Menimbang Gagasan Farid Esack Tentang Solidaritas Lintas Agama
Abstract: Inter-religious
conflict has been part of the history of religions. To the dismay of many, the
conflict has escalated from time to time overshadowing the benevolent nature of
religions as a blessing for mankind. Hence, instead of addressing the formidable
problems of poverty, backwardness, ignorance, injustice, oppression and the
like, people of different religions in one way or another are dragged into the
acts of violence. It is this unfortunate development in the history of
religions that we are interested in discussing by appealing to the ideas of
Farid Esack who has established himself as an international scholar of Islam.
We portray Esack as a man whose attention is being paid solely to promote the
inter-religious dialogue with a single purpose in mind, to push peace and
harmony for all regardless of their race and religion. We are particularly
interested in developing further the idea of what he calls a “productive
dialogue” in which an awareness of religious solidarity constitutes an integral
part. We will try to expose the “hermeneutics of awareness” to get a better
idea of what Esack is trying to do as far as social harmony is concerned.
Within this scheme we will also discuss some other related issues such as the
problem of pluralism and liberation. We argue that Esack sees the problem of
social harmony as essentially theological and not simply political. It is
therefore the task of religion—and not simply of politic—to deal with such
problem.
Keywords: solidariy,
inter-religious dialogue, theology, hermeneutics of awareness
Penulis: Fawaizul Umam
Kode Jurnal: jpperadabanislamdd100039
