SPs UIN Jakarta holds public lecture on religion and ecology

SPs, UIN News Online – The Graduate School (SPs) UIN Jakarta holds virtual public lecture entitled “Religion and Ecology in Europe and Muslim World” on Monday (06/14/2021) through Zoom application.

Moderated by lecturer of SPs UIN Jakarta Arief Zamhari, this event presents professor of empirical and practical religious studies at Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands Frans Wijsen. Also present in the event, the Director of SPs UIN Jakarta Asep Saepudin Jahar.

Asep in his remarks appreciates the International Office (CIC) UIN Jakarta for organizing this event. He also expressed his gratitude to Prof Frans for giving a public lecture at the SPs UIN Jakata.

“Through this public lecture, we hope to gain new insights on how to develop ecology and philosophy, especially in the field of Islamic studies,” said Asep.

Meanwhile, Frans Wijsen in his presentation presented about his research on how religion relates to the pollution of Citarum river. According to Wijsen, Muslims do ritual purification (wudu) before performing prayers. In doing so, they still use the polluted water from the Citarum River.

“This leads us to question their perception on purification in Islam and on the pollution of the river, and how the two are irrelated in practice,” he said.

He also offered several findings, one of which is a distinction between clean water and pure water. The latter refers to runing water that might be unclean. Many users realize that water in the river is unclean, but still consider it pure according to their religious beliefs

In order to overcome the problem of water, Wijsen recommended the Religious scholar to pay much attention to the way religion is practiced by local people and to understand its influence on people’s attitude toward water.

“We need to take social-empirical approaches as a way to understanding the cause of the problem. We should do the creative hermeneutics to contextualize religious beliefs in the middle of contemporary problems,” said Wijsen.

For information, Frans Wijsen is professor of empirical and practical religious studies at Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, and honorary professor in the department of philosophy and religious studies at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

He lectures on policy and management issues concerning religious diversity in secular and multicultural societies. His current research focuses on religion and ecology, more particularly on how various faith-based organizations collaboration in environmental campaigns. (usa)