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LibForAll Programs Director Advises Congress
on
Fostering Religious Freedom
Washington, D.C.
20 June, 2006
LibForAll Worldwide Programs Director,
Dr. Ravi Krishnamurthy (shown speaking), outlined LibForAll
Foundation’s significant
achievements in promoting religious freedom
in
Indonesia, and described how this experience can be
widely implemented in other Islamic
countries. His address was part of
Religious Freedom Day on Capitol
Hill, which event was held in the Dirksen Senate Office
Building from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on Tuesday, June 20,
2006.
Senator Rick Santorum, Chairman of the
Senate Republican Conference, hosted the event. Other
speakers and panelists included John Hanford,
U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom;
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton; Senators
Sam Brownback and Norm Coleman; House Majority Whip,
Congressman Troy Blunt; Congressman Trent Franks and
Congressman Todd Akin; William J. Murray of the Religious
Freedom Coalition; and Paul Marshall of the Center for
Religious Freedom at Freedom House.
At this event, various speakers focused attention on the
widespread occurrence of religious persecution and
oppression in many parts of the world. Luminaries shared
their vision of the United States' role in advocating
religious liberty, and its commitment to the ideal of
religious freedom. In this context, LibForAll offered
a message of hope, based upon the success of its Board
members and management in promoting religious freedom
through popular culture, the skillful exercise of
religious authority and networking moderate Muslim leaders
to help stem the tide of Islamist extremism.
Encouraging Change from Within in
the Muslim World
by Ravi Krishnamurthy, Ph.D.
I would like to thank Senator Rick
Santorum and his staff for putting together this timely
event, and the Center for Religious Freedom for
inviting me to speak on behalf of LibForAll Foundation.
Freedom of conscience is of the utmost importance in a world
threatened by religious extremism and terror, whose
advocates seek to extinguish not only the principles of
freedom and tolerance, but modern civilization itself. I am
honored to be with all of you, and will use my time to
describe how LibForAll Foundation is working with local
partners to encourage change from within Indonesia -- the
world's most populous Muslim nation and democracy -- and how
we are exporting
the Smiling Face of Islam from Indonesia to the rest of the Muslim
world.
Indonesia has a strong pluralist heritage
that stems from its historical experience of
defeating radical Islam,
and institutionalizing religious freedom, in the
16th century. Please bear in mind that this
was 150 years before the establishment of Pennsylvania, and
200 years before the
Virginia Statutes of Religious Freedom, which served as
the basis for our own First Amendment. Indonesia's
historical experience offers a
blueprint of how we, living in the 21st century, can defeat
the forces of religious hatred and intolerance. The most
vital element in this strategy consists of uniting
courageous and powerful leaders from
the fields of religion, education, popular culture,
government and business to defeat the ideology of religious
extremism that
underlies and animates terrorism.
LibForAll IS a network of
leaders in each of these different fields. Our
organization was founded by Mr. C.
Holland Taylor -- an author, successful entrepreneur and businessman, and expert
on Islam, who has been involved with the Muslim world for over
four decades. Mr. Taylor co-founded the organization
with Kyai Haji Abdurrahman Wahid, who was the first
democratically-elected president of Indonesia and long time head of the
world's largest Muslim organization, the Nahdlatul Ulama, with 40 million members. Together,
President Wahid and Mr. Taylor have
developed a strategy for not only stemming the tide of
religious extremism, but
for ultimately winning the struggle for the soul of Islam
that is raging throughout the Muslim world today.
LibForAll Foundation's strategy was
presented in a
landmark
article published in the
Wall Street Journal 's 2005 year-end Friday
edition (available on the tables in back ). The
Wall Street Journal described this piece as "a
seminal article for this newspaper." The op-ed was reprinted
in numerous publications worldwide, including the Hudson
Institute's Journal
Contemporary Trends in Islamist Ideology, which
recommended the piece as "worthy of very serious reading and
reflection." The strategy described in this piece has been successfully
employed by LibForAll Foundation not only in Indonesia but
other parts of the Muslim World, such as in Europe and Egypt, where we are working with the renowned
reformist Nasr Hamid Abu-Zayd.
I would now like to describe some of the
successes achieved using this approach. Earlier, Dr. Marshall mentioned attacks against the Liberal Islamic Network
(JIL) by radicals who threatened to forcibly shutter or even
destroy their office. President Wahid sent members of the
Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) to defend the JIL compound, and
ultimately forced the radicals to back off. On
countless occasions this great Muslim cleric has also
defended Christians, both by
encouraging Muslims to respect others' right to worship
freely, and by dispatching his
followers to defend --
with their lives, if necessary -- churches that are
under attack.
Last year, the MUI (Indonesian
Council of Religious Scholars) issued a set of 11 Islamist fatwas
which sought to undermine Indonesia's tradition of pluralism and religious tolerance,
and there was a danger that the government might actually
back these fatwas as part of the nation's religious policy. President Wahid
immediately called a
press conference at the headquarters of the Nahdlatul Ulama and
dismissed the MUI's fatwas as theologically invalid,
discrediting and dispelling the veneer of "absolute moral
authority" that the fundamentalists
claimed to possess. Due to President Wahid's stature, this
event received saturation coverage in both the print and broadcast
media. His rejection of the MUI fatwas was thus
conveyed to the vast majority of Indonesian households;
stimulated and united opposition to the fatwas; and
promptly derailed the attempted Islamist "coup."
Recently, President Wahid has taken a
courageous public stand
against apostasy laws and the punishment of Muslims who
convert to another religion. He is perhaps the most prominent Muslim
leader in the world to have done so, and his views on this
subject are featured in a
Washington Post
article that can be read on our website.
Next I would like to share a few words
about our successes in the field of pop culture. LibForAll board member Ahmad Dhani
is the top rock star in Indonesia, where his celebrity is
equivalent to that of Bono here. In 2004 Dhani created an album
called Laskar
Cinta ("Warriors of Love"), which directly challenged Laskar Jihad
("Warriors of Jihad"), a major terrorist
organization that had slaughtered thousands of Christians in
the Eastern provinces of Indonesia. Through this album and public
comments that were aired throughout the nation, Dhani presented
Indonesia's youth with a stark choice -- did they want to be
warriors of jihad, butchering innocent women and children?
Or warriors of love, spreading a message of peace, tolerance
and affection for all humanity?
As a result of his groundbreaking use
of pop music to discredit the ideology of radical Islam,
Dhani was called a Zionist, heretic, infidel and apostate,
and had to move his wife and children out of their home for
their own protection. In order to defend this
courageous musician, President Wahid, Holland Taylor and
LibForAll advisor Abdul Munir Mulkhan -- Vice Secretary of
the Muhammadiyah, which has thirty million members -- held a
press conference in the headquarters of the Nahdlatul Ulama
where they jointly presented
Ahmad Dhani and his group Dewa with the
LibForAll Award, in recognition of their outstanding
contribution to world peace, and for presenting the true
face of Islam. This event, which was covered by
virtually every major Indonesian television network, completely
discredited radical claims that Dhani was a Zionist, heretic
or infidel, and demonstrated to the Indonesian public that
Dhani's message was, in fact, that of "true Islam."
Since that event, Dhani has composed
and released a
"musical fatwa" against religious hatred and terrorism
that soared to the top of Indonesia's pop charts and MTV
Asia. LibForAll plans to translate this "musical fatwa" into
languages such as Arabic, Turkish, Farsi, Urdu, Hindi and
Bengali -- and to record the song with top musicians in each
of these linguistic/cultural/commercial music markets -- so
as to mobilize the forces of pop culture to reject the
ideology of hatred throughout the Muslim world. As you can
see from these examples, the work we do at
LibForAll Foundation is designed to
ultimately reach the masses, which we accomplish by
establishing solid relationships of trust with moderate leaders who
have to power to impact large numbers of people. These
leaders recognize the importance of working together, and
LibForAll's network offers a practical way for individual
members to provide each other with cover and assistance when
attacked by those opposed to the principles of religious
liberty and tolerance.
I would like to conclude with a recent
statement that President Wahid made in a private conversation with
Mr. Taylor, and with an historical analogy. President Wahid said, “Right now, the radicals
think they're winning. But God willing, one day they'll wake
up and realize that we've beaten them!" The forces of
religious extremism and intolerance do indeed seem to be in
the ascendant in much of the world today, just as, during
WWII, the Japanese appeared to be triumphing as they swept across
Asia in the wake of Pearl Harbor. However, the natural
desire for liberty, which God implanted in every human
heart, will ensure the radicals'
ultimate defeat.
The struggle ahead may be long and
hard, requiring that "people of good will of every faith and
nation" mobilize and work
together to ensure the ultimate triumph of religious liberty
and the human spirit, in the face of vicious, ongoing
intimidation and violence. Securing liberty in the
face of religious hatred and intolerance is the great task
of our generation. Which is why I request your
support, and invite all of you to join with us, in this
grand struggle for the future of humanity.
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