Welcome to the Center for Shared Civilizational Values:
Permanent Secretariat of the G20 Religion Forum (R20)
“It would be truly a game changer, I will suggest, if the R20 were to stimulate the world’s most important religious authorities to reform their traditions from within and become forces for peace, carrying along with them the huge number of adherents that each of them could mobilize.”
~ Dr. Jonathan Benthall, writing in Sciences Po’s Bulletin de L’Observatoire International du Religieux
View a short film about a 3-day R20 event held in Java, the birthplace of Nadhlatul Ulama, Humanitarian Islam, and the R20:
“Yesterday we told all of our students that THIS [R20] is the jihad of today”
“I regard the work of Humanitarian Islam and the Movement for Shared Civilizational Values as one of the most pathbreaking and important developments in world politics and cross-civilizational ethics in our generation. No event that I know of is more timely, urgent, or well conceived.”
~ Robert Hefner, Professor of Anthropology and International Relations at Boston University and President of the American Institute for Indonesian Studies
Leaders Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), established the Center for Shared Civilizational Values (“CSCV”) to preserve and strengthen a rules-based international order founded upon universal ethics and humanitarian values.
On 20 May 2022, the Nahdlatul Ulama Central Board appointed CSCV to serve as the Permanent Secretariat of the R20.
The Center works with a group of closely affiliated organizations including Nahdlatul Ulama; Gerakan Pemuda Ansor, the NU’s 8-million-member young adults movement; Bayt ar-Rahmah, which helps coordinate the global expansion of NU operations; LibForAll Foundation; and Humanitarian Islam.
These organizations seek to restore rahmah (universal love and compassion) to its rightful place as the primary message of Islam by addressing obsolete and problematic elements within Islamic orthodoxy that lend themselves to tyranny, while positioning these efforts within a much broader initiative to reject any and all forms of tyranny, and foster the emergence of a global civilization endowed with noble character. Their efforts have been extensively cited by sponsors of an international campaign to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Nahdlatul Ulama.
“The majority of Muslims look to the Arab world for guidance, but the failure of this region’s ulama to keep up with the transformations taking place will lead to the rug being pulled out from under them… by Nahdlatul Ulama and its new Chairman”
~ Mohamed Abu Al-Fadl
Deputy Editor, al-Ahram (The Pyramids)
In recent years, Humanitarian Islam leaders — including Kyai Haji Yahya Cholil Staquf, General Chairman of the Nahdlatul Ulama Executive Board — have drafted a series of historic declarations that were adopted by Nahdlatul Ulama and/or Gerakan Pemuda Ansor. These declarations are part of a long-term, systematic and institutional effort to reform obsolete tenets of Islamic orthodoxy. NU leaders have also developed — and begun to operationalize — a global strategy to reconcile Islamic teachings with the reality of contemporary civilization, whose context and conditions differ significantly from those in which classical Islamic law emerged.
As a result of these pioneering efforts, a large body of Sunni Muslim authorities are now engaged in a wide-ranging, concerted and explicit project of theological reform for the first time since the late Middle Ages.
Historic Declarations
National
Campaign
NU Centennial
Proclamation
International
Convention
Islamic Jurisprudence for a Global Civilization
Watch
CNN Report
International
Summit
Read the
Declaration
“The Nahdlatul Ulama calls upon people of goodwill of every faith and nation to join in building a global consensus not to politicize Islam, and to marginalize those who would exploit Islam in such a way as to harm others.”
Nahdlatul Ulama Declaration
Arab
Media Analysis
Read
Communiqué
Read the
Declaration
“If Muslims do not address the key tenets of Islamic orthodoxy that authorize and explicitly enjoin such violence, anyone—at any time—may harness the orthodox teachings of Islam to defy what they claim to be the illegitimate laws and authority of an infidel state and butcher their fellow citizens, regardless of whether they live in the Islamic world or the West.”
Declaration on Humanitarian Islam
Grassroots
Impact
Nusantara
Manifesto
Nusantara
Statement
The Nusantara Statement conveys the essence of the historic Nusantara Manifesto, through which Gerakan Pemuda Ansor and Bayt ar-Rahmah have officially launched a process of systematically recontextualizing (i.e., reforming) obsolete and problematic tenets within Islamic orthodoxy.
Second Global Unity Forum
The Center for Shared Civilizational Values and Humanitarian Islam movement have direct access to the world’s largest political network — Centrist Democrat International/European People’s Party (CDI/EPP) — via Indonesia’s largest Islamic political party, PKB, which was founded by senior NU leaders including H.E. Kyai Haji Abdurrahman Wahid (1940 – 2009) and Kyai Haji A. Mustofa Bisri.
Working closely with leaders of Nahdlatul Ulama and with Humanitarian Islam/CSCV co-founder C. Holland Taylor, Centrist Democrat International has adopted four resolutions that endorse Humanitarian Islam’s theological framework; affirm that “Western humanism, Christian democracy and Humanitarian Islam are kindred traditions”; call for “a 21st century alliance to promote a rules-based international order founded upon universal ethics and humanitarian values”; and recognize that “the foundational texts of the Humanitarian Islam movement represent a comprehensive affirmation of these universal values from within the Islamic tradition, including the principle of rahmah (universal love and compassion).”
Centrist Democrat International Resolutions
