Motivation Letter

Rifqi Fairuz
Muslims and Christians have a very long contact through history for centuries. The
dynamics of these world 's two largest religions are in flux. They had been very close,
sometimes very tenuous and distant. Recent phenomena in current millenium (marked by
9/11 incident in USA) recorded that Muslim-Christian relations suffered a new phase, as it
became not only sentiment of civilization, but also brought sentiment of religion. The issues
of terrorism have brought suspicion also stereotypes about Muslims in Christians community
and vice versa, which eventually pushed us to rebuild the bridge between the two religions.
Surely many kinds of efforts to bridge between Islam and Christianity isnt new thing
and have been running for long time, but it does not mean to be underrated. In contrary,
Muslim-Christian dialogue should still be maintained and preserved to counter such
stereotypes, prejudice and unfounded accusations between the two religions and their
adherents for better living and purposes in the future.
Regarding the program, I have strong major in Islamic history and culture, which is
my field of study in UIN Sunan Kalijaga. Therefore, I, as a student majoring Islamic History
and Culture, am well aware that one of many paths to establish rapport of civilization or
religion is through reconciliation and dialogues path. I would like to share my ideas about
bridging the two religions and finding their meeting point, especially through cultural point of
view. I'm sure the VICISU program will earn good effect either to rebuild bridges and find
meeting point between the two religions.
Specially to Islam and Christianity, the meeting point is actually not hard to find.
History recorded that Islam and Christianity are both rooted to Prophet Ibrahim (Abrahamic
Religion). Also Europe, especially in the Mediterranean, has also been written in history as
one of the highly developed civilization of Islam in his time, especially Andalusia and
Cordova in current Spain.
Indonesia as a multicultural country also highly motivated me to campaign and bring
the mission of peace, pluralism, tolerance and diversity through this program. Not only those
purposes, I also motivated to share the experience to the participants of the program about
how the diversity runs in Indonesia, as well as challenges that occurred in Indonesia about
religious radicalism (horizontal conflict between society regarding minority religions and
stream) and democracy (as 2014 is Indonesia's year of politics for general election).
In global view, by this program I am expecting I could earn new angles and wider
point of views from other participants who expectedly come from around the world regarding
global challenges such as issues of migration, environment, population, human rights and the
others. Especially how the two religions contributions to address these kinds of challenges.
Finally, I do hope I am considered proper to take part in this program. I would like to
share all shared knowledge and value during the program to my university colleagues in
Indonesia, and spread the message of peace and pluralism through seminar, published
writings or discussion fora. Thus I do hope it could be beneficial not only for me as personal,
but also for wider and larger scope such community-organization scope, as well as
institutional level.