Indonesia’s largest Muslim group calls for welcoming President Obama and condemns hardline protests.
(Via an emailer.)
Latest Updates: indonesia RSS
-
thabet
-
johnpi
More than half of the mosques in Indonesia face the wrong direction.
Some of the country’s top religious officials stressed on Wednesday that worshippers should not be overly concerned by reports that more than half of Indonesia’s mosques displayed incorrect kiblat, or direction toward Mecca.
“There is no problem in regard to kiblat, because in Islam, you may pray to God in any direction. God is not in Mecca. Remember that,” said Amidhan, head of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI).
Islamic scholar Mutoha Arkanuddin claimed recently that more than 50 percent and up to 80 percent of the country’s mosques and graves did not reflect the correct direction toward Mecca, but his claims have drawn fierce fire.
“Mutoha Arkanuddin’s research was only conducted at several mosques in Yogyakarta and it absolutely does not represent all the mosques in the country,” said Rohadi Abdul Fatah, director of Islam and Shariah law at the Ministry of Religious Affairs. “It is dangerous to publish such statements as it is invalid and can make the public feel uneasy. He is very reckless, and I am disappointed.”
-
johnpi
Muslim clerics seek ban on ‘funky hairstyles’ in Indonesia.
Muslim clerics in Indonesia have demanded a ban on women having perms or straightening their hair, which they described as ‘inviting moral danger’.
An Islamic body which has issued fatwas on inappropriate behaviour from practising yoga to failing to vote in elections said it is now considering a request to tackle the craze among pupils in religious boarding schools.
Clerics from East Java have also requested a fatwa banning dreadlocks, punk haircuts and “funky hairstyles”.
-
arif
Another sign of changing times in the Muslim world. The city of Bandung Indonesia clamping down the freedom.
-
johnpi
First American Peace Corps volunteers ship out to Indonesia since 1965.
Armed with little more than laptops and textbooks, shod not in combat boots but in sandals and sneakers, these 25 volunteers will be the first representatives of the Peace Corps to land in Indonesia since the organization was expelled in 1965. By agreeing to dispatch volunteers to live side-by-side with Indonesians, teaching English to their children and exchanging insights into each other’s cultures, the Obama administration is sending the clearest possible signal to the world’s Muslims: America’s fight is not with you, but with the terrorists at your fringes.
The move also reflects recognition by the administration and Congress that the Peace Corps is a critical component of a new “smart power” policy toward U.S. engagement abroad. Such an approach emphasizes public diplomacy and grassroots-level development assistance over military hard power. Acknowledging the need for this shift, Congress voted last month to raise Peace Corps funding by $60 million — the largest increase ever — to $400 million.
Most critically, Peace Corps volunteers will strive to help young Indonesian Muslims extricate themselves from crushing poverty. This goal provides both countries with a minimally controversial means of diminishing the appeal of radical Islam without Americans stepping into the tar pit of a religious debate.
-
johnpi
A feature article on the religious police of Aceh.
Officers are relatively cheerful, they carry no weapons and they almost always let wrongdoers off with a warning.
“Punishment is not the objective of the law. We must convince and explain,” says Iskander, the sharia police chief in Banda Aceh, who goes by only one name.
Activists in Aceh – which just passed laws allowing the stoning to death of adulterers and the flogging of homosexuals – are worried about what the religious police could turn into, and offer the darkest, most scariest cautionary tale in all of the contemporary Muslim world:
“Aceh could look like Pakistan one day,” she warned.
-
johnpi
Top 10 good news stories from the Muslim world in the last year, according to Juan Cole.
10. Saudi Arabia opened its first coeducational college campus, the King Abdullah Science and Technology University.
9. Qatar is on track to average 7.5 percent per annum growth for the next few years.
8. A Pew Forum on Religion and Life poll finds that American Muslims are unusual in the degree to which they are integrated into mainstream American society and demonstrate moderate attitudes, condemning religious extremism and violence.
7. The information revolution is making strides in the Arab world.
6. Albania has averaged 10 percent a year growth for each of the last four years, and was the fastest-growing economy in Europe in 2009.
5. The small Gulf oil monarchy of Kuwait took steps toward greater democracy and rule of law.
4. Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world at about 230 mn., had successful parliamentary elections in 2009, further consolidating the country’s decade-old democracy.
3. Turkey, which averaged 5.8 percent a year economic growth between 2002 and 2008, was slowed but not devastated by the world’s financial crisis.
2. Stability returned to Lebanon.
1. The greatest political awakening in Iran for 30 years.
-
aziz
Abdurrahman Wahid, former president of Indonesia, has died. He was a brave leader who epitomized the “liberal” and “moderate” muslim labels.
-
johnpi
Indonesia’s Aceh still healing after tsunami.
Ikra Alfila has rediscovered the joy of play, but the little 10-year-old still has nightmares about giant waves five years after the tsunami that killed everyone in her family except her father.
Life has resumed its tranquil course in Ikra’s fishing village of Lampuk, which was all but wiped off the map on that awful day on December 26, 2004, when an earthquake off the Sumatran coast unleashed a wall of water.
-
johnpi
A scandal has broken out at the Miss World contest, where Miss Indonesia has been exposed as a member of a Christian cult called The Family International that until 1986 was known for including its children in sexual activity.
The group was also known for a form of evangelistic religious prostitution that its members called ‘flirty fishing.’
The group claimed that the purposes of Flirty Fishing were for women to show God’s love to men, to win converts to the group, and to garner material and financial support for the group. As cult members usually live in communes, travel a lot and spend their time proselytizing rather than earning a regular income, the financial aspect soon became dominant. The cult also used Flirty Fishing to curry favours with local men of influence such as business men, politicians or police.
Rick Ross’s Cultwatch has more. The only quote you need to hear is the one that echoes the timeless refrain about religious extremists:
The official Family position is that a few individuals misused their authority and misapplied the law of love.
Or as one brother said to another about the Taliban:
Brother, don’t know you know they were merely misguided?
The Miss World contest is not allowing Miss Indonesia, Kerenina Sunny Halim, to talk to the media.
-
johnpi
The chairwoman of the National Commission on Violence Against Women Kamala Chandra Kirana has urged the Indonesian government to review Islamic bylaws.
An Indonesian organisation has urged the government to review a number of Islamic Sharia-based bylaws deemed discriminative against women as part of its first 100-days programme.
-
johnpi
-
johnpi
Global recession fuels child sex boom.
Increasing poverty in children’s countries of origin and smaller budgets for social services are two of the factors heightening children’s vulnerability. Deterioration of living conditions often compels young people to abandon school in order to contribute to the family income, putting them at risk of seeking livelihood options that lead to their being exploited, according to ECPAT International.
and
ECPAT International’s recent report also warned that the number of children and young people trafficked within their own country is increasing. Such trafficking frequently involves movement from rural to urban areas or from one city or town to another without the need for travel documentation.
Muslim country bonus fact: The International Labor Organization says sex tourism contributes as much as 14 percent of the gross domestic product of Indonesia and Malaysia. The real question is would more conservative, religion-based governance better confront the problem with harsher policies, or make it worse as puritanical attitudes turn the victims into untouchable wretches and scapegoat them for the crimes of their victimizers?
America doesn’t seem to be doing any better at coming up with just solutions:
See an interview with the girl here. The judge had little choice because of California’s harsh mandatory sentencing guidelines. His options were life without possibility of parole, or 25 to life.
-
buzz
In the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, Washington deployed money and rhetoric in a big push to bolster “moderate” Muslims against what Bush called the “real and profound ideology” of “Islamo-fascism.” Obama, promising a “new beginning between America and Muslims around the world,” has avoided dividing Muslims into competing theological camps. He has denounced “violent extremists” but, in a June speech in Cairo, stated that “Islam is not part of the problem.”
North, the USAID mission chief, said the best way to help “champions of an enlightened perspective win the day” is to avoid theology and help Indonesia “address some of the problems here, such as poverty and corruption.” Trying to groom Muslim leaders America likes, he said, won’t help.
Rethinking post-9/11 tack
This is a sharp retreat from the approach taken right after the Sept. 11 attacks, when a raft of U.S.-funded programs sought to amplify the voice of “moderates.” Hundreds of Indonesian clerics went through U.S.-sponsored courses that taught a reform-minded reading of the Koran. A handbook for preachers, published with U.S. money, offered tips on what to preach. One American-funded Muslim group even tried to script Friday prayer sermons.
Such initiatives mimicked a strategy adopted during the Cold War, when, to counter communist ideology, the United States funded a host of cultural, educational and other groups in tune with America’s goals. Even some of the key actors were the same. The Asia Foundation, founded with covert U.S. funding in the 1950s to combat communism, took the lead in battling noxious strands of Islam in Indonesia as part of a USAID-financed program called Islam and Civil Society. The program began before the Sept. 11 attacks but ramped up its activities after.
-
johnpi
A group of 10 alleged Iranian drug smugglers, including eight veiled women, were caught with $12.5 million worth of methamphetamines at Indonesia’s main airport, the customs chief said Wednesday.
….Indonesian authorities have never seen veiled women used as drug runners, he said. The drugs, wrapped in plastic food containers and cleaning fluid bottles, were packed into hand luggage. But the oddly-shaped packages were picked out by officers operating scanners.
“We believe they are part of an international syndicate,” he said. By wearing conservative Islamic clothing the women tried to “fool officers in a country like Indonesia, where women in black veils are generally considered to be good women.”
-
aziz
Island Islam: amazing photos from National Geographic about Islam in Indonesia.
-
johnpi
Indonesia: Muslim civil servants obliged to read Koran.
The city council in Gorantalo, central Indonesia, has ordered its Muslim civil servants to read the Koran – Islam’s holy book – every Friday. Gorontalo mayor Adhan Dambea said Saturday that he was not yet satisfied with the implementation of his instructions.
“Some civil servants are still unable to read the Koran fluently,” he said. Dambea said his administration would provide religious teachers to improve the civil servants’ ability to read the Koran.
However, he promised that public service would not be affected by the new Koran reading activity in his administration.
Elsewhere, In Italy: ‘No to teaching of Islam in schools’, says minister.
Italy’s interior minister Roberto Maroni from the anti-immigrant Northern League party said he would not back a proposal to teach Islam in Italian schools to improve integration.
“The Northern League is absolutely against the proposal of an hour of Islamic religion in Italian schools,” Maroni told the commericial TV programme Mattino 5.
The proposal was put forward by the deputy minister of economic development Adolfo Urso.
“While the hour of Catholic religion represents an entity, the Church, which has a hierarchy and contains clear, well defined values that can be conveyed, Islam on the other hand is a completely different case,” Maroni said.
“The imam can freely interpret the Koran, there is not a series of tenets, there is not a clear message to convey…If the proposal served to improve integration, we would be all in agreement, but this is clearly the wrong way to do it,” Maroni.
-
Kawthar
An Indonesian cleric who married a 12 year old girl last year was acquitted of abuse after the presiding judge deemed the charges “unclear and inaccurate”
The prosecution plans to appeal
-
johnpi
Aceh ulama outraged over hijab-less Aceh woman winning ‘Miss Indonesia’ title: ‘Hair is beauty, and I am proud of beauty.’
Clerics in Indonesia’s conservative Muslim province of Aceh say they are outraged that an Acehnese woman has won the title of Miss Indonesia.
Qori Sandioriva, 18, won the Miss Indonesia title on Friday, beating 37 other contestants for the crown.
The clerics say that by failing to wear a veil during the competition she has betrayed her Acehnese roots and brought shame to the province.
….When asked about not wearing a veil during the competition, Ms Sandiorova said she believed hair is beauty, and that she is proud of beauty.
The controversy is likely to return next year when she goes on to compete in the Miss Universe contest where she will have to don a swimsuit as part of the pageant.
The BBC article uses the word “veil,” but the Indonesian article uses the words “jilbab” and “hijab.”
-
johnpi
-
johnpi
-
johnpi
Indonesian filmmakers defy clerics over Japanese porn star’s visit.
Filmmakers in Muslim-majority Indonesia on Monday defied condemnation by clerics, saying they would stick to their plans to fly out a top Japanese porn star to act in a local comedy.
Muslim leaders have blasted plans to bring out 23-year-old erotic film megastar Maria Ozawa, popularly known as Miyabi, to play herself in the upcoming film “Menculik Miyabi” (Kidnapping Miyabi). But Maxima Productions General Manager Adi Sudiadi said the company would stick to its plans to include Ozawa in the film, which tells the story of a group of university students who accidentally kidnap the starlet.
“We guarantee that Miyabi won’t be playing in a porn film here, we’ll bring her here not as a porn star but purely for a comedy movie,” Sudiadi said.
“Miyabi is well-known by Indonesian people… we’re expecting that Miyabi will attract a lot of spectators here.
-
johnpi
Time magazine: Indonesia’s Islamic schools: More female friendly.
When she was widowed two years ago, most people in the Javanese village of Babakan Ciwaringin expected Nyai Yu Masriyah Amva to marry again. They also assumed that the local pesantran, or traditional Indonesian Islamic boarding school, would close with the death of her husband, its head Islamic scholar. Neither happened. Bucking tradition, Amva decided that she would run the school. “If men can do it, then why can’t I?” the 48-year-old recalls praying. “If you, Allah, are the source of all power, then why do I have to find someone else to run it? Just give me the power. I know that I can do it.” After all, she reasoned Megawati Sukarnoputri, Indonesia’s ex-president, was a woman, joining the ranks of “Benazir [Bhutto], and Elizabeth, and the woman Madonna played in that movie” — Evita Peron.
….This July’s bombings at two five-star hotels in Jakarta and the 2002 bombings in Bali raised fears among counterterrorism experts that Indonesia’s 12,000 pesantran were potential breeding grounds for radicalism. And while suicide bombers and radicals have been traced to a few schools notorious for their extremist teachings, others have been incubators for a more benign trend in the world’s most populous Muslim nation: the development of feminist readings of the Quran and Islamic traditions. Indonesia’s two largest Muslim political parties — the Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah — have intricate campaigns promoting women’s rights. Indonesian feminists, male and female alike, have worked with progressive pesantran to develop women-friendly interpretations of shari’a — a radical break with the conservative notions of shari’a across the Muslim world, which tend to be heavily reliant on the world views of medieval — and male — jurists.
-
johnpi
In defense of fun against the Islamist sourpusses…
As a child in Malaysia I recall celebrating the end of Ramadan with fireworks, oil lamps, music and a jolly dose of cake-eating, which kids are wont to do. Ramadan and Eid were fun then, during those days in the 60s and 70s when the entire month of Ramadan was spent cleaning the oil lamps, filling them with kerosene, lighting them up every evening, buying (and hoarding) fireworks and having firework fights with my neighbours. Things however began to change as soon as the tone and tenor of normative Islam in Malaysia took a turn for the political and the Mullah-wannabes began to preach from the pulpit about the evils of fun and happiness.
By the 1980s, as Malaysia went into full swing in the spirit of an Islamisation programme that witnessed little fun but rather the rise of more and more conservative types in mosques and the Parliament, the element of fun was slowly but surely stamped out. We were told that music was haram, that the oil lamps were Hindu, that the fireworks were decadent and corrupt. Tell that to a seven-year old and you kill his love for fun for the rest of his life.
As a researcher working on comparative religious politics across the Muslim world, I have witnessed the massacre of fun from Pakistan to the Magreb, from Malaysia to Brunei. Which is why Indonesia is such a startling place for me, as it seems to be one of the few places in the Muslim world today where Muslims can actually be happy and have fun, despite the difficulties – both economic and political – that the country faces.
-
razib, murtad fitri
indonesia is becoming less muslim (marginally). see here and here. also looks like significant numbers of people were “protestant” because of suharto era hostility toward irreligion (legacy of the anti-communist era). unlike many nations indonesia seems to have reliable statistics because of the nationalist ideology which encourages affiliation to one of the recognized religions.
-
johnpi
“Tea party” leader melts down on CNN: Obama is an “Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug.”
Elsewhere on the wires tonight: “A Muslim model: What Indonesia can teach the world.“
-
johnpi
Interesting places to break fast: Indonesia.
An iftar at a “home” could be a good way to kick off your culinary journey. This means you could just head over to The Apartment, a lovely eaterie in Kuningan, South Jakarta, which was designed to resemble a cozy premium residence.
Entering the place, you’ll feel delighted to find out that you’re free to dine anywhere you please: The living room, bedroom, pantry, library, bar, terrace or even Jacuzzi and bathroom. The waiters and waitresses are even dressed in pajamas, too. And as your menu arrives, be sure to smile as it’s printed to look like a newspaper — just the thing you’ll find at home. First impression? Very inviting.
“Just like at your own home, you can eat anywhere you want, right?” says the restaurant’s general manager Tito Andhika.
“It’s the same at The Apartment; you can eat on the sofa or even bed. We want you to come here and feel like you’re home — all cozy and comfortable.”
Iftar in the jacuzzi or bathroom attended by strangers in their pajamas. Never occurred to me…
-
thabet
Reports say Indonedsia’s most wanted terrorist has been killed in a gunfight:
Local television TVOne said Noordin, Indonesia’s most- wanted man, was confirmed to be among the terrorists killed in the raid in a village 360 kilometers (224 miles) east of Jakarta in Central Java. Noordin, a former member of a terror organization linked to al-Qaeda, is suspected to have been involved in the July 17 suicide bombings at the JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels in Jakarta.
Reuters has a useful Q&A on Noordin Mohammad Top.
-
razib, murtad fitri
-
thabet
Counting is underway in Indonesia’s presidential elections.
