Indonesia’s aggressive anti-terror police unit, Densus 88, shot dead four suspected terrorists on Wednesday in two separate incidents… the heavily-armed officers had tried negotiating with the men in the Bandung house for 3 1/2 hours, but the reply was “explosions, gunfire and bombs”. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Indonesia
Indonesia: Four Islamic terrorist suspects killed
Indonesia: What’s an atheist to do?
Condemn the Indonesian government for believing in ‘black magic’, or praise them for making it illegal? Continue reading
Indonesia: Government condones rising religious mania
Indonesia has experienced a “sharp uptick” in religiously motivated violence, with Islamic gangs regularly attacking Christian churches as well as “deviant sects” of their own faith, a strongly worded new report has warned. Continue reading
Indonesia: Hundreds of girls annually suffer genital mutilation
During the morning, 248 Indonesian girls undergo the same ordeal. Suminah is the oldest, the youngest is just five months. It is April 2006 and the occasion is a mass ceremony to perform sunat perempuan or “female circumcision” that has been held annually since 1958 by the Bandung-based Yayasan Assalaam, an Islamic foundation that runs a mosque and several schools. The foundation holds the event in the lunar month of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday, and pays parents 80,000 rupiah (£6) and a bag of food for each daughter they bring to be cut.
It is well established that female genital mutilation (FGM) is not required in Muslim law. It is an ancient cultural practice that existed before Islam, Christianity and Judaism. It is also agreed across large swathes of the world that it is barbaric. At the mass ceremony, I ask the foundation’s social welfare secretary, Lukman Hakim, why they do it. His answer not only predates the dawn of religion, it predates human evolution: “It is necessary to control women’s sexual urges,” says Hakim, a stern, bespectacled man in a fez. “They must be chaste to preserve their beauty.”
Can’t argue with that, can you?
Australia: Couple charged over genital mutilation
A Perth couple have made a brief appearance in court, accused of organising the illegal circumcision of their one-year-old baby girl in Bali.
The couple, who can’t be named for legal reasons, appeared in the Joondalup Magistrates Court today charged with female genital mutilation offences.
The 44-year-old father and 42-year-old mother were released on bail and are due to appear in the Perth Magistrates Court on December 12.
Police allege the parents committed an offence in August at Perth Airport when they took the girl to Bali for the genital mutilation procedure.
Female circumcision is performed in some cultures and religions, but is illegal in Australia.
It is also illegal to perform, arrange or take a child out of the state for such a procedure.
It’s still legal to chop bits off four-day-old baby boys, however. Their only problem is they had a child of the wrong sex.
Indonesia: Islamic militants arrested
Nine Islamic militants were arrested in Indonesia on Saturday and a dozen homemade bombs seized from a group suspected of planning suicide attacks, police say.
Two suspects were arrested in central Java’s Solo town after authorities received information from other militants in the group who had recently surrendered, national police spokesman Brigadier-General Boy Rafli Amar said. The two led police to six other group members in the same town. A ninth suspect was arrested in West Kalimantan on the island of Borneo.
General Amar said two of those arrested, Badri Hartono and Rudi Kurnia Putra, both 45, were central figures who recruited young men and taught at least one how to make bombs.
Indonesia: Hey kids! Want to see Lady Gaga?
Stand up for your right to exercise bad taste!
Then ditch your stupid religion.
Indonesia’s national police are considering banning a performance next month by pop diva Lady Gaga amid threats of violence by Islamic extremists.
It follows an attack by religious hardliners on lesbian Muslim author Irshad Manji prompted deep soul searching in a country regarded as the Islamic world’s most moderate.
The threats and attacks are part of a trend in Indonesia for extremists to bully and intimidate anyone who does not subscribe to their hard line doctrine. Police rarely act against them.
And you should do something about those police, too.
Indonesia: God sends disasters to prepare us…
… for when God sends more disasters.
Like many, Acehnese man Rizni Aulia’s suffering from the 2004 tsunami was profound. Of his family, only he and his wife survived the wave. Together they watched from the second storey of their house as their three-year-old daughter and many other family members drowned outside, trapped in the family car.
Advertisement: Story continues belowThe horror of that day came alive again on Wednesday as an earthquake shook the region, prompting fears of another deadly wave .
Mr Rizni, like thousands of other Acehnese, took refuge at the mosque. ”Some people went to the mosque because it is quite high, 16 metres,” Mr Rizni, 32, said yesterday. ”But it’s true that during the afternoon and the evening prayers, they all prayed, through all the aftershocks, they stayed there, some praying, some reading the Koran, all the mothers looking after the children.”
In Islam, he believes, natural disasters are ”little doomsdays”.
”It’s about warnings from God to his people about the mistakes they have committed, the wrongdoing they have committed,” he said.
That three-year-old girl must have been a real little bitch.
Indonesia: The crime of being rational
A civil servant who incited controversy by declaring that he was atheist was on Monday indicted on three charges, including one for violating the Information Transaction Law (ITE).
The first charge brought against Alexander at the Muaro Sijungung District Court was for violating Article 28, Clause 2 of the ITE. Next was for Article 156a(a) of the Criminal Code (KUHP), and the last for violating Article 156a(b) of the KUHP. Alexander was indicted for creating a Facebook group called Minang Atheists.
Alexander wrote about Prophet Muhammad on the Facebook wall. The trial was attended by five witnesses, Hendri, Mulyadi, Doni Saptri, Yon Riadi, and Hendri Martariko, who had seen the pictures and posts on Alexander’s Facebook group.
Prosecutor Ibrahim Khalil, in the indictment, said the Facebook posts and pictures insulted Islam. The posts also caused a public disturbance and outcry.
How dare you assume we’re not stupid!
Indonesia: Harmless pleasure? Ban it!
Indonesia’s powerful religious affairs minister has declared that mini-skirts are pornographic and would be banned under the country’s tough new anti-porn laws.
Minister Suryadharma Ali has been appointed to run Indonesia’s new anti-porn task force, announced by president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono earlier this month.
He told reporters in Jakarta yesterday that before deciding what they must ban as pornography, the task force would consult widely to come up with “a set of universal criteria”, adding that “one [criteria] will be when someone wears a skirt above the knee,” according to the Jakarta Post.
Once a standard of pornography was established, the task force would apply it nationwide across all ethnicities, the newspaper reported.
Entrenched corruption is tearing apart the ruling Democratic Party and imprisoning its members of parliament, and thousands are demonstrating on the streets about fuel price rises and the cost of living, but the Indonesian government’s response has been to crack down hard on short skirts.
“We need a distraction!”
“How about mini-skirts? They always distract me.”
Indonesia: Ten suspected terrorists killed in Bali
Indonesian counter-terrorism forces have shot dead five suspected militants believed to have been planning a series of attacks in Bali.
Heavily armed officers from Indonesia’s crack anti-terror unit Detachment 88 stormed two separate addresses, in Denpasar and in Sanur, on Sunday night where they shot and killed five men.
And being dead, of course, it’s no longer possible to verify whether they were terrorists or not. That’s … convenient.
Global: Uppity atheists back for 2012!
JUST minutes after learning that a Cardiff student had removed a Jesus & Mo cartoon from his Facebook page after his school threatened to expel him, I learned that an Indonesian man, who used Facebook to declare the non-existence of God, could face jail….
Back now to the ongoing Jesus & Mo row. Wunderkind Rhys Morgan, 17, who received the James Randi Award for Grassroots Skepticism for outing a scam drug, got himself into hot water after he posted the J&M cartoon in solidarity with the University College London’s Atheist, Secular, and Humanist Society.
Because that image from the comic Jesus and Mo was his Facebook photo for a week, he has been harassed and threatened at school by his classmates. The sixth-former was then summoned by his head of year and told to remove the cartoon. When he said no, he was threatened with expulsion. Rhys details the saga, under the head Intolerant Islam on his blog.
One Law for All, which is organising [a] free speech rally, is also calling for simultaneous events and acts in defence of free expression on on the same day in countries world-wide.
The call follows an increased number of attacks on free expression in the UK, including demands by the UCL Union that the Atheist society remove a Jesus and Mo cartoon from its Facebook page. It also follows threats of violence, police being called, and the cancellation of a meeting at Queen Mary College where One Law for All spokesperson Anne Marie Waters was to deliver a speech on Sharia.
Two days later at the same college, though, the Islamic Society held a meeting on traditional Islam with a speaker who has called for the death of apostates, those who mock Islam, and secularist Muslims.
UPDATE: The BBC reports that celebrated author Sir Salman Rushdie, will not attend India’s biggest literary festival for fear of assassination by Muslim fanatics. The author had been due to speak at the Jaipur literature festival later this month.
He said he had been told by sources that assassins: ‘May be on the way to Jaipur to kill me.’FURTHER UPDATE: Teenage atheist Jessica Ahlquist, who won law suit that compelled her school to remove a tacky, unconstitutional, prayer thingummy from a hall wall continues to be the target of Christian rage. Rhode Island State Representative Peter Palumbo referred to her as “an evil little thing”, and on Wednesday, according to this report, four different Rhode Island florists in the Cranston area refused to deliver flowers to Jessica.
There’s just no getting away from them…
Indonesia: Atheism is against the law
An Indonesian man who said that God did not exist in a posting on a Facebook page for atheists could face jail.
Civil servant Alexander Aan, 31, is now in protective police custody after he was attacked by an angry mob earlier this week.
He may also lose his job over his posting on the social networking site.
Atheism is a violation of Indonesian law under the founding principles of the country.
Indonesia – the world’s most populous Muslim nation – recognises the right to practice five other religions aside from Islam, says the BBC’s Karishma Vaswani in Jakarta.
Such a shame that Pastafarianism didn’t make the cut.
Indonesia: Muslim extremist gets three month sentence for killing
SMH.
An Indonesian court has sent a “chilling message” by giving Muslim extremists light sentences for a vicious mob attack in which three sect members died, rights activists say.
Twelve people stood trial but none faced murder charges in what human rights campaigners say is a travesty of justice in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country.
The sentences range between three and six months’ jail – less than prosecutors had sought and well below the maximum penalty of 12 years.
Dani bin Misra, a 17-year-old who repeatedly smashed a victim’s skull with a stone, was sentenced on Thursday to three months in jail for manslaughter.
It’s not only God who benefits from special pleading.
Indonesia: Islamic cleric guilty of incitement to terrorism
SMH.
Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir has been found guilty of inciting terrorism and financing an Aceh-based terrorist cell and sentenced to 15 years in prison, ending a decade-long effort by authorities to put the firebrand militant who endorsed the Bali bombings behind bars.
Hundreds of Bashir’s supporters, who chanted “God is great” as judges spent hours reading through a summary of evidence, erupted in jeers when the verdict was read out.
One down… how many to go?
Indonesia: Temple dispute disrupts ASEAN meeting
SMH.
The credibility of the Association of South-East Asian Nations and its aim of becoming a European Union-style security and economic community by 2015 was damaged this weekend as Thailand and Cambodia openly brawled over their deadly dispute over ownership of an 11th-century temple complex.
The sporadic military conflict in the border area where the temple is located has claimed 29 lives and displaced 85,000 people. Despite not being on the formal agenda, it dominated the ASEAN summit in Jakarta.
Peace, harmony, and improving the lives of millions? Sure, but first there’s this magic building we have to sort out..
Indonesia: Islamist group plans church bombing on Good Friday
The renewed concerns about Negara Islam Indonesia (NII), or Indonesian Islamic State, follow the disruption last week of a plot to explode a 150-kilogram bomb near a Jakarta church during Good Friday services.
Pepi Fernando, the alleged mastermind of the plot, is a former NII member, and up to six of the suspected members of his cell were from a prestigious state-run Islamic university where NII is thought to have engaged in an aggressive recruitment campaign.
Confrontation with non-believers? How rude! They clearly haven’t been listening to the accommodationists.
Indonesia: Mainstream Muslims harass breakaway sect
SMH.
Members of the Ahmadiyah religious sect have been pressured by Indonesian security personnel to abandon the faith amid continual harassment of them, sect leaders say….
Ahmadis have come under increasing attacks in the past 18 months, culminating in the killing of three adherents by a mob of hundreds of Islamists in Banten province last month.
The government denounced the violence and 12 people have been arrested.
But since the incident, several provincial governments have introduced edicts banning Ahmadiyah, while the Minister for Religious Affairs, Suryadharma Ali, has continued his campaign for the group to be outlawed entirely.
The attacks are believed to have been triggered by a report that Ahmadiyahns break open their boiled eggs at the big end instead of the little end.
Indonesia: Police officer maimed by Islamic bomb
SMH.
The first bomb was sent to broadcaster and co-founder of the Liberal Islamic Network Ulil Abshar Abdalla in East Jakarta and was hidden in a book titled They Deserved to Be Killed: Because of Their Sins to Islam and Muslims.
Police were called into defuse the suspicious package but the operation went wrong and police officer Dodi Rahmawan lost his arm and is in a critical condition in hospital.
Three other police officers were wounded in the incident, which was captured on video by a mobile phone and showed the policeman hosing down the package and attempting to open it before the blast.
Indonesia: Savage and stupid Sharia laws erode women’s human rights
In Aceh today, it is a crime for two mature people of different sexes who are not married or related by blood to be together in an isolated place. Such unlawful proximity is banned by Aceh’s khalwat (mesum) law (literally “seclusion (indecency)” law; hereafter, “Seclusion Law”). Violations are punishable by caning and/or a fine of up to 10 million Rp (US$1,116).
Indonesia: Islamic fanatics linked to police and city government
SMH.
JAKARTA: The city’s governor and police chief have been widely condemned for embracing a hardline Islamic group which wants to help enforce the closure of bars and entertainment venues during the month of Ramadan.
The Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) has a long history of brutal attacks, including a recent spate of actions that resulted in parishioners being beaten and Christian prayer rooms and churches being closed.
Indonesia: Islamic cleric Bashir accused of heading terrorist group
SMH.
The notorious Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir was the major organiser behind a new terrorist group planning a wave of attacks, police said yesterday.
…
The group dubbed itself al-Qaeda in Aceh and allegedly planned attacks including a Mumbai-style shooting on Indonesia’s Independence Day, targeting the President, foreign dignitaries and luxury hotels.
Indonesia: Muslim authorities may ban catshit coffee
Kopi Luwak is made from beans fermented in the stomach of a civet cat, extracted from their dung and then roasted.
While it can fetch as much as $200 a pound, it’s that middle bit in the production process that has Indonesia’s top Islamic body concerned.
It’s considering banning Muslims from drinking the brew. The council’s acting chief says the worry is that coffee might be unclean. He notes that approval is possible, assuming farmers clean the beans before they are ground.
Might be unclean? It’s made from cat droppings and it might be unclean? What would it have to be made from before they were sure?
First they take away our guns. Then they take away our catshit coffee…
Indonesia: Muslims facing the wrong way to Mecca
SMH.
Indonesian Muslims have been praying in the wrong direction for months, facing Somalia when they should have been facing Saudi Arabia, the country’s highest religious authority says.
A cleric from the Indonesian Ulema Council admitted it had made a mistake in March when calculating which way Muslims should turn to pray. New instructions had now been issued and people had only to shift their position for the correct alignment, he said.
Oh noes! This means.. well, it means nothing, apparently. (Why am I not surprised?)
The error did not mean their prayers would be ignored, he said. ”God understands that humans make mistakes.”
So why pray at all? “No prayers, Lord? Just a mistake. Oh, and thirty years of atheism? Another mistake. No biggie. It just seemed like a good idea at the time. How was I to know you were an intolerant bastard?”
Indonesia: Ruler guided by queen of the spirit world
‘The Queen of the South Seas is a Javanese belief. She was given the power to rule the sea in the southern end of the world,” says Dr Mudaffar, the latest in an unbroken line of monarchs in Ternate stretching back more than 800 years.
”Before, she only stays in Java. But since many prominent figures, especially the sultans of Yogyakarta and Solo, do not follow her rules, she asked me if she could stay in Ternate.
”She is now my adviser in every problem.”
And Ternate is a really nice place — between massacres.
Indonesia: Internet a threat to nation, says minister
“We want to minimise the negative impact from the internet as it will destroy this nation,” Communication and Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring, from the Muslim-based Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), told reporters.
He should get together with Stephen Conroy.
Indonesia: Transformed cow seduces man
Well, that’s his story and he’s sticking to it…
On Friday, Alit underwent a cleansing ritual in which he was bathed and the cow was drowned in the sea to rid the village of bad luck.
Isn’t it always the way? The woman gets the blame every time.
Indonesia: immorality causes disasters, says minister
And we all know God can’t be bothered to discriminate between the guilty and the innocent…
Indonesia: District bans tight trousers for women
The fashion has become too open, and it embarrasses me, says theocrat.
As a fellow-human, you embarrass me.
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