February 5, 2009
by Bernard and Farsijana Adeney-Risakotta

YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia – While listening to a panel on Islamic economics in Sumatra, Indonesia, I surreptitiously watched the U.S. election returns on my wireless laptop. Strange. So far away and yet so close.

As the only Christian among several hundred Muslims, I spoke on Islamic studies in a multi-religious, multicultural world. It's a world where the son of a Kenyan father and a mother from Kansas, with a Muslim name, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii and attends a black church on the south side of Chicago was elected president of the U.S.A.

Amazing. The front page of our newspaper showed an old picture of Obama wearing an Indonesian school uniform and looking just like the other Indonesian kids sitting around him.

Indonesians used to view America as a symbol of freedom, prosperity and human rights. During the movement to unseat the authoritarian Suharto, young people wore American flags to signify their support for democracy. One morning in 1998, I woke up to find our neighborhood in Yogyakarta festooned with American flags.

Prior to Sept. 11, 2001, 90 percent of Indonesians had a positive view of the U.S.A. By the waning years of President Bush's administration, the approval rating for the U.S. had plunged to 10 percent. The primary reason for this reversal was the invasion of Iraq and the "war on terror." The image of America as a symbol of democracy was replaced by an image of America as a brutal, global bully and the enemy of Islam.

Indonesia includes more than 200 million Muslims, more than the whole of the Middle East. The tolerant forms of Islam followed by most Indonesians are a source of hope for the world.

However, for the past eight years militant Islam has grown rapidly in Indonesia. I was invited by a radical group (MMI) to speak on a panel with the provocative title: "U.S. Hegemony and Relations between Islam and the West." The large auditorium was packed.

The other two speakers used sophisticated multi-media technology to paint a picture of Western and Christian decadence, brutality, immorality, violence and greed, which they contrasted with the high and noble teachings of Islam. Evidently I was invited as the representative of U.S. hegemony!

After a spirited discussion, I asked them if they really thought the world was so clearly divided into good and evil, right and wrong. Did their portrayal of Islamic teaching reflect real conditions in Islamic countries? I said America was much worse than they thought. But it was also much better.

I said, "I am a Christian and an American. Do you think I am your enemy?" You could hear a pin drop in the auditorium.

Finally the Islamist leader responded that no, I was not their enemy. Americans were not their enemies, but only U.S. foreign policies that attacked innocent Muslim populations. After the meeting one of my former students, who is a professor at the Islamic university, thanked me with tears in his eyes. He said, "We really need to hear other perspectives on the world."

The growth of militant groups in Indonesia is not primarily a threat to America but rather to the great majority of tolerant and gentle Indonesian Muslims.

It is also a threat to Indonesian non-Muslims. Indonesia includes approximately 24 million Christians, equal to the total population of Malaysia. Indonesia is one of the least known countries in the world and its large Christian population is even more invisible. For the most part Christians live in harmony with their Muslim neighbors. Peace doesn't make the evening news.

Peace is not just absence of conflict, but rather the positive ability of people from diverse religions and backgrounds to work together for the common good. Farsijana and I are honored to be associated with many Muslims and Christians who are working together to build a better future.

Farsijana is a leader in the Indonesian Women's Coalition (KPI) a predominantly Muslim organization that empowers women. The local branch of KPI still uses our house as its headquarters for helping women, especially victims of disasters. Workshops with victims of the Yogyakarta earthquake led to publishing a book on Women and Disaster and founding a publishing house (SUP) that gives voice to marginalized people.

With help from a church in Champaign, IL, a second book is now out on women creating crafts from the waste of sagu palms. Farsijana recently led an international workshop that follows up her Fulbright fellowship in New York. It will lead to another book on the impact of post-colonialism and gender on relations between Muslims, Christians and Jews.

I am honored to be director of the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies (ICRS-Yogya), which exemplifies the genius of Muslim-Christian relations in Indonesia. ICRS-Yogya offers an international Ph.D. program in inter-religious studies that is co-sponsored by three major universities. Nowhere else in the world will you find leading multi-religious (secular), Muslim and Christian universities co-sponsoring a doctoral program.

ICRS-Yogya was declared a Center of Excellence by the Indonesian government. In only its second year, ICRS-Yogya is attracting students from all over the world. ICRS-Yogya is certainly the greatest professional challenge of my life. ICRS doctoral students are now participating in one semester "sandwich" programs in universities like Capetown in South Africa, Duke, Georgetown, The Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Hartford, Melbourne in Australia, NU Singapore, Temple and Union Theological Seminary in New York.

We are very grateful to the PCUSA for supporting us in our work in Indonesia. We will be in the U.S. from July through December, 2009. Please write to us by email if you would like us to visit you, lead a seminar on Indonesia or preach in your church while we are in the States.

Information about and letters from PC(USA) mission workers around the world are available at the Web site at http://www.pcusa.org/missionconnections/.

Presbyterian News Service