Prof. Desmond Cahill gave an address for the Fifth World Peace Forum on the Theme of Quest for Peace: Lessons of Conflict Resolution held in Jakarta on 20th-23rd November, 2014, sponsored by the Central Board of Muhammadiyah in collaboration with the Cheng Ho Culture Trust of Malaysia with support from the Centre for Dialogue and Cooperation among Civilizations.
Beyond Conflict Cessation to Reconciliation and Healing in Transformed Communities
Introduction
On October 3rd 2013, more than 300 refugees and asylum seekers were drowned off the Italian island of Lampedusa in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. One woman was drowned while she was actually giving birth with the umbilical cord still attached and the two bodies were buried together in the same coffin. The world noted that most were fleeing Eritrea, a hell-hole of a country that mostly and very undeservedly flies under the world’s radar. After the war with Ethiopia in 1993, the victorious military leader, Isaiah Ifewerki, after a referendum in 1993 approving independence, has for the past 20 years increasingly become an autocratic unelected president, governing with a small Christian Orthodox clique of military men and secret police, all masked by a puppet government with completely powerless government ministers. Eritrea is a clear example of a country where conflict was not appropriately transformed and where the democratic and pluralist promises were not kept, certainly not with the Muslims as the second largest religious group.
Yet since World War Two, there have been instances where transformation has occurred and old enmities have been relegated to the dustbin of history: Germany with its European neighbours, Japan with its Asian and Pacific neighbours, Timor Leste and Indonesia. we have seen the rise in the 1960s of the Christian ecumenical movement where the Catholics, the Orthodox and the Protestants have begun walking the road to Christian unity – ut unum sint (that they may be one). But the struggle for peace and reconciliation in an increasingly unpredictable and less controllable world (Beck 1999) is a continuing and uncertain process. The transformations in Russia and Myanmar remind us of this. Part of this struggle is also the defusing of religiously inspired terrorism.
Sri Lanka is another country recovering from a vicious civil war driven by ethnonationalist and ethnoreligious ideology. There is the famous sociological saying, “Ethnicity in small doses can bring delight to us all; in large doses it can kill us”. Professor Jayadeva Uyangoda, Professor of Political Science at the University of Colombo, has been critical of the Sri Lankan Government for placing too much reliance on economic development as the key to national reconciliation. He writes of “the two solitudes”, criticizing the retreat into solitude as the preferred political path among the ethnic elites even though “the military defeat of the LTTE has not obliterated the Tamil community’s political aspirations for power-sharing in an advanced form of devolution” (Uyangoda 2012: 23).The post-conflict triumphalism of the government has led to the inability to both dialogue and discern, and the necessity for broadening the sense of national belonging if a deep, healing peace is to be achieved.
Findings of the 2014 Global Peace Index
The latest 2014 Global Peace Index (GPI) in its survey of 162 countries encompassing 99.6 per cent of the world’s population and based on 22 indicators such as open conflict, terrorist activity, violent crime and relations with neighbouring countries is grouped around three dimensions: (i) level of safety and security in the society (ii) the extent of domestic or international conflict and (iii) the degree of militarization.
In the last seven years since 2008 there has been a notable deterioration in levels of peace. While only 51 countries have improved, there has been a deterioration of peace levels in 111 countries caused, in the past twelve months, by the rise in terrorist activity, especially Islamist-inspired terrorism, rise in the number of conflicts fought and the increased number of refugee, displaced and stateless persons. The most peaceful countries are Iceland, Denmark, Austria and New Zealand, and the least are Syria, Afghanistan and South Sudan. The area or region with the least peaceful nations is South and South-Western Asia.
According to the 2014 GPI Report, trends in peace are shifting from hostility between states to a rise in the number and intensity of internal conflicts with Eritrea and Sri Lanka as good examples from the recent past. This may be a little surprising, given the rise in living standards across the world as measured by the UNDP’s Human Development Index. Economic development has not necessarily brought peace and harmony. The UN has developed its Human Development Index which over the years has shown the rise up the index of the Asia-Pacific countries whilst the African countries have continued to remain in the lower ranks of the index. In 1980, the index on a range from 0 – 1, was at 0.559, whereas in 2013 it had risen to 0.702. Within the Asia-Pacific region, the worst performer in terms of human development has been Afghanistan which is the worst overall performer on all indices, followed by Pakistan.
From Conflict to Reconciliation
After the cessation of a conflict, reconciliation and healing involve a process of mourning and reconciliation, perhaps forgiveness. Healing is rarely a matter of saying sorry, and sometimes attempts to heal and achieve reconciliation in the framework of restorative justice can exacerbate the pain, renew suffering and even traumatize victims and survivors. Sometimes people feel no better when the perpetrators are convicted as criminals (Komesaroff, Kath & James 2011). Often reconciliation is linked to truth and truth-telling – hence the emergence of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions as in South Africa. But such commissions are not necessarily panaceas.
The process is more complex. “Reconciliation encompasses a much broader field than legally-enforced conflict resolution and modern justice alone, and can extend to the establishment of peace, customary justice, fairness, healing and forgiveness, the recovery of cultural identities, the building of trust and the overcoming of personal enmities. It also covers a range of cultural and political goals, including human rights, social justice and mutual coexistence … … The task is to enable a process in which new truths and new ethical insights can be generated that take us into a different future” (Komesaroff, Kath & James 2011: 235-236). This new future will usually involve new governance frameworks, new alliances and a new shared sense of a diverse community and identity. This process involves not only political leaders but community leaders, including religious leaders. Authentic religion, whilst concerned about self-love and self-care, is primarily concerned with the other, the other of the transcendent, the other of family, the other of neighbour, the other of enemy and the other of creation. Religious leaders have a responsibility to lead their communities to accept and embrace the other, even the enemy other.
This healing and reconciliation task can only be accomplished through dialogue that leads to discerning the framework of that post-conflict future. In this paper I want to, firstly, examine some ten principles of dialogue before drawing on the Incheon Declaration from the Asian Conference of Religions for Peace, declared in August 2014, which affirmed the eight pillars of nationhood, and also drawing on the insights from the social cohesion literature. This will lead to a consideration of the quality of religious leadership, quality of local community leadership and, lastly, a consideration of the role o
f the police and the philosophy of community policing.
The Importance of Dialogue and Discerning the Future
Now that conflict and religion are at world centre stage, intercultural and interfaith dialogue has become a necessity. Ethnic and faith communities can have four types of arrangements or interrelationships: those of (1) conflict (2) segregation (3) competition and (4) cooperation though in reality these relationships tend to be a mixture of the types. The answers to the world’s current political and religious problems partly lie not in a secularism that often triggers a religious extremism but in religious moderation and in ecumenical and interfaith activity. Fortunately since 9/11 interfaith and intercultural cooperation has become an impressive growth industry. Kenneth Fernando has articulated within the Anglican Communion ten very useful principles (slightly adapted) for bettering intercultural and interfaith relations:
- We confess our failures and lack of love and sensibility to people of other faiths and cultures in the past. We intend to forgive one another, seek the forgiveness of others and commit ourselves to a new beginning.
- We affirm that good interfaith and intercultural relations can open the way to better interethnic relations and peace throughout the world.
- We recognize building true community, both among persons and between various ethnic and religious communities, as our primary objective. We need to develop a global theology that will be appropriate for the unfolding sense of a globalized world.
- We affirm the importance of promoting a culture of dialogue within and among all religious communities, ethnic communities and indigenous traditions.
- We condemn violence and terrorism as being against the spirit of all true religion and we pledge ourselves to removing their causes.
- We shall respect the integrity of all religions and all cultures, and ensure that they have the freedom to follow their own religious beliefs and cultural traditions.
- We believe that the different religions and cultures are enriched by identifying agendas in which they can collaborate such as making peace, protecting the environment, eradicating poverty and ensuring the human dignity of all.
- We endeavour to live out and explain the truths of our own religion in a manner that is intelligible and friendly to people of other faiths and cultures.
- Cultural diversity as well as religious diversity in our communities will be affirmed as a source of enrichment and challenge.
We affirm it is important for us all to listen to and learn from other religions and other cultures so that we can value cultural and religious plurality as a factor that enriches our communities.
The Eights Pillars of Peace for Nation States
After conflict, political leaders, supported by religious and other community leaders, are called to construct a new framework for a renewed future built around overcoming the deep wounds of the past. The Eighth Asian Assembly was held at the end of August 2014 in Incheon in South Korea. Religious representatives of more than half the world’s population were able to agree on the Incheon Declaration, reflecting Asia’s inbuilt and growing confidence to exert its leadership in the face of a declining Europe and the U.S.A. and in the face of conflict through its theme Unity and Harmony in Asia. “Asia as the birthplace of the world’s major religious traditions has a special place in building a response around binding authentic values, irrevocable standards of virtuous behaviour and deeply-seated inner attitudes, all grounded in the unity of humanity. Spirituality abounds in Asia. As a gift of the divine, spirituality is a transcendent force making Asia one in its diversity in its many expressions. It is an uplifting force of higher quality within the depths of the human person which makes us fit and worthy channels for great love, compassion and service and proclaimed by all religious traditions”. The Declaration specifically mentioned the danger of “hate speech against other social and religious groups and against other nations (which) had significantly increased”.
The Incheon Declaration cited the Global Peace Index (Institute for Economics and Peace 2014) sponsored by the Australian philanthropist, Steve Killelea. Analysis of the data suggests that there are eight key indicators of a peaceful nation called ‘the eight pillars of peace’ which were cited in the Declaration:
- (a) a well-functioning government
- (b) a sound business environment
- (c) an equitable distribution of resources
- (d) an acceptance of the human rights of others
- (e) good relationships with neighbouring nations
- (f) free flow of information
- (g) high level of human capital and
- (h) low levels of corruption.
Government management of religion and religious diversity is to keep an open religious market which prevents the emergence and growth of ultra-fundamentalist religious movements, and to facilitate religious practice in meeting the needs of many of its citizens. In addition to this facilitating role, the second role of government is to encourage harmony and contact between the different faith communities – in this sense, it has to play more of a brokering role. This is why the interfaith movement is so important. Thirdly, it also has a monitoring role to detect at the earliest possible moment causes of difference and tensions between ethnic and religious groups, then to act purposefully in defusing such tensions and conflict from escalating into violence and to unmask the real motives behind conflicts. It has to monitor and take action against bad religious practice that threatens the state itself or its citizens.
The stance might be better described as ‘a facilitating, brokering and monitoring neutrality’ of the state to create a culture of tolerance, acceptance, reconciliation and peace through its legislative, judicial, policing and educational agencies and to prevent the development of any heady brew of religious extremism or a religiously-supported ethnonationalism as well as to construct a new future in a post-conflict situation.
Religious leaders generally have a poor understanding of the role of government in the governance and management of religion and religious diversity. In the pursuit of interreligious harmony and social cohesion, we need quality religious leaders who know how to give community leadership in a religiously pluralist Australia and how to interact with other religious bodies. We need quality religious leaders who understand that religious law, whether it is Catholic canon law or Anglican church law or Muslim Shari’a law or Jewish religious law, is always subservient to the civil and criminal law in a democratic society although accommodation can be made as happens with regard to burial laws, offensive weapons law, equal opportunity law etc., but never when fundamental human rights or fundamental norms and practices are at stake. This highlights the limitations of religious law.
All countries are at their various points along the path of development and democratisation, and this is also true in respect of faith traditions, their attitudes and their institutions. Intra-religious harmony may be as important as inter-religious harmony. In the healing and reconciliation process, mechanisms for managing global, regional and local ethnic and religious diversity depend on broadening understanding about the functional equality of all persons, all cultures and all faiths and building common foundational norms. Separation of religion and state does not imply a secularist or a majoritarian stance on the one hand, or a theocratic approach on the other. Certainly it is a neutrality that is positive towards religion though this has to be further nuanced to accept that religi
ons usually contain destructive or hurtful elements or practices or doctrines. Furthermore, it is a neutrality that treats all religions, large and small, as essentially and in principle equal. The tyranny of the religious majority has to be resisted in combating the new religious intolerance (Nussbaum 2012).
Creating Interethnic and Interreligious Cohesion
The social cohesion and religious extremism debate has focussed in the last 6 – 7 years very much on homegrown terrorism but the issue is much broader than this. But it is also important in the healing and reconciliation debate. There is no agreed definition of social cohesion but generally descriptions revolve around a shared vision held by a well-functioning core group or community that acts in a continuous and interminable process of achieving social harmony. The research evidence (Markus 2008, 2009, 2013 in the Australian context) suggests there are five key elements:
(1) creating a sense of belonging to a multifaith nation, proud of itself and incorporating shared values, trust and a sense of psychological identification. A nation’s first task at all levels is to create continuously a sense of belonging, including to the local area. As Indonesia knows, this has been a continuing task since 1945.
(2) ensuring social justice and equity in accord with human rights observance and in terms of access to government services and funding. This second task is to ensure, firstly, that all citizens and residents, both permanent and temporary, are treated justly, with equity and equitably, including that the youth and the adult young receive their fair share of the local resources and are provided with multiple opportunities to develop themselves and their talents through training and education. Almost all suicide bombers have been young adults.
(3) encouraging democratic participation with regard to political and cooperative involvement. This third task is to ensure participation by all groups in civic and social life as part of creating this sense of belonging. Elected civic and administrative leaders as well as members of parliament need to attend the many varied ethnic and religious community functions as part of creating the sense of welcoming and participation that lie at the heart of social cohesion.
(4) bringing about acceptance of ethnic, indigenous, religious and sexual minorities and working against racism, discrimination and extremist ideologies based on literalist interpretations of sacred religious texts or ethnonationalist ideologies. Welcoming includes resisting racism, bigotry and discrimination through formal media and community education programs.
(5) forging a sense of worth for all incorporating people’s general happiness, life satisfaction and future expectations. People must all have a sense of their personal worth as individuals, generally happy in their personhood, generally satisfied with their lives and living and working with achievable and realistic expectations.
With five such strategies, the aim is to transform tension and conflict as well as to inoculate societies from being impacted by overseas events and dangerous imported ideologies and from the incubation of homegrown terrorism. Underlying such strategies are, firstly, the principle of gradualism in moving nation states along the path to greater openness and acceptance of the other – the wise person does not hurry history. Second is the principle of accommodation in having mechanisms to make accommodations for cultural and religious diversity e.g. accepting the wearing of the kirpan by Sikh males, the wearing of the hijab by Muslim women in European states – this accommodation is very important in post-conflict, healing contexts.
Linked to social cohesion is the notion of social capital or social wealth. Social wealth which is built around bonds, bridges, links and acceptance of the other refers to the processes that facilitate individual and social well-being and positive communal outcomes within a nation or a group. A nation’s social capital is built on
- an accurate understanding of its past
- solid but flexible social institutions that are resistant to corruption, fanaticism and zealotry, are able to manage conflict and deeply felt value clashes and are able to deal constructively with the multilayered national and international flows of ideas, finances, peoples, technologies and media images
- facilitative modes of communication and association between and across individuals, organizations and collective institutions,
- all underpinned by (I) positive psychosocial characteristics such as openness to new challenges and ambiguities, the tendency to modernity and long-sightedness, the propensity for care, nurturance and honesty and the readiness to trust people and institutions and (II) positive cultural and religious values, norms and behaviours that produce success in economic, political, military, recreational and other endeavours (Inkeles 2001).
Let us now focus on the role of professional and adult community education in bringing about social cohesion built on social wealth in constructing a nation in a post-conflict situation. Whilst the school and the university are clearly important in this task, equally important is the role of professional and adult community education, in particular, three groups of professionals who provide leadership at the local level. As we know, the local is the global; the global is the local. Let us firstly focus on religious leaders.
1. Religious Leadership: To be Religious is to be Interreligious
In the contemporary world in the Battle for God (Armstrong 2001) in constructing a culture of peace, an important insight is this: to be religious means to be interreligious. One cannot be authentically religious unless one is also genuinely interreligious (Wilfred 2011). An emerging governance problem in multifaith societies, especially in post-conflict and reconciliation contexts, is the quality of leadership in religious communities and their knowledge, skills and experience in dealing with the sensitivities of a healing, religiously pluralist society. Religious leaders, like educational and all other community leaders, can enlarge the stock of social capital and help choreograph social and ethnic cohesion in complex societies and across the world. But they can also destroy it in religiously pluralist societies. It seems to me that, firstly, basic professional and educational standards need to be set for the training of religious personnel and, secondly, their training in the religious sciences needs to be accompanied by training in the social sciences. They also need to meet leaders of other religious traditions in interfaith contexts and build bonds of friendship. But there will be some difficult issues to negotiate.
Educational programs targeting religious personnel could cover issues such as:
- the interreligious theology of the major religious traditions
- the nature of multifaith societies and their governance and management
- freedom of religion and the different models of religion-state relationship
- the responsibilities of community leadership in socioreligious settings
- human rights of individuals and the communal rights of religious communities
- the nature of transnational reciprocity
2. Local Community Leadership
A second core group are provincial and district political and administrative leaders who need to be educated to take the lead in facilitating a local vision for a culture of peace, healing and reconciliation, brokering or bringing about contact between the various community groups and locally mon
itoring the state of intercommunal relations. Leadership thus relates to their capacity for community building, and not just of their own community. The challenge of community leadership is to act as catalysts and enablers; to open up the processes of communication, face up to issues and to develop a positive vision and the strategies to get there. Local community and administrative leaders need to pursue the following tasks as enunciated by many community development specialists:
- serve as a model for personal integrity and responsible behaviours
- develop and communicate a concrete vision for a local culture of peace
- articulate forward-looking but realistic goals and the accompanying strategies
- work to achieve a high level of community acceptance
- engage in strategic planning and action
- respond quickly and positively to new opportunities
- identify issues and find practical solutions
- encourage and facilitate collaboration and cooperation between the various sub-groups
- display resilience in the face of difficulties and disappointments
- develop leadership potential
A major point is the issue of identity and the emergence of multiple national identities. One can no longer say that to be Australia is to be Christian or to be Indian is to be Hindu or to be Indonesian is to be Muslim – there are many different ways of being Australian, of being Indian, of being Indonesian. And those many different voices must be heard. And there are many different ways of being Muslim, of being Catholic, of being Hindu, and those many voices must also be heard as part of the articulation of a peace vision.
3. Interreligious Harmony, Social Cohesion and the Police
There is an old English policing axiom, “The public are the police and the police are the public”. The police are the keepers of the local peace, and they are the key players in creating a local culture of peace, healing and reconciliation. The Northern Ireland experience illustrates how long it took to address the policing issue. Policing policies are at the core of social cohesion, and the education and training of police at all levels is a central and proactive strategy against religious radicalism and creating a culture of interreligious peace. There are different models of policing such as militarist policing, zero-style policing etc.. Central to this is a policy of community policing which is, as the term suggests, composed of community partnerships where, in the outlook of the USA Department of Justice, it involves law enforcement agencies working with cultural and religious groups and other vulnerable groups to build trust with the police and with other such groups in addressing public safety issues such as physical attacks on minorities, the arson of religious buildings, terrorist attacks etc.. Their role is especially important in reconciliation contexts. The strategy partly is to educate police about their obligations and responsibilities, especially in dealing with minorities in accordance with the human rights provisions of a nation’s laws and the international covenants. In other words, community policing is changing police culture and combating police resistance.
There are many possible strategies such as neighbour watch teams for criminal behaviour, crime-stopper mechanisms, appointment of community police liaison officers, police interfaith committees and so on. As has been said, the emphasis is on working cooperatively with majority and minority communities. The extra advantage in such a strategy is that in the event of provocative actions such as arson or terrorism, the trust created will contribute much to defusing tense and volatile situations. A model is in the State of Victoria in Australia where there is a Victoria Police Multifaith Council together with multicultural liaison police officers who have been appointed in each police region – senior and local police attend iftar dinners during Ramadan and on Jewish special occasions and attend Buddhist and Hindu dinners religious festivals such as Vesak in order to build up trust with religious communities and their leaders.
The work of a police multifaith advisory council (PMFC) is to work with police in four areas through regular dialogue. The four aims are (1) to work with police in enhancing the effectiveness of police service delivery in helping police work across religious and ethnic boundaries, to give assistance in managing emergencies and to identify priority areas and improve police information. (2) to assist police in improving community safety through modelling and educating the community in ethical behaviours and in combating the drivers of crime (drugs, poverty etc.), through helping to combat serious and organized crime, helping in the work of rehabilitating offenders after jail, through combating the causes of road trauma and working with police in addressing possible cases of religiously-inspired violence and the impact of overseas events. In (3), the aim is for PMFC, as a stakeholder, to utilize the network of its religious members in assisting police to reach out to religious and ethnic communities, reflecting social, cultural, religious and linguistic diversity by enhancing the confidence and satisfaction of all members of religious and ethnic communities in the police and its operations and by supporting the recruiting of police and other safety officers, especially from minority communities and in areas difficult to fill. The fourth (4) aim is for the police multifaith advisory council to assist police in improving the knowledge, attitudes and skills of police and other safety officers by assisting in the pre-service and in-service training of police officers and safety officers into the diversity of the community regarding cultural and religious norms, attitudes and practices as well as inculcating ethical behaviour at all times.
Responsibility is a gift (Mudge 2008). The transforming of conflict in contexts of internal ethnic and religious diversity has taken on a new urgency and multifaith societies have an enviable task in the healing of ancient and less ancient hatreds and animosities and the reconciliation of communities. It has always been a process and it will continue to be a process. In today’s unpredictable world, to be religious implies to be interreligious. All religious groups, drawing from the deep wells of their own spiritualities and rituals, must forge their own understanding of healing and reconciliation in the 21st century. Let us be reminded of the national poet of Bangladesh, Kazi Nazrul Islam, who was a unique figure to have opposed bigotry in relation to religion and gender, with his proclamatory call, “Come, Hindu! Come, Musulman! Come Buddhist! Come, Christian! Let us transcend all barriers, let us forsake forever all smallness, all selfishness and let us call brothers and sisters as brothers and sisters. We shall quarrel no more”. Our spiritualities animate the best that is human, making ourselves into channels of peace for great compassion, love, healing and service as proclaimed by all the world’s great traditions.
List of References:
Armstrong, K. (2001) The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Harper Collins, London).
Beck, U. (1999) World Risk Society (Polity Press, Cambridge).
Institute for Economics and Peace (2014) Global Peace Index 2014: Measuring Peace and Assessing Risk (Vision of Humanity, Sydney and New York)
Komesaroff, P., Kath, E. & James, P. (2011) Reconciliation and the technics of healing. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 8, 235 – 237.
Markus, A. (2008) Mapping Social Cohesion: The Scanlon Foundation Summary Report, (Monash Institute for the Study of Global Movements, Clayton).
Markus, A. (2009) Mapping Social Cohesion 2009: Summary Report (Monash Institute for the Study of Global Movements, Monash University, Clayton)
Markus, A. (2013) Mapping Social Cohesion 2013: Local Areas Report (Monash Institute for the Study of Global Movements, Monash University, Clayton)
Mudge, L. (2008) The Gift of Responsibility: The Promise of Dialogue amongst Christians, Jews and Muslims (Continuum International, New York)
Nussbaum, M. (2012) The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age (USA)
Saeed, A. & Saeed, H. (2004) Freedom of Religion, Apostasy and Islam (Ashgate, U.K.)
U.N.D.P. (2014) Human Development Report 2014. Sustaining Human Progress: Reducing Vulnerabilities and Building Resilience (U.N.D.P., New York)
Uyangoda, J. (2012) Healing after war: thinking beyond the solitudes. In Herath, D. & Tudor Silva, K. (eds) Healing the Wounds: Rebuilding Sri Lanka after the War (International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo)
Wilfred, F. (2011) Becoming Christian interreligiously. Concilium, 2, 59 -67.
Professor Desmond Cahill, OAM.
Bio-data: Desmond Cahill, Professor of Intercultural Studies at RMIT University in Melbourne, has been teaching about cross-cultural issues and multicultural societies for the past 35 years to students in the areas of criminal justice, education, international, tourism and youth work studies. Since 9/11 his focus has been on religion, globalization and interfaith issues. At his university, he established the B.A. (Multicultural Studies) in 1986 and its successor course, B.A. (International Studies) in 1999 to deal with global, multicultural and interreligious realities. Currently, he is supervising international Ph.D. students with Australian, Bangladeshi, Indonesian, Iraqi, Saudi Arabian and Vietnamese backgrounds.
In 2004, he published with colleagues for the Australian immigration department, Religion, Cultural Diversity and Safeguarding Australia and in 2011 for the Australian Human Rights Commission, Freedom of Religion and Belief in 21st Century Australia. Since 2000, he has chaired Religions for Peace Australia and in 2014 was re-elected co-president and deputy moderator of Religions for Peace Asia whose moderator is Professor Din Syamsuddin. He led the City of Melbourne’s bid to stage the 2009 Parliament of the World’s Religions, the world’s largest interfaith gathering and was subsequently its honorary Melbourne Program Director. In 2010, he was awarded the Order of the Medal of Australia for “his services to intercultural education and to the interfaith movement”.
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