So, essentially the Koran warns against allying with non-Muslims in some verse.
Ahok said something like “It doesn’t mean you can’t vote for me.”
While he is being kind of a weasel, he didn’t say anything that condemns the religion. Just shows to go ya, it only takes a spark to get a conflagration going.
I caught that. Well played!
Ahok was given a sentence of two years in prison. I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for people who pooh-poohed this as merely “political protest” to say they are surprised or particularly upset by it.
And some people in this country think we should dissolve the First Amendment, opening the door to this kind of stuff. I have to wonder, how can they be sure THEIRS will be the State religion???
It doesn’t stop being a political protest just because they got what they wanted, any more than it would have had Clinton been “locked up.” This is a Christian, who was allowed to be a Christian in their country, until said Christian tried to run for office, which then they suddenly cared.
And, no, I’m not particularly surprised or outraged, because this is what happens when your government is a theocracy rather than a de facto secular state pushing religious freedom. If you have a law against blasphemy that you still enforce, and someone brings it up, it’s not surprising that it gets enforced.
What this is is not is a condemnation of Islam. There are Christians who think all atheists and Muslims should be locked up. It is, instead, a condemnation of the theocratic political system. Of course the people who live in a theocracy are going to be the extremists. And a theocracy is going to protect itself from having the “wrong religion” in their government.
I voiced everything back then. A blasphemy protest isn’t bad, but a religious bigotry protest is. I hate that these types of governments exist in the world, but, short of going to war with every theocracy, I don’t really see an immediate solution. The best solution is just to push information, and hope that there is a secular revolution there like there was here.
If you do it right, the religion will follow. I’ve often said now that Christianity, if you actually read its Scripture, does not mandate conversion. It says to preach, but nothing about forcing. Islam has it harder, since the Quran has some “convert, leave, or die” aspects to it. But, if Christians can reinterpret the “women are submissive to men” aspect, then Islam can reinterpret that.
(I will also freely point out that it says to treat “people of the book”, i.e. Christians and Jewish believers, differently than other “blasphemers.” They aren’t exactly following their own holy book in doing this.)
Is an anti-blasphemy protest anything like a blasphemy complaint to the police? Irish blasphemy complaint against Stephen Fry. Yes, ultimately the Irish police decided not to investigate, but it’s bizarre that a modern nation has a blasphemy law in the first place. More interesting in light of the OP, a European Christian nation has a blasphemy law. :smack: By the way, I think the last time I was in Ireland I made a wrong turn at Hooleehootoo on the way from Dublin to Tralee. 
Well, they did try to stone that guy who kept saying “Jehova”…
Didn’t realize this thread existed, or I would have updated it with the saga of Ardian Syaf.
There is one aspect in this whole story that, in my opinion, is very important, and I haven’t seen it mentioned here so far: The now-jailed governor is ethnic Chinese.
Ethnic Chinese in South East Asia have historically been looked at with suspicion and dislike. The reasons/excuses for that are very complex and numerous, but the fact remains that indigenous Malays and Indonesians dislike ethnic Chinese.
The fact that he is a christian and his words could have been twisted to be interpreted as “blasphemy” are a fig leaf, in my opinion, to cover the real reason behind all of this: He is Chinese. Of course, you cannot really say in public that your reasons for opposing somebody boil down to racism. So the blasphemy excuse is manufactured to give an “out” to those who really dislike him for being Chinese, and who now have a “legitimate” reason to loudly oppose him and punish him for daring to be a politician who is not of the “right” stock.
There is a comment in the article linked by Hooleehootoo that is very revealing. Copy-pasting…
[QUOTE=The Washington Post]
The five-judge panel sentenced Purnama, who is ethnic Chinese, to two years in prison.
<…>
Sofyan Tan, an ethnic Chinese Christian member of parliament from Medan, in North Sumatra province, said Islamist fury against Purnama reminded him of the time he ran for mayor of Medan but lost after a hate-filled campaign spearheaded by Muslim religious leaders.
“There was nothing weird about this,” he said of the Islamist campaign against Purnama. “Racist attitudes are still with us.”
[/QUOTE]
Observe that this other ethnic Chinese politician does not say that all this happened because of Islamism, but because of racism. And I would imagine that he knows what he is talking about.
There is a whole Wikipedia article dedicated solely to the issue of Anti-Chinese sentiment in Indonesia:
As recently as 1998 there were widespread riots that targeted ethnic Chinese in Indonesia. And although the 1998 riots led to the fall of president Suharto and a change in legislation that aimed at correcting the worst discriminatory situations, the fact remains that there is a strong and deep-seated anti-Chinese feeling among many (if not most) native Indonesians.
I think that this is something to be kept in mind when dealing with things that happen in that region of the world.
(Missed the edit window) It also seems that a lot of fellow Indonesians think that the 2-year jail sentence for the former governor was an injustice, and have been demonstrating and showing their support for him.
The deputy governor that is now acting governor of Jakarta has asked for Ahok to be freed, and has made himself garant for him: “If anything happens, I will voluntarily go to jail in his place”.
It looks to me very much like a political coup aimed against a governor that was disliked by certain elements for basically racist reasons. Those elements used the “blasphemy” gambit as an excuse to give a veneer of “legal legitimacy” to what basically is a putsch based on racist and political reasons more than religious ones.
What does God need with a starship?!
Wait, no, that’s not right.
Why does god need a bunch of ass-hats to defend himself from paintings ad nasty words?
Being all powerful and what not, I’d imagine he’d punish the blasphemers all on his own, and he wouldn’t need the help of a mob of machete wielding imbeciles.
Maybe the artists have iron chariots!
What exactly is good about an anti-blasphemy protest ?
It let’s us know which dangerous nutbags we need to keep an eye on.
Interesting bit at the end there:
Emphasis added.
Muslims don’t want a Christian leader is a political issue rather than a religious one? Hmmm…:dubious:
I think that the issue is rather “Many Indonesians don’t want a Chinese leader, and the Muslim/Christian thing with the blasphemy charges is an excuse to be able to get rid of a ‘racially unacceptable’ leader with a veneer of legality.”
Or, the cigar could just be a cigar. He was Christian, Muslims were against him, he was charged with blasphemy, not with being Chinese. Why try to explain away the obvious?
An article giving approval rating. 70% approval and only when religion becomes a factor does he lose the election?
Christian governor Ahok used to enjoy a 70% approval rating but then came his blasphemy trial for allegedly insulting Islam. Now the vote is too close to call
Well, yes, or from the religious perspective, asking unbelievers to try to be virtuous (but not actually adopt faith) is also a bit weird, unless it’s a weird thin-end-of-the-wedge thing.
It is not “explaining away the obvious”. It is taking into account that it is not just “muslims vs. christians”. I would even say that it is not mostly about that. The underlying issue is entrenched anti-Chinese sentiment in Indonesia, which is pervasive, and the elements who wanted to get rid of Ahok -not so much for being Christian but for being Chinese- used the anti-blasphemy laws to get some legal traction against Ahok and to inflame passions.
In the article from the Guardian that you quote, there are some interesting comments regarding the winner in the gubernatorial election (Baswedan):
[QUOTE=The Article from the Guardian]
“I don’t think that you can categorise him [Baswedan] as a man of principle,” says [professor in political sciences] Jemadu, “He is quite pragmatic. Whatever benefits him he will take it, from one camp to another camp changing his principles, his values, all the way.”
[/QUOTE]
Basically, Baswedan jumped on the bandwagon of “more muslim than thou” (when in fact he really wasn’t that kind of individual) in order to profit from the whole mess. It seems apparent that he was very much cinically using the whole thing for his own self-interest.
I am still convinced that this is not so much because of an inherent animadversion between muslims and christians than because of race issues, with religion being used cinically to muddle the waters, rile up a sufficient amount of people and (again) give legitimacy via the anti-blasphemy laws to an act that was more about anti-Chinese sentiment among certain native Indonesians than about anti-Christian sentiment among Indonesian muslims.
One thing of note in the article is the 70% approval rating prior to his comments. Did those people who suddenly changed their mind about him only then notice that he was Chinese? Of course not. This is almost entirely about religion as 70% of the people approved of him beforehand. (assumption that the 70% is an accurate figure).
The other question to ask is if he was Muslim, would he have been charged with blasphemy for similar comments?