The Role of Islam and Christianity in Public Space. Perspectives from Indonesia and Germany

The recent violent disruptions of Christian retreats in Sukabumi and Padang (2025) starkly expose the fragility of religious coexistence in Indonesia. Despite its celebrated reputation for tolerance, prevailing practice often reflects passive tolerance—a conditional permission granted by the majority rather than an inherent right. This sustains asymmetric power relations between religious...

Despite longstanding claims by cultural essentialists like Samuel Huntington, Bernard Lewis, and Elie Kedourie that Islam and democracy are inherently incompatible, Indonesia—the world’s largest Muslim-majority country—has challenged that assumption. For over two decades since the fall of Suharto’s authoritarian regime, Indonesia has managed to blend democratic governance with Islamic values....

Indonesia ranks at the top as a country where most people consider religion to be very important in their lives. Religion plays a role as the most important reference in various areas of life and an important part of everyone’s identity in Indonesian society. The importance of religion makes everything related to religion an interesting issue, including the number of religious adherents. An...

Religious authorities shape political landscapes worldwide in different ways: While in Indonesia over the past two decades, socially conservative religious forces have gained political influence and contributed to a growing religious nationalism, other religious actors continue to contribute to democratic education and emancipatory participatory processes.
Drawing on extensive research on the...

The hallmark of modern - in the sense of today's - democracies is the plurality of social systems (in the sense of Luhmann’s sociology) in the states in which we live. Christian political theology and political philosophy have devoted themselves extensively in recent decades to the question of how the ideological, cultural and religious plurality of citizens in democracies should be present in...

This chapter examines the emotive infrastructures of governance in Yogyakarta, focusing on how religion-infused signs, sounds, and spatial arrangements work as instruments of affective discipline. Through the concept of „orders of feeling“ (Stodulka, 2019; 2022; 2024), I explore how public announcements, banners, clothing norms, and curated atmospheres shape emotional orientations towards...

This paper aims to explore how academia can engage with the everyday interreligious and ecological practices of local communities. These practices are intended to tackle the structural causes of religious discrimination and environmental degradation, such as inadequate regulations on extractive development, industrial pollution, and market-driven consumerism. Engaging with existing studies on...

Using a decolonial approach, this presentation argues that a Christian multidirectional eco-theological perspective is crucial in the interreligious public voice on the role of religion in shaping the ethics of sustainability and the formation of interfaith eco-habituation oriented toward embodied eco-healing. It offers an Indonesian Christian multidirectional eco-text of embodied healing,...

Indonesian scholarship in theology and religious studies shows a slow shift from focusing on religious moderation to focusing on religious environmentalism. This shift reflects that Indonesians seem less concerned about the threat of religious extremism and more concerned about environmental degradation. Based on recent large-scale research, I will explore awareness of Indonesians about...

Muslim women’s movements in Indonesia are central to the decolonization of religious authority, contesting narratives that have long excluded women’s voices from interpretive and leadership roles. For centuries, Islamic legal interpretation has been shaped by male-centered scholarship, reinforcing patriarchal structures and limiting women’s authority. This article examines how women Islamic...

This contribution examines the affective and moral dimensions shaping Muslim queer and transgender lives in Aceh, Indonesia —the only province governed by Sharia law. Drawing on ethnographic data from a decade ago, it explores how transpuan (transgender women) and gay men navigated moral boundaries and social stigma in constrained spaces such as salons, cafés, and semi-private gatherings....

This paper elaborates on the relationship between Christian and Muslim women on the small island of Ternate, Alor Regency, East Nusa Tenggara (NTT). This research shows that Christian and Muslim women on the small island develop wisdom to survive and develop their families’ life by sharing resources for their common good and progress. On this small island, with an area of approximately 3.82...

The organization of religious education in postcolonial Indonesia largely replicated the institutional patterns inherited from the colonial period, but with a shift in the locus of religious privileging. Under Dutch colonial rule, the state promoted Christian missionary schooling while restricting the growth of Islamic institutions, exemplified by the the formal incorporation of church...

This presentation explores the development, conceptual foundations, and current state of Islamic Religious Education (IRE) in Germany. Beginning with the historical trajectory of IRE in the context of migration and educational policy, it examines the challenges of institutionalization within the framework of the German constitution. Beyond the institutional dimension, the contribution...

The international context broadens our perspectives: While in the Netherlands, as recently as 2017, the 80% of religiously affiliated private schools predominantly offered religious instruction from the student's own denomination, in Sweden a state system dominates, with students having been taught together for approximately 60 years (Bertram-Troost 2017, Klintborg 2022). The situation is...

This article consists of an idea of new exegetical approach that can be applied to the Qur’an in the 21st century. This approach is called ‘ma‘nā-cum-maghzā Approach’. Before exploring it, I discuss the typology of Qur’an interpretations in the contemporary period in a critical way. Furthermore, I build the approach by mentioning its definition and methodical steps in detail. The main...

This presentation argues that ideological criticism offers a vital hermeneutical resource for Muslim–Christian relations. The Bible, when read as an ideological text, is revealed to be both a source of integration and distortion: it shapes communal identity but also legitimates domination. Recognizing this ambivalence enables Christians to confront the complicities of their scripture while...

This article examines the role of academic lived space and the civil sphere in fostering interreligious engagement within Indonesian university campuses and broader society. While Indonesian classrooms have long functioned as lived spaces for interreligious dialogue, grassroots initiatives have further cultivated a civil sphere conducive to mutual interreligious interaction. This study draws...

In the past 20 years, Interreligious Studies (IRS), as an academic field of study, has grown rapidly, and its proponents/ practitioners are still engaged in debating its object(s) of study, approaches and other aspects. In some understandings of the field, IRS is conceived as going beyond an academic enterprise, but also aspiring to interreligious engagement, with its more normative objective...

In many contexts, religious plurality is perceived either as dangerous or as fragile, depending on the assessment of the power and impact of religious actors and religious traditions. In recent decades, interreligious collaboration has become an avenue for taking a more constructive approach to religious plurality and for resisting pervasive mechanisms of exclusion. One important aspect is...