Wednesday Forum – 27 April 2022

The small, Indian Ocean island known as Sarandib, Lanka, and Ceylon was a site of banishment throughout the 18th century for members of royal families, convicts, servants and others sent there from across the Indonesian archipelago. Descendants of these exiles who remained on the island continued to speak and write in Malay, the archipelago’s lingua franca, and to adhere to a collective Muslim identity for several centuries and into the present. The talk considers if and how earlier religious and literary traditions of banishment tied to the island – those of Adam’s fall from paradise to Sarandib and Sinta’s abduction to Lanka – played a role in the lives of the early exiles and their descendants. read more

Wednesday Forum – 2o April 2022

Religious extremism among students in major campuses in Indonesia remains a cause for concern for Indonesian government officials. Several social and political surveys, journal articles and scholar reports have presented and discussed the rise of religious extremism among youths in Indonesia. But few have discussed religious extremism among students in Indonesian universities. This webinar aims to explore what cause Indonesian university students to subscribe to extreme ideas of Islam and also, to analyse the effectiveness of government and campus policies in tackling student religious extremism in Indonesia major campuses. This webinar argues that university students are lured to subscribe to religious extreme ideas due to increasing religious extremism narratives in public or private spheres. These narratives are internalized in the minds of university students in systematic and structured ways, through regular meetings and online postings, and through public events such as webinars organized by student organizations that promote extreme ideas of Islam. The internalization of such ideology is exacerbated with the lack of narratives on moderate Islam in public and private spheres. The government and campus authorities have formulated and implemented strategies to tackle the religious extremism problems among university students, but they largely work in silos, hence their strategies are not fully effective. This webinar is based on, among others, in-depth interviews with student activists, campus authorities and government officials during a one-month-long fieldtrip in some major campuses in Yogyakarta, Jakarta and Bandung between October and November 2021. read more

Wednesday Forum – 13 April 2022

How can mutual understanding and exchanges among people of different cultures and ethnicities be supported in a manner that recognizes the variety of their worldviews and spatial-temporal-kinesthetic knowledge and cultural and spiritual values? In Diane’s experience, a practice-based approach to the art of intercultural dialogue does not stem from a predetermined method but rather is an organic process that grows from the interactions of the people involved, which will evolve differently in each place depending on its historical and current conditions. One approach that she has greatly appreciated in Indonesia, which has given good results, is by taking into account the place, time and conditions. With this in mind, she will share some aspects one might consider in the fostering of a common field for dialogue. read more

Wednesday Forum – 06 April 2022

In this talk I would like to talk about the role that AI can play regarding religion. Since I come from a Buddhist culture, my example will be mostly from Buddhism, but I intend that my talk will be applicable to AI and other religions too. Among the questions that I will be addressing are: With the advent and rapid development of AI, what kind of impact will AI have on religion? There are many aspects of the impact that we can discuss. AI can be used to help the practicing of religion in various ways. An example of this is the robot monk in Japan. The robot can recite Buddhist sutras and practitioners can gather around it to listen to the sutra. Secondly, AI can be used to help with analyzing religious texts, such as doing concordances and searching for passages. This can be of great help to those who have to go through a large amount of texts everyday. Thirdly, AI can be used as an engine inside apps that aid with meditation. There are several apps that claim to do this. I will then reflect on these developments and will ask what do AI’s increasing roles in our religious lives and practices actually mean. Can AI itself become religious? If so, what does this signify in terms of our religions? read more