From the Jakarta Post, with thanks to Nancy Block and L:
Despite a dissenting opinion on Islamic rituals, certain Muslim clerics have questioned the police's decision to detain an Islamic school leader in Malang, East Java, for leading daily prayers in both Arabic and Indonesian, a practice libeled as despoiling organized religion.Ahmad Syafii Maarif, who chairs Muhammadiyah -- the country's second largest Muslim organization, said that while Muhammad Yusman Roy might have done something wrong, he did not commit a crime.
"He should have just been told about the mistake he was making, but not arrested," Syafii told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.
Ali Maschan Moesa, the East Java branch chairman of the country's largest Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), said that police had gone too far in detaining Yusman. Yusman was arrested for violating Article 156 (a) of the Criminal Code on despoiling an organized religion, a crime that carries a maximum punishment of five years in jail...
Why would someone be arrested for preaching in a language understood by the audience? It's almost like saying, "OK... come and hear this symposium, it will be spoken in a language that YOU don't understand, but come anyway..." I'd probably sleep through it!
What good would come of this? Are we saying that muslims have to endure hours and hours of preaching, in a language they do not understand, with no benefit whatsoever? Not even a message they can understand? Do they have to do the bowing and the rituals, too? Just a robotic ritual each and every day?
I KNOW muslims believe in God, But do they know, that God TRULY LOVES THEM, and created them, and wants no harm to come to them? Do muslims know that they are God's perfect creation, just like the Jews, the Christians, the Hindu's, the etc?
Do they know, that even if they are not perfect in their walk on the Earth, that God still loves them? That they are here for a purpose? Do they know that God knows, that we as humans are sinners, and there are no good works that we can do to get closer to God? Do muslims know the absolute and unconditional love that our Father (God) has for His creation and His children? If not, WHY NOT?
Why are the doors to the Kingdom (God and his love) shut to muslims? What can we do to open the doors? Please tell me, because I will do it!
My son gets a little 'glazed over' in church sometimes, but at least he hears uplifting music and a sermon that is in a language that he can comprehend and understand.
I wonder how many muslims are simply following rituals.... I pray for their release from the bonds of the cult that was created by a man, developed and spread by many men with weapons, and forced down the throats of so many, many innocent people that really want no part of it.
Pray for the deliverance of muslims... Pray hard, pray often, and pray without ceasing. I do.
...Even if I AM a sexy Kafira! Sorry, I hit 'enter' before I previewed.
This is further evidence to suggest that Islam is essentially a vehicle for Arab imperialism.
There is something else behind this,the police here dont just walk in and arrest a cleric for a minor offence like this without a riot going down.
So only Arab speakers in Indonesia know what the Qu'ran says?
I suggest the psychological operations people immediately flood VERY 'peace & sweetness' Korans out to the Indonesians -in their native tongue- ASAP.
Translate the calls to murder into pleas for spiritual improvement, and that "all killing of innocents is a sin"- making terrorism iSLAMICALLY illegal by a PARALLEL new intrepretation of Sharia Law. (Produce pamphlets with this text, also.)
If they won't dare modernize within the Muslim community, then why shouldn't we give them a friendly kickstart?
A more cheerful, softer Koran, turning it into a Sermon On The Mount-esque version -taking a crudely militant document, very much like the Old Testament, and making it finally humane.
Three scholars could whip one up such HAPPY KORAN in a long weekend with standard Word Search/Replace and a compassionate mindset.
"Jihad" could be purified to:
"'The war of the soul' (interior struggle to achieve perfection of spirit).
OBS. 'holy war'- an earlier false translation of the Arabic word. It is this common almost-heretical slang usage that is popular throughout the uneducated extremes of Islam today."
BigSleep
There is already a HAPPY KORAN in Indonesia and is already being used in the schools,also when teaching islam to the kids,all the nasty stuff is left out,the get told about Moses and Abraham,Jesus and how Mohammed was such a jolly fellow,and more weight is given to reciting the quoran in arabic,than learning what is written
It is not until the males get older,about the time when boys want a little bit more action that the real nasty stuff starts to get revealled
By the time most boys leave school they still dont know all.Those that go to Pesantras are the ones who get to know all about jihad
Islamization includes arabization. Muslims should take, and most do take, Arab names. Some Western converts love the idea and especially the extra, geographic designation that they choose -- as Soliman al-Kosovi. There are some who never outcrow the Secret-Decoder-Ring stage of growth,and like the idea of joining a special group, and you get to (figuratively) march around together, and work for the special good of fellow club-members, who are your bestest friends, and everyone who isn't a club member is just bad-bad-bad, and of course once you join the club you get documents proving that the past you thought you had, and the parents and ancestors you thought you had, hardly mattered anymore. Now you were Arab, or quasi-Arab, or an honorable Arab, and you might even give yourself a "sayeed" to show you were a direct descendant of the Prophet. Or of someone. What fun.
The injunction to read the Qur'an in Arabic, the language in which it was "communicated" to Muhammad, of course is a necessary part of that arabization that accompanies islamization. Thus we find the new convert eagerly typing out with excited fingers some Qur'anic phrase, possibly one that is not fully intelligible to the typist himself, but it's great fun to start things off with. Just take a look at some of those new converts who come to Jihadwatch (some of them also asking, rather bizarrely, for further instruction from us in Islam; such plaintive requests will receive the strong, silent NO they deserve).
It was bad for Ataturk not only to have the Qur'an translated into Turkish (I have a copy right here, by my computer), but also to commission the writing of a Turkish-language tafsir. Why did he do this? Because he knew that, just like ceasing to use Arabic script, anything that reduced the Arab connection would likely help reduce the full force of the original texts, and perhaps even allow for some deliberate lightening up on some of the more disturbing passages, of which there are so many.
And there is another reason. Those conducting Da'wa are not trying to save souls. They are trying to induct people, permanently, into the Army of Islam. They don't necessarily want them to know exactly what they are getting into. It might not prove quite as attractive a belief-system, if the real facts of the Sira, or the contents of the "authentic" Hadith, not to mention the Jihad-passages in the Qur'an, were dwelt upon -- or, indeed, mentioned at all. Best to give them only the Qur'an, and to focus on a few of the rituals (wudu ablutions, the shahada, Ramadan, hajj) and prescriptions about clothing anddating dos-and-don'ts, that sort of thing. No mention of a ban on music, or scultpure, or painting of live creatures, or the Total Explanation of the Universe that is Islam. That wouldn't do for potential converts. Da'wa is part of war, the war to spread Islam. "War is deception," said Muhammad. Deception in war, taqiyya and kitman, are not only allowed but religiously-sanctioned. No need to let Muslims read, in their own native tongues, what Islam is all about? What's next -- could they next find out about little Aisha? That might not go over as well as one used to hope.
Islam? Oh, even for Muslims, it's strictly on a need-to-know basis. Those conducting Jihad need to know the full, the real story. And they do. And more will. But others are ignorant.
And in the Western world, in this country, some Muslims need not be ignorant -- the full texts of Qur'an and Hadith and Sira are just a click away, right on the Internet -- but they choose to remain ignorant. Now why would they do that? Wouldn't you think they would want to learn all there is to learn about Islam, if they are Muslims?
The answer is what those who watch crime-and-trial programs know as the lawyer's advice: you don't ask, and you are not told, and then you can better preserve your deniability. Too many Muslims seem bent on preserving their deniability.
Too late. It won't wash. Or Nawash.
"Islam? Oh, even for Muslims, it's strictly on a need-to-know basis. Those conducting Jihad need to know the full, the real story. And they do. And more will. But others are ignorant."
Scientology is remarkably similar - although making money is the primary directive of Scientology. Junior members of the cult are not told the sci-fi nonsense at the heart of the religion. They could look up everything on the Internet but they choose not to. The first thing they are taught is that the information found at the “higher levels” of their religion is dangerous for “unprepared minds”.
It is certainly easy for non-scholars to misread ancient texts but there is no attempt to stop Christians from reading anything in the Bible or any other book. I guess the Christian God is less insecure than the Muslim Allah (another sign Muhammad was tricked by Satan?).
Bog Sleep:
"So only Arab speakers in Indonesia know what the Qu'ran says?"
That's why Indonesia was always considered a "moderate" Muslim nation. And it was -sort of- moderate in the seventies, when I spent a bit of time there. I traveled through Java & Sumatra and it was all in all pleasant, people were friendly and I didn't feel threatened. Nobody wore a headscarf!
The Bodobudur (Great Buddhist temple) was kept from disintegrating by foreign organizations, (Indonesia is poor-don't we know it) and Suhartos dictatorship made sure that his generals all had a share in the up & coming Bali hotel boom. That's right folks: The Hotels in Bali are mostly owned by the fat cats in Jakarta, employees are Balinese, (for the most part) they are Hindus and not as troublesome as Muslim employees.
So if you don't go to Bali, the employees get hurt. (The fat cat's never hurt THAT much)
With the Arabs increasing oil wealth, cheap travel and plenty of Jobs in Arabia many young Muslims from Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia went to work in the Emirates, in Saudi and Kuwait.
Most of them came back all fired up with a newly found (old) faith called ISLAM. Many got support by their Arab masters to set up Schools and Madrassahs (the Wahabi variety of course) and very soon after that the Jihad started in Aceh, the Moluccas, Borneo: Mindanao, the south of Thailand, Timor, its all too obvious to ignore: Allahs Lunatics did wreck havoc with the local population everwhere, with the few Christians that remain living in fear. Timor was totally destroyed by the Indonesian Armee and Muslim militia a few years ago without anybody being punished.
Ignorance is no excuse. Once the poison of Islam is in the blood, the call to kill is not a long way off.
We can't have that! Let's stop them NOW!
Well, maybe this explains why the Malay peoples are so pleasant--they're cut off by a HUGE language gap from the religion they profess.
hugh terminator
you both have got it dead right