Promoting culture of peace

By Sudarto Murtaufiq

Peace for the whole world in the post cold war era has not been materialized despite the fact that ‘the freedom from and the freedom to’ jargon has always been relentlessly voiced. Hegemonies, hostility, calamity, and the ignorance of humanity which are the significant factors of world injustice have contributed to the current deteriorating conflicts.

We know that the conflicts are inseparable from human life. Amid the stream of global change, humankind is facing a big challenge, namely, different interests that have always been settled with violence and even war. The conflicts have become common features in many countries. For instance, religious and ethnic conflict in Sudan and US invasion to Iraq have, admitted or not, claimed lives of more than thousands people and displaced many others.<>

What is interesting to note here is that the invasion has triggered conflicts between Shiite, Kurdish and Sunnite factions, claiming more than a hundred lives everyday. After freeing itself from Russia, Afghanistan which is now in the hand of US has been labelled as the hotbed of terrorism. Moreover, the suffering experienced by Muslim minority in Southern Thailand and Mindanao in Southern Philippine has made us deeply concerned. There are many other conflicts in most populous Muslim countries which attract our care and attention.

For that reason, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) as the Indonesia’s biggest Muslim organization is now holding its third world forum called as the International Conference of Islamic Scholars in Jakarta from July 29th to 1st August in Jakarta. Religious leaders, Muslim scholars and figures throughout the world are invited to share ideas and experiences to deal with both peace building and conflict prevention in the Muslim world.

The forum taking up issues on how to reach peace building and conflict prevention in the Muslim world based on the principle of Islam as blessing for the universe (rahmatan lil’alamin) is expected to play an important role in promoting such “culture of peace” in the Muslim world.

The expression “culture of peace” should be understood that peace means much more than the absence of war. Peace is considered as a set of values, attitudes and modes of behaviors promoting the peaceful settlement of conflict and the quest for mutual understanding. In fact, peace is one way to live together. The expression “culture of peace” presumes that peace is a way of being, doing and living in society that can be taught, developed, and best of all, improved upon.

The culture of peace is peace in action. Introducing such a culture is a long-term process requiring both a transformation of institutional practices and individual modes of behavior. Finally, in order to survive and become entrenched in our values, a culture of peace requires non-violence, tolerance and solidarity.

Through the forum, NU with its principles of moderation and tolerance is also committed to create collaboration and solidarity aimed at building peace preventing conflicts especially in the Muslim world through the transformation of Islamic values as blessing for the universe.

In this respect, the forum has a strategic function to achieve mutual understanding with regard to any emerging differences in addition to reach a common objective. The mutual understanding should be achieved by building foundations to design a new way to live together. Indeed, the mutual understanding fosters certain values vital for peace, including non-violence, respect of others, tolerance, solidarity, and openness to others.

Mutual understanding does not mean homogenization of society. On the contrary, a culture of peace is enhanced by the variety of traditions. The fact that a common vision emerges from a multi-cultural society proves that living together is possible and that this society lives according to the pulse of a culture of peace.

Therefore, the culture of peace is intrinsically linked to conflict prevention and resolution.  The key-values of this culture are tolerance, solidarity, sharing and respect of every individual’s rights are aimed to prevent conflict by tackling it at its source, including new non-military threats to peace and security such as exclusion, extreme poverty and environmental degradation. Finally, it seeks to solve problems through dialogue, negotiation and mediation, so that war and violence are no longer possible.

But how can the culture of peace become a concrete and lasting reality? In the interactive world, everything is a matter of awareness, mobilization, education, prevention and information at all levels of society and in all countries. The elaboration and establishment of a culture of peace require the whole-hearted participation of everyone. Countries must cooperate, international organizations must coordinate their different actions and populations must fully participate to the full in the development of their societies.

A culture of peace is thus a comprehensive union of existing movements. The NU-initiated forum strives to create a worldwide movement for a culture of peace and non-violence. It will expectedly be one of the key moments for the creation of such a movement. This global movement should help change the culture of war into a culture of peace by uniting all groups, agencies, associations, governments and, especially, individuals within a comprehensive network that works towards the emergence of a culture of peace. Swords should be replaced by roses and jasmine. Weapons should be replaced by olive and musk; arches bow should be replaced by open dialog and culture of peace.   


The writer is journalist at the NU Online  news portal