Minority-to-Majority Dialogue:
Assisting a receiver for the minority's messages
This discussion was held on Tuesday, March 14th 2023
Speakers:
Ziad Jamil
Muslim Minority from Sweden
Rev. Prof. Tabita Kartika Christiani, Ph.D
Christian Minority from Indonesia
Ahmad Alfajri, M.A.
Muslim Majority from Indonesia
Josh Mock
Christian Majority from the United Kingdom
Moderator:
Emelie Guth
Global Studies Student from the University of Gothenburg
Background
Equality benefits everyone. It leads to decreased poverty, improved economy, education, health and safety, and less violence. However, equality is not reached without efforts – we have to work for it. Those often in need of extra support to reach the same level of equality as the majority in a society are minority groups. The rights of minorities are not about giving privilege, but to bring all humans and identities to a minimum level of quality in coordination with human rights. Promoting rights of minorities is proven beneficial for a country as whole in regards to democratic security, stability, and peace. In conclusion, minority rights promote a tolerant and diversely enriched atmosphere where people of different identities can cooperate which leads to a more peaceful world.
Minority groups vary between regions, countries and time periods. An identity can be a majority somewhere but a minority elsewhere. However, one thing is global, which is continuous violations against minorities’ rights. For example, most hate speech and hate crimes target minority groups. Religious minority groups are especially vulnerable and are suffering from discrimination from many governments and other social groups. According to PEW Research (2019) Jews are discriminated against in 89 countries, Muslims are discriminated against in 147 countries and Christians are discriminated against in 153 countries. Most worrying is that there has been a constant increase of religious discrimination the last ten years. Nurturing the relations between minorities and majorities is essential to avoid conflicts and achieve durable peace. By bringing together religious groups representing both minorities and majorities to a heart to heart dialogue in this public discussion we aim to promote harmonic sustainability in religious minority-majority relations.
Objectives
By facilitating a platform where religious minorities and majorities can meet, we aim to strengthen their relationship and raise compassion and understanding in religious minority-majority relations as well as promote cooperation among them. Including representatives of both minority and majority of the same religion can be of favor for promoting understanding since representatives can relate to others sharing their identity. Further, the minorities might share similar experiences of how it is to live as a minority although coming from diverse religions and countries, and hence support each other and each experiences.
The diversity of countries will provide a knowledge exchange in regards to minority rights and laws, ways the majority can help to support minorities, as well as how minority and majority relations might be in different places and what constellations their countries have in terms of minority and majority relations. Although this event includes solely people of abrahamic religions, minorities might suffer similar experiences and countries share similar issues everywhere. Making this discussion important for not only abrahamic religions. The representatives from majority groups are essential to include due to their populous size and power of being a majority as they have a great opportunity to raise equality in their community.
Language: English
Total Participants: 180 participants