Distinguished participants,
        Ladies and gentlemen,

It is indeed a great honor for me to welcome you to this public symposium on 'Islamic Perspectives on Governance'. At the same time, I also wish to commend the Center for Islamic and Societal Studies, the State Islamic University of Jakarta, and the Key Center for Ethics, Law, Justice and Governance of Griffith University, Brisbane, for their timely initiative to organize this symposium. I sincerely hope that this important undertaking would provide the participants with a venue to explore Islam and, hence, better understand this currently rather misunderstood religion.

Distinguished participants,
        Ladies and gentlemen

There can be no question that Islam is one of the most important social and political forces in today's world. As well as guiding the day-to-day lives of more than one billion Muslims throughout the world, Islam forms the ideological basis of governments in various regions in the world. While the political importance of Islam cannot be questioned - in recent times - its compatibility with democracy has been the subject of much conjecture, with scholars pointing to the relatively small number of Islamic democracies as evidence that the two are indeed not compatible.

This theory is highly questionable if one considers that Prophet Muhammad - peace be upon Him - once was documented to issue 'the Medina Charter' guaranteeing the fundamental human rights of the whole population under his administration regardless of their origins, religions, races, ethnicities and skin colors.

We must therefore conclude that somewhere along the way, Islam has been hijacked so it seemed to be incompatible with democracy. For certain, the reasons for this seeming incompatibility lie not in the religion itself but rather in the world politics that tends to merely focus on accumulating power. It is common knowledge that the national interests of the world's superpowers necessitate the stabilization of those Islamic countries at the expense of democracy. Worse still, some in the Western world have indeed tried to portray that Islam is incompatible with democracy, apparently in order to better deal with the perceived threat it poses to their civilizations or way of lives. This brings us to the question of why Islam is considered to be a threat to democracy, and indeed, the Western world. Samuel Huntington opined in 1993 that the fundamental of conflicts in this new world will not be primarily ideological or economical but rather cultural. He hence predicted that the clash of civilization - between Islam and the Western world - will be inevitable.

According to Huntington what we have at the moment are two opposing forces about two collide. On one side is the Western nations, that is, those countries with a primarily European or Christian background and on the other is Islam. Indeed, bound together by their common culture, military conflict between the Western nations is highly unlikely.

Distinguished participants,
        Ladies and gentlemen,

After the fall of communism, with its pluralistic and universal nature, Islam has been seen as the greatest perceived threat to the Western global dominance. And, the divisions between these two forces are further deepened by the way Western nations dominate the decision-making process in the political and economical global governance as embodied in the UN Security Council and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with the West solely promotes its political and economic interests while imposing whatever policies it sees fit on the rest of the world. These injustices may well become the underlying reasons for some in the Muslim world to frustrate and lead them to commit horrendous acts of violence.

Although the term 'Islamic extremists' may seem reasonable the question has to be asked why is it only Muslim extremists who are labeled in such away while those involving in terrorist's activities in the north of Ireland - to use an example - are never referred to as 'Catholic extremists' or 'Protestant extremists'. Similar case also applied to the Serbians, we have never heard 'Christian extremists' or 'terrorists' being slapped into their faces albeit they have mercilessly killed thousands of Muslim and, indeed, the entire population of Srebrenica during the Balkan conflicts.

The reason seems to lie in the premise that although the Western world may be outraged by these acts of terrorism, they remain part of their common Western civilization. Unfortunately, this attitude has led many to believe that the West's so called 'war on terror' is indeed a war against Islam.

There are also those who have drawn a connection between Islamic fundamentalist and a lack of democracy as Thomas Carothers asserted in his 1993 essay 'Promoting Democracy and Fighting Terror' that the lack of democracy in the Middle-East and Asia helped to breed Islamic extremism.

This brings me to the case of Indonesia. As some of you may have already heard, Indonesia will organize a three-round of general elections to elect its parliamentarians and president consecutively in April, July and September 2004.

There are twenty-four political parties approved by the Election Commission and although this figure may sound large in comparison with elections in Australia, this is half the number of parties that had participated in the last general elections. We do hope, however, that those eligible to vote would base their votes purely on the merit of the various parties. Certainly, one may conclude that democracy is now at work in Indonesia, a proof that Islam and democracy are indeed compatible. If democracy can thrive in Indonesia that houses almost two hundred millions Muslims, surely it can do so in any other Islamic country if given the opportunity.

Better still, the two largest Islamic organizations in Indonesia, 'Nahdlatul Ulama' and 'Muhammadiyah' have long been championing democracy in the country. The leaders of these Islamic organizations KH Hasyim Muzadi and Dr. Syafi'i Ma'arif have recently visited Australia canvassing their visions on democracy and on inter-religious harmony in Indonesia. They also noted that conflict in Indonesia because of purely religious reason is rare. Rather, the conflict that exists is due mostly to economic discrepancy.

Unfortunately indeed, during most of the President Soeharto's rule, these organizations were criticized for being too compliant and were manipulated to rubber-stamp the government's policies. This resulted in many Muslims moving away from these mainstream and moderate Islamic organizations and drifting them away to the more radical organizations led by the 'Habibs'. Taking into account the Middle-Eastern background of these habibs, it is only logical therefore that their followers, notably the youths, became more involved in international issues such as the Israeli - Palestinian conflict. The call for 'Jihad' has ever since become the flavor of the day.

These two largest Islamic organizations have recently begun to restore their credibility and, as a result, many Indonesia's Muslims are returning to moderate Islam. The emergence of Amien Rais and Abdurrahman Wahid as the reform prime-movers in Indonesia significantly helped accelerate the process.

Distinguished participants,
        Ladies and gentlemen,

To sum up, while Western democracies encourage all nations to uphold and practice democracy, it should not be forgotten that the world is comprised of many diverse and distinct cultures. Western-style democracy should, therefore, allow the process of democratization to integrate in every culture in an evolutionary way, and intercultural bridges should be built to gain mutual understanding and trust.

This dialogue - together with many others - will hopefully allow us to better understand Islam and its relations with the Western democratic values. There is, however, a need to remind all of us that a healthy and productive dialogue can only be conducted if all its participants stand equal. And, no strings, such as anti-US or anti-Semitism, should be attached to it, for it would only prevent us from having a candid and frank dialogue between civilizations.

Finally, in the name of God, the most compassionate and the most merciful, I now declare this symposium open. I wish you all the success in your deliberations.

Thank you.

Canberra, 19 February 2004

Imron Cotan
Ambassador