsir al-mawdu‘i or tafsir based on themes/topics.) In this paper, when I mention a name of a mufassir (exegete) of them, it means I refer to his interpretations/commentaries that come after the verse being discussed. Read more in religio.uinsby.ac.id
*Aziz Anwar Fachrudin is CRCS Student batch 2014
 

Applications for admission to the Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies (CRCS) for the 2016/2017 academic year are now being accepted. For more information click Admission 2016 and information on scholarship click Scholarship

Abstract

The Indonesian Ahmadiyya community has been facing violent conflicts after the Reformasi era. This dissertation focuses on the narrative of Ahmadi women about their experiences in dealing with daily conflicts they face in relation to their faith. This paper focuses on the acts of the Ahmadi women organization called Lajnah Imaillah from 2000 to early 2015 by examining their defense mechanism and exercising agency in resisting and preventing conflicts. The study was conducted in four areas in Indonesia, Kuningan in West Java, Yogyakarta, Lombok in West Nusa Tenggara and Head Office of Lajnah Imaillah in Bogor. The informants were Ahmadi women from different socio economics status and positions in the organization. Using narrative inquiry, this research found out that in responding and resisting to violent conflicts, Lajnah Imaillah has been changing its way of resistance and its forms of defense mechanism. The conflicts that Ahmadi women face have encouraged them organizationally and individually to be more actively participate in wider society and build good relationships with the religious others outside of the community. Therefore this paper argues that non-violent defense mechanism promotes better relations and mutual understanding among conflicting parties in society.
Speaker
Nina Mariani Noor just earned her Ph.D from Inter Religious Studies, ICRS (Indonesian Consortium For Religious Studies) Universitas Gadjah Mada last January. Her concern is on conflict resolution, gender, and minority studies. Nina is Programme Executive Globethics.net Indonesia (www.globethics.net) . Globethics.net is the biggest, global online platform dedicated to promote inclusive, values-driven transformation for sustainable living, through access to knowledge, networking, collaborative research, training and events. She also teaches in Universitas Pembangunan Nasional (UPN) Yogyakarta this semester.

Protecting the Sacred: An Analysis of Local Perspectives on Holy Site Protection in Four Areas in Indonesia | Author: Dr. Suhadi Cholil | Pages: IX+94 Pages| Size: 16 x 23,5 cm | ISBN: 978-602-72686-4-7| Year Publishing: Januari 2016
Indonesia is home to communities of believers in the world’s major religions and traditions, in addition to various indigenous religions and other smaller world religions. Holy sites, varying from mosques to temples to churches to tombs, can be found in all corners of the archipelago. Despite this abundance of holy sites, there is a general lack of knowledge, understanding, and respect for these sacred spaces. Holy sites, particularly houses of worship and other sacred places, are often the target of violence during conflicts in Indonesia. That is why there is an urgent need to promote the significance of public understanding of houses of worship and holy sites.
This book investigates three key questions: (a) To what extent can the Universal Code of Conduct on Holy Sites be used to campaign for respect and protection towards houses of worship and holy sites in Indonesia? (b) What are the public’s perceptions and public knowledge about houses of worship and holy sites as well as its attitude towards the recognition and respect for them? (c) How does social change affect the relationship between religions and the protection of houses of worship and holy sites in certain areas of Indonesia? The investigation took place in four areas of Indonesia: Manado, Pontianak, Bali, and Bekasi.