“THE DANGER OF POLITICIZING OR IGNORING RELIGION” CESFAS FISIPOL UKI

Jakarta, FISIPOL UKI

NOTULENSI KULIAH UMUM
“THE DANGER OF POLITICIZING OR IGNORING RELIGION”
CESFAS FISIPOL UKI
@ Ruangan 3363

Speaker: Professor Paul Marshall, Ph.D
Moderator: Dra. V.L. Sinta Herindrasti, MA
Notulensi: Nadya Carollina
1. Opening by MC
2. Prayers by Committee
3. Opening Remarks from Vice President of CESFAS
“How can religions were used in political campaign”(e.g., 2019 presidential election)
4. Moderated by Dra.V.L. Sinta Herindrasti, MA
5. Material presentation by Prof Paul Marshall, Ph.D
Main ideas, there are Two dangers:
1. When the religion is politicized
2. When the religion is ignored
West and Indonesia, terrorism, economic or any other shortcomings are oftenly declared as “Politics! Not a religion” because its nothing to do with religion. For example, in Nigeria, there’s so many violence was based on religion (e.g., ISIS).
New York Times, what is the cause of Nigerian cases? It’s climate change. Because there’s a temprature shift that leads to the Northern people migrate to South to avoid harsh major climate change effects. that’s becoming the background condition of Nigerian religion clash.
The West, prefers to categorized a conflict is a politics, not a religion. Because the religion itself was barely noticed or ignored. Therefore, there’s a tendency to say religion cannot be a real reason, because there’s a underlying issue on it (economic, political, social). Unlike the nations outside the West that tends to underestimate religion as a main reason of the conflict.
There’s a misunderstanding between ignoring or underestimating, in order to gave a clear explanation towards the linkage of religion and politics which are intertwined with each other. Latin America, Christian Political Party. “how can Christian think about the politics”. German “Christian Democratic Party”. It’s a political party but yet it’s a religion shaped the politics. The religion affect the political mindset. In 1992, Canada adopted new Consitution of recognizing the religions substances, bear in mind that Canada is secular country.
Main ideas: religion shape our views on how to perceived something and then shaped our politics. For example, how we viewed Justice, Law.
Key Questions:
1. Whether religion and politics may intertwined with each other. Will that becoming a good things or bad things?
2. Whether is something was politics or religion.
Political manipulation where people are using religion to achieve its political interests. Not necessarily they mean it, but as a leverage to achieve things. You can political manipulation religion with one condition, that the region was ‘care’ about religion. In order to do a political manipulation religion, you need to have religion. By believe something and make it important to you. Because religion is sometimes used as tool for implementing politics.
For instances, in 2005 Danish newspaper posted about Islam Prophet Muhammad and leads to outrage in Muslim country as a “religion blashphemy”. Also there’s a huge gap, between the conflicted party, peaceful demonstration and riot. Ahok’s cases leads to mass demonstration consists of million protestants. Bosnian-Herzegovina war.
What is likely to lead to clash is shallow religion and used as source of an identity. Therefore,“a person who are not religious and used religion as a source of identity, because religion is a powerful force”. The fact is something is political, it does not mean that it is not religious, and political manipulation religion is sometimes is used when people is has shallow religious.
6. Handing the certificate and goodie bag for speaker and moderator
7. Closing remarks
8. Group photo session