Greece (Brussels Morning) There are many ways to describe the connections between Europe and the wider world. One is through religion: For many Europeans, for example, faith is not that important anymore, neither individually nor collectively. But for many people elsewhere in the world, faith still shapes who they are and what they want. It stands to reason that if we want to improve the world, or even just engage the world, we’d shortchange ourselves if we did not include religion.
That’s even more critical because rising numbers of Europeans trace their recent ancestries to parts of the world where religion remains formative (which has consequences in Europe, too—consider the intense debate in France and elsewhere about visible markers of faith). Part of the problem? For those to whom religion is unfamiliar or unnecessary, it is easy to ignore how religious people live, confusing our biases for their priorities.
This year’s G20 convenes in Bali, Indonesia, over the next few weeks. The Group of 20 refers to the world’s twenty-largest economies, many of which are European by location or political ancestry (like the United States and Canada). But many of the G20’s rising economies aren’t European; just this year, for example, India surpassed the United Kingdom to become the world’s fifth-largest economy. In those societies, too, religion is significant.
In India, for example, secular democracy is challenged by religious majoritarianism and tensions around identity and even citizenship. Not just India, either: Three of the G20 are Muslim-majority, including the world’s largest Muslim country, Indonesia; the historic birthplace of Islam, Saudi Arabia; and a longtime if unlikely EU candidate, Turkey. Long story short, religion is a big part of the social, economic, and political affairs of the G20 countries.
But until this year, religion was mostly an afterthought—despite its obvious significance.
Alongside this year’s G20 will be the first-ever G20 Religion Forum, or R20. Its conception and areas of focus are truly exciting. Convened by that nation’s largest Muslim body, the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) of Indonesia, which claims tens of millions of members, in partnership with the Saudi-based Muslim World League, the world’s largest Muslim NGO, the R20 upends many of our common prejudices. For Europeans raised to believe in the potential of intergovernmental and cosmopolitan conversations, this is especially significant.
The R20 aims to create a space where global faith leaders–from the Pope, who has already addressed the R20 virtually, to the head of the Muslim World League, Dr. Abdul Karim al-Issa, and on to major Hindu, Jewish, Sikh and Buddhist leaders–convene to think creatively about how religion can provide moral heft to economics, sociology, and politics. To be clear, this absolutely does not mean state-sanctioned religion. If you’re thinking about imposed Shariah, theocracy, or medieval emirates, in other words, you’re not thinking.
The R20 is a vision of religion’s possible future, where senior clergy from across the major faith traditions in the world’s largest economies gather to think through how to build bridges, accelerate development, address climate change, and more broadly interject compassion into our sometimes cold conversations. At a time when even our noblest secular projects like the European Union are suffering from fatigue, overstretch, and confusion, the possibilities are invigorating. Just consider the context–and its potential.
The Muslim leaders gathered at the R20 have unusual sway over huge numbers in the world’s fastest-growing faith community; these leaders determinedly preach coexistence, tolerance, and free speech. They warn against religious doctrine in government and the public enforcement of private morality. And because they’re in conversations with G20 concerns, that means that when they talk about religion, it’s never independent of everyday life and shared human concerns. Much of this, of course, has been happening for years.
Already, at the R20, Dr. Al-Issa has hailed the need for “moral leadership” in the face of our great global crises, which, he argues, have “moral and spiritual” roots—and responses. To capture just what he meant, perhaps, Dr. Al-Issa also announced that the world’s largest Muslim NGO was creating a humanitarian fund to aid victims of war, including, as he noted, Ukrainian victims of war. Europeans, largely Christian, receiving help from the Muslim world.
It might sound surprising. It shouldn’t. It should be inspiring. And motivating.
What happens at the R20 matters to Europeans. We must learn how the wider world is changing. How it’s ambitious and eager to engage. We might even think about diversities and differences in our countries, now and in the future, and whether we have missed opportunities to embrace those nuances instead of fleeing from them. Difference doesn’t have to mean division. What happens in Bali could change how the world looks from Brussels.
