News

Religious Freedom on Trial: The State’s Failure to Protect Ahmadiyah’s Rights

18 March 2025
Angie Wuysang Human rights violations against Ahmadiyah in Indonesia reflect a broader struggle between constitutional guarantees of religious freedom and the influence of intolerant groups.  While Indonesia officially upholds religious pluralism through Pancasila and its constitution, in practice, Ahmadiyah communities ...

Recognizing Shibboleth, Building Language Awareness

12 March 2025
Anthon Jason Just because one could not pronounce one word the same way, resulted in the death of forty-two thousand Ephraimites. This event is recorded in the Hebrew Bible, specifically in the Book of Judges 12:5-6. The word, "shibboleth", was ...

From the Eyes of the Ordinary

27 February 2025
Photography plays a vital role in bringing people together emotionally and generating deep empathy. Photographs are proficient at touching emotions when highlighting the beauty of religious expressions—such as devotion, celebration, grief, or compassion. Photographs are also masters at fostering empathy ...
View All

Wednesday Forum

View All

Agenda

View All

Known as a city of culture and academic accomplishment, the Javanese city of Yogyakarta is a fascinating place to study religion. It is home to several of the most respected public and private universities in Indonesia. In 2006, three of these universities, Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM), the State Islamic University (Universitas Islam Negeri/UIN) Sunan Kalijaga and Universitas Kristen Duta Wacana (UKDW), formed the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies (ICRS). At the core of the Consortium is the regular doctoral program in Inter-Religious Studies (IRS), which is legally located in the Graduate School of UGM and has been accredited “A” by the Indonesian National Accreditation Agency for Higher Education (Badan Akreditasi Nasional Perguruan Tinggi/BAN-PT) since 2016.

Religious studies have become established in academia as a discipline or an academic field of study. While the field of inter-religious studies, understood as focusing on the relations between religions, has grown quickly in the past decade, with textbooks and journals carrying the name starting to appear. Yet, as an academic field of study, both still leave open a wide space of diverse views in terms of their objects, scopes, and methodologies.

Supported by