Religious Pluralism Discourse in Public Sphere of Indonesia: A Critical Application of Communicative Action Theory to Inter-religious dialogue

Abstract

This paper examines religious pluralism discourse in post-Reformasi Indonesia. Though there is general consensus about the importance of maintaining inter-religious harmony, there are still various perspectives and arguments on the idealization of dealing with religious diversity in the society. The differences are found not only between advocates and opponents of religious pluralism, but also between proponent groups of religious pluralism. This paper looks at how religious organizations for inter-religious harmony struggle for legitimating their religious pluralism ideals in the society. They make their voices in particular ways such as holding conference, publishing books, issuing fatwas and sometimes doing cultural performances and so on in order to convince their counterpart in particular or civil society in general that religious pluralism should become common platform that accommodates every religious groups, or it should be rejected as deteriorating religious truths in each religion. They vigorously participate in debate, deliberation and negotiation with counterpart and try to attain a legitimacy of their vision and way of dealing with religious diversity. In this context, this paper focuses on the characteristics of their efforts to communicate with others in public sphere using Habermas