Cynthia Webb, Contributor, Byron Bay, Australia

"You people are so blessed," said Laksmi Pamuntjak, as she gazed from a headland over endless stretches of white sand beach, sparkling sea and a dazzling clear blue sky.

She was in Australia for the eleventh Byron Bay Writers' Festival, (July 27-29, 2007) where Laksmi was a guest writer. The festival has strong connections with the Ubud Writers' Festival, Bali, and has a new director this year -- Jeni Caffin, who served as publicist in the past.

Laksmi had never heard of Byron Bay until she received her invitation but said, "I'd like to run away to here for a while," she so liked the feel of the place.

Fortunately, lunch at one of the street caf‚s of this seaside resort village also received the approval of this famous gourmet diner. However, it did seem odd that on the first morning of the festival, during a discussion titled Eating my words: writing on food, Laksmi was not one of the speakers, for she is famous for her Jakarta Good Food Guides.

However, Laksmi took part in several panel discussions and read some of her poetry. She said, "Poetry is accountable to nothing and to no one. It liberates one from the demands of others. The poet tries to write in a language that is timeless."

Regarding language, Laksmi, a former classical pianist, explained, "I have a passion for rhythm. Structured patterns of sound in my writing are very important."

Laksmi's book of short stories, The Diary of R.S.: Musings on Art, was written in English, and is now being translated into French, but has not yet appeared in Bahasa Indonesia. "I am one of the few Indonesians writing in English. It almost feels like 'the double other'.

"Indonesians expect me to write for and represent them, and English audiences too. It makes it hard to navigate sometimes. My fiction is mainly in English so I have to look toward foreign shores."

There were many discussions about different aspects of being a writer, getting the task done, and about how to get published, book launches and discussions of poetry.

Filmmakers talked about finding stories in life, and there were book and poetry readings and some amusing discussions such as The Rise and rise of the media circus: How its demands affect a writer's life, and Laugh out loud: The serious business of being silly, in which the witty Nury Vittachi of Hong Kong was indispensable.

Moderator Deepika Shetty of Singapore called him a "literary rock star" for his popularity on the festival circuit. There was also a literary lunch with Indonesian food, hosted by restaurateur Janet DeNeefe from Casa Luna, Ubud, Bali.

Change in the air

This year's festival had a change of mood in that quite a few panels dealt with controversial, difficult issues, which were fearlessly discussed by the writers, some of Australia's leading social commentators and national TV and radio journalists.

These included incest, abuse of power by media personalities, ethics of investigative journalism, human rights, being a "whistle-blower", the "national identity" consequences of saying/writing something "un-Australian", the dark side of "mate-ship", where to draw the line, and why, in journalism, expressing unpopular truths, Australia's foreign policy and the life of a foreign correspondent.

Mark Bowling, who was The Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Jakarta correspondent, arrived there with his wife and two small children, two days before the demise of Soeharto.

On hearing of his appointment to Jakarta, he had told his wife, "Don't worry dear, it will be like a long Bali holiday" but by the time they arrived the city was full of students, soldiers, razor wire and tanks.

Their residence was located inside the protective razor wire around the area of the Soeharto residences in Menteng. When walking through the leafy suburb with the pram, Mark's wife Kim was terrified when she saw that "Tutut" Soeharto kept an unusual pet -- a Sumatran tiger tethered by a rope in her front garden that security guards bearing guns used to take for walks just as others walk their dogs.

Later, he reported from East Timor and had some frightening experiences, and came away wracked by guilt at being able to fly out to safety and having to leave behind Timorese friends and staff, knowing that they were in desperate danger from the militias.

Mark's new book is titled Running Amok and tells about his years working in Indonesia.

Under examination by Barry Jones, long famous for his vast knowledge and brilliant mind, were the positive and negative sides of the Australian collective persona, the bad side of patriotism and the experience of the migrant in Australian society.

Also under the spotlight were our convict past, shameful treatment of Aboriginals during our history, our long-standing fear of "the other" and restrictive policies toward refugees, and the strain of anti-intellectualism that has been running through our society.

One of the most potent discussions of all was titled, In the name of God: the individual and religious law. This fascinating discussion got to the root of one of today's major concerns -- the chasm of misunderstanding between secular and religious systems of living and governing in the world.

Participants were Jesuit priest Frank Brennan (once dubbed "that meddling priest" by former prime minister Paul Keating), Antony Lowenstein, who defined himself as a Jewish atheist and husband-and-wife academics in the field of international Islamic law from Malaysia, Mehrun Siraj and Haji Sulaiman Abdullah. Both are on the faculty of University Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur.

The challenge of Islam

The discussion opened with the chair commenting that the world has changed a lot, and 10 years ago they would not have predicted or believed that there would come a time when such a discussion would be part of a writers' festival: Sulaiman agreed with this.

Antony Lowenstein was brought up in Melbourne, by Jewish parents, and feels proud of being Jewish, but does not go to synagogue or believe in God, and does not approve of the policy and behavior of Israel.

He has written a book titled, My Israel? for which he has attracted strong criticism from fellow Jews because he has broken the taboo among Jews in this and other countries, and questioned Israel's treatment of Palestinians, which, he is convinced, will lead to civil war within Israel's borders.

Mehrun Siraj explained the situation with sharia law and that for Muslim Malaysians it is this Koranic law that is applied to them in family law, although not for other legal matters, but not applied to non-Muslims, of course.

She said those laws can never be changed or modernized because they are considered to come directly from God. From a Western viewpoint this gives rise to situations that seem unfair, unequal and even unnecessary, between men and women.

Suleiman explained that in Malaysia, (made up of Muslims and non-Muslims), sometimes Muslims feel as if they need some rights extended to them because there is always so much talk about human rights issues, irrespective of Islamic considerations.

He said, "Sometimes the non-Muslims can only see one side."

Brennan spoke of his conviction that religion and government of the nation and its laws should be kept separate. "The state must not impose religious beliefs," he said. Moral, legal and social policies are different to each other.

Suleiman explained that God is ever present in the lives of Muslims, whereas for the Westerners, they talk about God now and then, and if something goes wrong at work, they exclaim "Oh, God!" This raised a chuckle from the audience, who knew what he said was true.

"In Islam the state and religion are one, and this is the fundamental problem that now confronts us, not just within national borders -- it now involves all of us," said Brennan; Suleiman said, "I agree with you, but change the word `problem' to `challenge.'"

The following day another forum, Islam and the rights of women: A conversation across cultures -- continued the discussion, and there was a genuine need to understand the complexities of various forms of Islam, demonstrated by the audience, via their questions.

A small number of questioners had some fixed anti-Islamic attitudes, brought about by reports of female genital mutilation, so-called "honor killings" and stoning of widows.

Professor Mehrun Siraj explained the facts from the Koran on some issues. She, too, strongly condemned those crimes against women and said they were not permitted in Islam, but were pre-Islamic practices.

Writer Paul Sheehan raised applause when he stated, "My view of most religions is that they are controlled by men, of men, for men in order to constrain the potent sexuality of women."

He spoke of abuse of women here in Australia by white Australian men, and pointed out that he's not always blaming Muslims, although he also referred to a series of cases of young Islamic men in Sydney, who carried out a series of gang rapes of non-Muslim young women.

He continued, "I do not believe we have a clash of civilizations over religion. I think religion is the surface tension. I think we have a real schism over the rights of women. I think sex is more important than religion in this clash.

"In the '70s we thought that 50 percent of humanity were finally going to come out on top because of their natural energy, decency and sexual potency, but the men are rolling it back, and that's what my next book is about."

These discussions revealed just how much the Islamic world and the Western world need to learn about each other -- perhaps it is the greatest challenge facing us today.

The Byron Bay Writers Festival is subtitled The Festival for thinkers and it certainly lived up to it. Guests had an opportunity to hear many viewpoints and gain a deeper understanding of many subjects.

It demonstrated the value of such events to go deeply into subjects, in long, informed discussions, rather than the soundbyte-type quotes we so often hear, or heavily edited news items.