R20 Forum Produces Communiqués Containing Recommendations on Strategic Issues
Bali, MINA – Chairman of the Nahdlatul Ulama (PBNU) Executive Board KH Yahya Cholil Staquf officially closed the G20 Religious Forum or Religion of Twenty (R20) at the Grand Hyatt, Nusa Dua, Badung, Bali on Thursday.
The two-day conference of world religious leaders and beliefs held a communique containing recommendations on various strategic issues that had been discussed.
The grandson of the charismatic NU cleric KH Bisri Musthofa Rembang said that the R20 communique will be published in a number of languages, including Indonesian, English and Arabic.
Some of the points contained in the communique as quoted from NU Online are as follows:
G20 Religious Forum Final Communicate (R20): Efforts to Ensure Religion Functions as a Source of Global Solutions
1. We, religious leaders from G20 Member States and other countries around the world, have great concern for global challenges, such as environmental degradation, natural, and man-made disasters, poverty, unemployment, refugees, extremism, and terrorism. Effective responses to these challenges are made more difficult by the emergence of competition between and among major powers and the rise of identity-based conflicts around the world, which threaten domestic and international peace and security, as well as the eroding of public commitment to ethical and spiritual values essential to the well-being of individuals and society.
2. In response to this challenge, we have gathered in Bali, Indonesia, in the First G20 Religious Forum (R20) on November 2-3, 2022, chaired by Kiai Haji Yahya Cholil Staquf and Sheikh Mohammad bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa.
3. R20 seeks to encourage mutual understanding, a culture of peace, and harmonious coexistence amidst the diversity of people, religions and nations in the world. To achieve this goal, R20 mobilizes religious, social, economic, and political leaders from around the world to ensure that religion serves as a source of genuine and dynamic solutions, not as a source of problems.
4. R20 welcomes and appreciates constructive efforts to achieve the above objectives, including but not limited to:
a. The establishment, in June 2021, of the “Center for Shared Civilizational Values” by the spiritual leaders of Nahdlatul Ulama, including the Founding Chair of R20 and the General Chairperson of the Nahdlatul Ulama Executive Board, Kiai Haji Yahya Cholil Staquf; and
b. “Forum to Build Bridges Between East and West” and “Mecca Charter” 2019, initiatives established by the Muslim World League under the leadership of H.H. Sheikh Mohammad bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa, Secretary General of the Muslim World League, to promote mutual understanding, peaceful coexistence and harmony among the world’s diverse peoples, cultures and nations.
5. Therefore, R20 calls on religious and political leaders as well as all people of good faith from all religions and nations to join in building a global alliance based on shared civilizational values.
6. R20, through this global alliance, seeks to:
I. develop and implement concrete initiatives that will bridge the nation and civilization;
II. encourage honest and realistic conversations within and between religious communities, to ensure that religion functions as a source of genuine and dynamic solutions, not as a source of problems;
III. instilling moral and spiritual values in the structure of the world’s social, political and economic forces;
IV. prevent the use of identity as a political weapon;
V. stop the spread of communal hatred;
VI. encourage solidarity and respect among the world’s diverse peoples, cultures and nations;
VII. protect people from violence and suffering triggered by conflict;
VIII. calls on the world to actively help those suffering from such violence;
IX. utilize spiritual ecological wisdom embedded in world religious traditions to ensure that the natural environment, including elements of earth, air, and water, is respected and preserved;
X. encourage the emergence of a truly just and harmonious world order, which is based on respect for the equal rights and dignity of every human being; and
XI. get the recognition that R20 officially became the G20 Engagement Group.
7. After launching the R20 under the Indonesian Presidency for the G20 in 2022, we look forward to the Indian Presidency for the G20 in 2023.
Bali, Indonesia, November 3, 2022. (T/RE1)
Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)
