Interfaith dialogue in Indonesia gets boost from Iraq crisis By Paul Jeffrey Jakarta (ENI) - Indonesians from different religions are being brought closer together by their common opposition to the looming war U.S. war against Iraq, according to an Indonesian Protestant leader. The Rev. Natan Setiabudi, general secretary of the Communion of Churches in Indonesia, the country’s main ecumenical Christian organization, recently returned from a trip to Europe with leaders from this country’s Muslim, Catholic, Hindu, and Buddhist communities. The group met with Pope John Paul II in Rome and European Union leaders in Brussels, urging them to pursue peaceful alternatives to war in Iraq. “We demonstrated with our presence as a unified delegation that the crisis in Iraq is not a religious crisis, but rather a purely political conflict,” Setiabudi told ENI. The seven-member delegation represented the National Moral Movement, an interfaith alliance launched in January 2002. According to Paulus Widjaja, director of the Center for Study and Promotion of Peace at the Duta Wacana Christian University in Jogjakarta, the group’s interreligious composition was significant. “Indonesian culture is very symbolic, and the delegation’s trip was an important symbol to people that if we can work together for international peace, perhaps we can get along better at home,” he told ENI. A U.S. invasion of Iraq will have repercussions in Indonesia, which hosts the world’s largest Muslim population and has in recent years experienced several violent clashes between religious groups, though complex economic and ethnic conflicts often underlie the religious feuds. “We’re already in trouble in Indonesia, struggling with a multi-dimensional crisis from which escape will be difficult. Yet if the U.S. invades Iraq, it will become impossible, as it will give radical groups a pretext to assert themselves,” said Setiabudi, a pastor of the Indonesian Christian Church and a member of the World Council of Churches’ Central Committee. In a letter presented to the pope during a 40-minute meeting on February 20, the seven-member delegation praised the pope’s “firm and consistent stance against the imminent war on Iraq.” The letter thanked the pope for making clear that the conflict between Iraq and the United States “has nothing to do with religions.” In Brussels, the delegation met with a variety of EU officials. Setiabudi said talks there focused on the need for European leaders to counterbalance U.S. dominance of the debate over Iraq. “It’s not good for anyone for the world to have only one superpower,” Setiabudi said. Following the meeting with European leaders, Setiabudi said a smaller delegation from Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesia’s largest Muslim organization, went to Baghdad to urge Saddam Hussein to obey U.N. resolutions regarding his country’s weapons. The head of Nahdlatul Ulama, Ahmad Hasyim Muzadi, participated in the delegation that traveled to Rome and Brussels. Setiabudi said interfaith relations had improved somewhat in Indonesia following the October 12 bombings on the island of Bali that killed almost 200 people. At least one Islamic paramilitary group, linked to radical Arab groups in the Middle East, has disbanded at least temporarily. The country’s police, separated from the nation’s powerful and corrupt military in 1999, tracked down several suspects who will soon go on trial. Many here suspect the same men were involved with a series of deadly church bombings at the end of 2000. Yet Setiabudi said that while the police “have caught the hands that did the bombing, they have not yet caught the body and brain that are connected to the hands.”