Prejudice Turns to Love Through Dialogue
Friday, 20 March 2020by adminstube
Having love, prejudice will not exist right? Or prejudice comes because there is no love? Both are possible and part of my reflection. I am Siti Muliana born and grew in Konawe, Southeast Sulawesi. Currently, I am pursuing a bachelor program in the study program of Al-Qur'an and interpretation at STAI Sunan Pandanaran Yogyakarta. When talking about tolerance including interfaith relations, I came to know this topic when I went to school in Yogyakarta since 2014. During my growth period until teenager in Southeast Sulawesi, I had never even interacted with different ethnic or religious community groups. So that, in my observations up to now, some people in my hometown are still exclusive to other religions.
I found a new perspective when I lived and went to school in Yogyakarta at Sunan Pandanaran Islamic boarding school, although our daily life interacts with Muslims, but it did not make me to be exclusive to other religions, even from the beginning until now, the boarding school where I live is open and often welcomes guests both domestic and abroad with a variety of beliefs. KH. Mu'tashim Billah as the leader of the Islamic boarding school always reminds us as his students, "Anyone who visits here, must be served well until they feel at home." That was his message, even during the funeral commemoration of Abdurrahman Wahid on February 27, 2020, which was attended by interfaith leaders, Kyai Tashim himself welcomed the guests and made sure they got good service. This is an example that Kyai shows with his pluralist attitude and must be adopted by his students.
Slowly I became more interested in issues of tolerance and humanity and its relationship with nationalities, so I joined Gusdurian community in 2018. This is a form of my admiration for Abdurrahman Wahid for promoting dialogue and avoiding violence as an approach to find meeting point for peace of Papua and Aceh, bloody conflicts related with ethnic and religious occurred between 1998-2000. However, not all promotions succeeded because of various political interests that still existed. From Gusdurian community information, I first came to know Stube-HEMAT Yogyakarta to participate in Multicultural and Inter-religion Dialogue training with the headline ‘Together, Compiling Indonesia’ on March 6-8, 2020 at Wisma Pojok Indah.
In this training I found that Stube-HEMAT Yogyakarta contributed to peace efforts through training that promoted dialogue and complemented with exposures to religious places of worship, as a response to the current phenomenon of diversity that resounded on social media without face-to-face interaction that led to prejudice. It cannot be denied, through sharing experiences from new friends who participated in this training, it was revealed prejudices that existed before the training and dialogue, even there were still grudges and trauma, because politics of identity was rife a few years ago. Exclusive attitudes, generalizing and truth claims in conservative societies show their existence increasingly on social media. The exclusive group is a group that claim the truth belongs only to themselves and reject other beliefs. This reality can certainly be eliminated through meetings and dialogues as Stube-HEMAT Yogyakarta has in order to be open to know one another. In addition, let's cultivate love through meetings and dialogue. I really appreciate the Stube-HEMAT Yogyakarta.
At the end of the training, both individual and group participants have follow-up plan. I joined a group that designed to make short movie about diversity. Whereas individually, I plan to provide material that can be discussed among students under my supervision in Islamic boarding schools, especially related to diversity. Hopefully, this Covid-19 pandemy which forces us to stay at home and to do social distancing can subside soon and we can continue our follow-up plans to sow tolerant attitudes and respect for diversity. (Siti Muliana).
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