Ali Alatas and the Alliance of Civilizations

He represented Southeast Asia in the High-level Group (HLG) of 20 world eminences tasked in 2005 with the writing of a report that would be the basis for the work and the workings of the Alliance.

Also in that group were South Africa’s Nobel laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu, religion historian Karen Armstrong, human rights activist Rabbi Arthur Schneier, and Mohammad Khatami, who had just completed his second term as president of Iran.

I remember Alatas expressing concern, as early as then, that the Alliance might be overly focused on the Muslim-Western fault line, to the neglect of other civilizations. “There are civilizations in Asia that are neither Muslim nor Western,” he said. “They shouldn’t be left out.

There was prescience in those words. Today there is a Muslim-Buddhist fault line disrupting harmony in South and Southeast Asian societies. And there persists a Muslim-Hindu fault line. Until the East Asian civilizations play a more robust role in the Alliance, it is an incomplete mix.

In its first report, the HLG stressed the Palestine-Israeli issue, because “it has taken on a symbolic value that colors cross-cultural and political relations … well beyond its limited geographical scope.” Alatas said something to the same effect in his first statement as HLG member.

Today the issue has a new overtone: Many people in Western societies have recoiled in horror at the indiscriminate bombardment carried out by the Israelis in Gaza, resulting in the mass killing of civilians. People are beginning to realize that there can be no peace, let alone an alliance, of civilizations unless both sides try to be just.

Alatas also insisted that freedom fighters shouldn’t be branded as terrorists. Nowhere is that distinction more important today than in Syria where genuine freedom fighters against the Assad regime are poorly equipped and poorly supported compared to jihadists with an imperial agenda.

Making that distinction is tricky, Alatas admitted. One man’s freedom fighter is some government’s terrorist. And your friendly neighborhood freedom fighter today may be radicalized tomorrow. But there must be an effort to make that distinction, he said.

I don’t remember him saying this, but I’m sure he would have approved of it: that the Alliance should invite even the radicals to join in the dialogue.

Otherwise you have a case of members of the choir preaching to one another. The idea is to ferret the radicals’ legitimate grievances, the root causes of their alienation and address these causes.

He did say that the root causes of terrorism, not just terrorism itself, must be vigorously dealt with.

Critics of the Alliance at that time were quick to claim that it wasn’t paying much attention to the faults of governments of Muslim countries. But this was belied by an op-ed piece in the Houston Chronicle co-authored by Alatas, Tutu, and Andri Azoulay, adviser to the king of Morocco. They decried, among other things, the political repression endemic in the Muslim world.

“Denying peaceful opposition movements the freedom to express their views and jailing their supporters generate anger and resentment, encouraging some to join violent groups,” they wrote.

That sentiment was anticipated by at least a good seven years the Arab Spring and the general regression into which the Middle East has subsequently fallen.

Jamil Maidan Flores is a Jakarta-based literary writer whose interests include philosophy and foreign policy. The views expressed here are his own.