MANY Asean member states are facing various issues related to religious freedom, with many ordinary people having to navigate religious intolerance, persecution and violent religious conflicts in their daily lives.
In this context, the Global Movement of Moderates (GMM) is supporting the Human Rights Working Group and Indonesia’s Coalition for International Human Rights Advocacy in coming up with a report entitled Freedom of Religion and Belief in Southeast Asia. The final report will be submitted to Asean leaders as soon as possible.
The objective of this exercise is to guarantee the fundamental rights of each person, regardless of religion and other grounds, and to eliminate all forms of intolerance and discrimination based on a person’s religion and belief.
The group believes there are three important things that have to be considered to see the extent to which religious freedom is protected and catered for by the state.
Firstly is the state’s regulation on religion, namely the restrictions that are in place — whether the state has selected a particular religion through formal law, policy or administrative actions.
Secondly is state favouritism towards a particular religion or religious group, manifested in subsidies, privileges, endorsements or approvals of budgets. And thirdly, social regulations, preceding policies, that are socially or culturally forceful.
Today, although religious freedom is guaranteed under the constitutions of Asean member states, in practice there are many refutations of this, either through the law or political policies of a government.
Statements by Asean leaders are limited to expressions of concern only, but without anything concrete to provide for the protection of religious freedom and belief. That is why we still see incidents of violence, discrimination and suppressive legislation and policies.
To improve the situation, the report proposes that the governments ensure an alignment of the constitution and other laws, repeal draconian laws, formulate policies that protect the minorities, strengthen the roles of Asean’s institutions that are mandated to promote human rights, harmonise the local laws of member states with international human rights instruments and encourage civil society organisations to promote freedom of religion and belief.
Freedom of religion and belief comes in two forms: inter-religion and intra-religion. As for GMM, one of our approaches is to share two important documents — A Common Word and the Amman Message — with as many people in the region as possible.
A Common Word aims to bring Muslims and Christians together on solid theological grounds from both religions, for the sake of God, world peace and harmony. Produced in 2007, the document is authored by Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad of Jordan, in consultation with 450 Muslim and Christian leaders and scholars from all over the world, including Asean.
A selected passage from the document states, “It is part of the very foundational principles of both faiths: love of the One God, and love of the neighbour … thus the common ground between Islam and Christianity.”
The Amman Message attempts to clarify the true nature of Islam. Produced in 2005, it was initiated by King Abdullah II bin al-Hussein of Jordan, and adopted by more than 200 of the world’s leading Islamic scholars, including those from Asean.
The three major points of the message are: the recognition of all eight legal schools of Sunni, Shia and Ibadhi, traditional Islamic theology (Ash’arism), Islamic mysticism (Sufism) and true Salafi thought; forbidding the declaration of apostasy between Muslims; and setting forth the preconditions for the issuing of fatwas, thereby exposing ignorant and illegitimate edicts in the name of Islam.
The two documents provide a template that can be used in inter-religious and intra-religious dialogues involving all religions in Asean.
Another approach that GMM is using is “walk the talk”. We promote the works of the Friendship Group for Inter-religious Service (FGIS) in Malaysia. A platform to gather all the major religious groups in the country, FGIS’ objective is to promote interfaith harmony and human values by working together to help the needy and contribute to nation-building.
FGIS is a “best practice” in the area of interfaith work. Among its programmes are Interfaith Health Care Camp, Fun Day for Special Children, Divine Winds (at different prayer houses), Interfaith Drama, Intercultural Youth Leadership Camp, Celebrating Friendship and Unity and FGIS Orchestra Performance.
Hopefully, with clear examples in the form of policy proposals, documents and best practices, Asean will do better in this area.
Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah is CEO of the Global Movement of Moderates. He is active on twitter: @saifuddinabd.
This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly, on April 6 - 12, 2015.
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