The 12 members of the Malaysian-based Action for Life group (AfL) returned from two weeks in Jakarta, hosted by the Initiatives of Change team in Indonesia in 2004. Nearly all of that team were under 25, many of them students of Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University. More than 40 had been involved in the planning and preparation for AfL’s visit.
In this country with the largest Muslim population of the world (90% out of 220 million), one of the team’s aims was to build bridges between religions. So a large part of the programme comprised ‘interactive dialogues’ of up to three hours – at a Confucian centre, the Indonesian Buddhist Council, an Islamic boarding school, a Christian University and a Pentecostal Church, and later on with students at the University of Indonesia.
Each of these sessions ended with a time of quiet reflection and sharing in groups, often drawing out deep personal struggles and decisions.
One unexpected vignette of inter-religious bridge-building: at the end of a meeting with the head of a 5 million-strong organization for Muslim women students, she turned to the Christian pastor who had come with the group and asked him to pray for peace
Three days in the hills outside Jakarta offered a welcome respite from the city’s heat and traffic, and time to stop and search deeper during a ‘Life Matters’ course for 50 people. Indonesia, and the Indonesians, quickly captured the hearts and imaginations of the visitors with their warmth, care and hard work.
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