“Tolerance as The Foundation of Religious Freedom” :
our role in building roads to uphold interfaith tolerance
A collaboration with @america Jakarta
This discussion was held on Friday, 18 November 2022
Speakers:
Habib Husein Ja’far Al Hadar
Author of Menyegarkan Islam Kita and Tuhan Ada di Hatimu, Youtuber with more than 1 Million followers and subscribers
Robinson Sinurat
Founder and CEO of Yayasan Mimpi Besar with more than 6000 followers
Harkirtan Kaur
Activist and Sikh Youth Representative with more than 1000 followers
Moderator:
Stella Sekarputri
Programming & Content Manager @america
Background
As a fundamental right to all human being, religious freedom is crucial to the identity of humans and this freedom allows for room to express, think, speak, support, and harmonize with the general public, yet in many countries religious freedom is often difficult to achieve due to numerous factors from Governments, CSOs, and Private Sectors. Religious freedom may be violated by these actors by giving restrictions that create limitations on the activities of religious groups to conduct their religious practices and the favoritism of these actors towards certain religious groups. Therefore, the restriction and favoritism that the religious communities will experience are slowly molding social inequality and economic gap.
Every country around the globe has its own laws that are structured to protect the religious rights of their citizens. However, even with the existence of these laws, violation of religious freedom keeps on happening. The violation can start from intolerance behavior to antagonism and violence. These practices occur in public areas, workplace, school, organization and even cyberspace. The urgency of religious freedom has made its way in the front line as we can see that there are divisions between religious communities, acts of terror in houses of worship as well as the unfair treatment people have received for the religion they adhere to, not to mention that this will eventually disrupt national security. Moreover, this kind of circulation has a great impact in the growth process of the young people and their psychology.
The laws for religious freedom are made to achieve peace and concord among people, governments should stand by this and should toughen their mission to achieve religious freedom for their people. Although the government has a big part in this, religious freedom shall also be achieved with collective concepts and spirit of the citizens, as the accomplishments or the failure of it will affect all our lives. Thus, the role of youth is very crucial and strategic for this matter as they are equipped with fresh and creative ideas to craft a better future that is bound with religious freedom. The question is, how to start building those roads to get there?
Let’s find out by watching the public discussion in this video attached!
Purpose of Event
To open a friendly discussion and knowledge-exchange regarding the importance of tolerance and how it can contribute in achieving inter-religious harmony from various points of view (from the speaker and from the audience).
To understand the consequences of intolerance behavior in our life and in the life of others.
To establish synergies among the young people in increasing religious tolerance and protecting their freedom of belief.
To build greater connection between youth, region-scale communities, and professionals in creating a better social life from different perspectives.
To achieve peace and harmony among religious communities by sharing different objectives and thoughts.
Aim
This discussion aims to open a youth-based discussion regarding tolerance as the foundation to achieve religious freedom and the role of youth in embracing tolerance to achieve inter-religious harmony. Therefore, the selected speakers have an important part to address this topic as we have noticed their works in creatively making positive and engaging content for youth.
Language: Bahasa Indonesia
Total Participants: 112 participants (majority: university students)