
Heroes towards Multiculturalism

Indonesian is well-known as the richest country of diversity. As the complex country, Indonesia has many various languages, ethnic, social strata, and religions. It has a slogan that is “Bhineka Tunggal Ika”. That’s mean although Indonesia contains diversity but it is still in one unity of nation. But in the fact, there are many conflicts happen through the diversity which is called by discrimination. One kind of discrimination in Indonesia occurs on religion point of view. Some people said that Islam is the right religion that we should believe. But other people view claim that Christian, Buddha or Hindu is the right one. Different religion has different perception. Some people said that their perception is different among other religion. For that reason, sometimes it seemed like there is a gap to interact with people believing on other religion even with their family. So this kind of case makes a change of social condition among Indonesian people. This change of social condition triggers the conflict through diversity of religion. Since the beginning till now, there are many conflicts occurred through different perception of each religion such as conflict in lampung, Timor timur, Rengasdenglok, poso, and so on. Sometimes it is caused by small case which is related to economy such as debt, snatching the territory, and other case that can more economically rather than politically. Then it is going to be big problem when the people bring religion’s perception to that case. It is seemed ironic. In that case, we should aware that we have a freedom to believe our religion, to life safely. Like as the constitution of Indonesia section 29 and verse 2 declares that nation assures a people’s freedom of believing religion and pray based on their belief.
Solving that case, Indonesia needs some multicultural movement. That movement is supposed to decrease tension of religion conflict occurring recent day. It can be implemented to establish multicultural education to our young generation so that their social life is not contaminated by conflict of religion. Obviously the teacher is the one who can be the heroes to solve this case because teacher can invest the multicultural value in positive point of view to the student.
Perceiving some cases above, I expect I can understands those kinds of diversity wisely and tolerance to other religion. Moreover I hope I can teach and invest right value to multiculturalism. So that’s why I write this article to increase my critical thinking on understanding those kinds of case wisely.
many faiths all claiming to be true, said John Hick.
My question, how to manage the truth claim of each religion in the public sphere?
I like the term "multicultural movement", what kind of this movement? This term/idea is so cool.
thank you pak hatim, responding on your question about diversity? we should confess the existence of that diversity and we can can tolerance to others but not too much, because we must hold on verse
"لكم دينكم و لي دين"
and what I mean about multicultural movement is teaching people so that they can understand that all religion is good. religion can be different but stay in one purpose. that is doing good life.