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Towards Inclusive Religious Freedom

Johanes Koraag The Intersectoral Collaboration for Indigenous Religions "Rumah Bersama" held  the 5th International Conference on Indigenous Religion at the Javanology Innovation Center of Sebelas Maret State University, Surakarta, Wednesday-Thursday ...

Indigenizing Democracy and Human Rights

Johanes Koraag Democracy, rooted in the Greek tradition of organizing society by electing representatives of the people to become public servants, has now become a system of government adopted by ...

New Criminal Code: the Death of the Living Law?

Rezza Prasetyo Setiawan  The customary law is the result of daily conversations held in coffee shops, in the verandas of mosques, schools, or village halls. That's the living law of ...

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.