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

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 that the interreligious field does not only consist of religious actors and representatives, but of a significantly diverse array of actors in society, including political, cultural and academic actors. This paper will offer an analysis of different patterns of multistakeholder public engagement in plural societies, and will highlight the roles that interreligious initiatives and academic research and teaching play in these processes. The interreligious and the academia have a specific role in fostering plural democracies as they engage in constructive and critical ways with otherness and knowledge-production and strengthen the agency of diverse actors and stakeholders.