Tabitha Naisiko, a book writer and the Ugandan participant in the International Summer School, opined that a marriage should be constituted by love and not by a government constitution. This doctor candidate of Ethics and Development Studies in Martyr University, Uganda, finds herself cannot make head or tail to the Regulation on Inter-Religious Marriage in Indonesia, a country she identifies as a multiculturalists one. The Regulation which came into force in 1974, most probably, has led the love among Indonesians into division.
Uganda, according to Tabitha who had written dozen books on ethic and development, is called as the heart of Africa. With a strong Catholicism and Protestantism presence, which is about 85% of the total population, religious adherents live harmoniously one to another.” Inter-religious marriage has never become a problem in Uganda?” says a young woman who got her master degree on Applied Ethics in Leuven, Belgium, comparing the marital issues in Indonesia with those in her country, Uganda. “Nonetheless, the ethnic groups are sometimes clash”, she added.
Coming to Yogyakarta to attend the International Summer School through the Cross-cultural Foundation of Uganda (CCFU) is one among wondeful things ever happened in her life. Tabitha asserts her aim of attending the program as “to be able to integrate the outlook I got here into my next reseach in getting a more mediated and dialetic approach to human development?” (Gie)
