"Morality" policing is a cheap and lazy way for a government to look busy and effective. It is a tool of intimidation and political pandering where Sharia has tied the right to rule to Islamic piety.
As even Imam Rauf knows, Sharia is a package deal, and its reach into every area of life sets up practical problems for limitations on the power to enforce it. The letter of the law is bad enough, and then there is the corrupting influence of power. "Hard-line Indonesian police shave punkers' mohawks," by Fukhrurradzie Gade for the Associated Press, December 14:
Police in Indonesia's most conservative province raided a punk-rock concert and detained 65 fans, buzzing off their spiky mohawks and stripping away body piercings because of the perceived threat to Islamic values.
Dog-collar necklaces and chains also were taken from the youths before they were thrown in pools of water for "spiritual" cleansing, local police chief Iskandar Hasan said Wednesday.
How long until one of his rivals decides that had baptismal overtones and goes after him for shirk and bida?
After replacing their "disgusting" clothes, he handed each a toothbrush and barked "use it."
The crackdown marked the latest effort by authorities to promote strict moral values in Aceh, the only province in this secular but predominantly Muslim nation of 240 million to have imposed Islamic laws.
Here, adultery is punishable by stoning to death. Homosexuals have been thrown in jail or lashed in public with rattan canes. Women are forced to wear headscarves and told, please, no tight pants.
It's not clear why police decided to hone in on punks.
Aceh's hostility to punk rock is nothing new.
Though pierced and tattooed teens have complained for months about harassment, Saturday's roundup at a concert attended by more than 100 people was by far the biggest and most dramatic bust yet.
Baton-wielding police scattered fans, many of whom had traveled from other parts of the sprawling archipelagic nation to attend the show.
Hasan said 59 young men and five women were loaded into vans and brought to a police detention center 30 miles (60 kilometers) from the provincial capital, Banda Aceh.
They would spend 10 days getting rehabilitation, training in military-style discipline and religious classes, including Quran recitation, he said. Afterward, they'll be sent home.
Twenty-year-old punker, Fauzan, was mortified.
"Why? Why my hair?!" he said, pointing to his cleanly shaven head. "We didn't hurt anyone. This is how we've chosen to express ourselves. Why are they treating us like criminals?"
The women, some in tears, were given short, blunt bobs.
Hasan insisted he'd done nothing wrong.
"We're not torturing anyone," the police chief said. "We're not violating human rights. We're just trying to put them back on the right moral path."
However, Nur Kholis, a national human commissioner, deplored the detentions, saying police have to explain what kinds of criminal laws have been broken.
"Otherwise, they violated people's right of gathering and expression," Kholis said, promising to investigate.
Aceh — where Islam first arrived in Indonesia from Saudi Arabia centuries ago — enjoys semiautonomy from the central government....
I've been working om a post about this all morning, I'll be sure to include this one as part of it. I saw pics from a jakarta news site that shows the kids sitting in rows on the ground with their shaven heads, the photo was reminiscent of concentration camps under the nazis. A commenter there noticed it too, saying that as a child he'd visited a Holocaust museum and learned that shaving heads and throwing people into water was part of the nazi technique of cruelty too.
I checked out some of the Aceh punk music on youtube, it is actually pretty good, a lot tamer than what we in the West think of as punk music, but they looked like NICE KIDS who were just having fun!
there is no fun in islam - khomeni
""We're not torturing anyone," the police chief said. "We're not violating human rights. We're just trying to put them back on the right moral path.""
That was easy for him to say...under Islam there are no human rights...only Islam law...
The hard left, sharia-compliant 'newspaper', The Guardian (UK) is running this story on-line today. So, naturally, the word Islam does not appear anywhere.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2011/dec/14/police-arrest-punks-indonesia
Clowns!
Here it is! Check out the cool videos of these kids! I hope they don't give up the fight. my message to the islamotyrants is entirely predictable if you're familiar with my work at all:
http://zillablog.marezilla.com/2011/12/take-your-sharia-and-shove-it-long-live.html
I don't think I want to ask about just how the body-piercings were "stripped away".
Aceh has always been a hotbed of jihad, the most fanatically Muslim region of the East Indies; the region that was first Islamised. It was also, not coincidentally, notorious as a hotbed of piracy, with nests of Muslim pirates preying on shipping that passed through nearby straits en route to China.
The great Dutch scholar of Islam, C Snouck Hurgronje, first drew a bead on Islam in Aceh (though, of course, he also visited Mecca, and did much else besides).
His classic book on Islam is called "The Acehnese".
Here is one little posting that 'Hugh Fitzgerald', one-time frequent commenter and also poster of articles at this forum, once wrote here, about Hurgronje, and the Acehnese.
'[Go to] The Acehnese" by C. Snouck Hurgronje, and turn to the last few pages in the book, where the great Dutch Orientalist (who visited Mecca, and even took photographs of the place, in the 1880s -- quite a feat, which may have required him to recite the Shehadah and pretend to be Muslim) discusses the concept of Jihad.
'Xerox those pages. Make many copies. Type it out as a document.
'Now email to as many people as you can those pages by C. Snouck Hurgronje."
Modern Australian priest, scholar and critic of Islam, Rev Dr Mark Durie, gained his 'on the ground' experience of Islam in Aceh, living there as a linguist, studying the language and the classical Acehnese literature - which is saturated with Quranic and other Islamic 'scriptural' references.
Here is the interview in which he talks about what he observed and learned, and how it laid the foundation for what he later went on to learn.
http://markdurie.blogspot.com/2010/09/third-choice-interview-of-mark-durie-by.html
Monday, September 20, 2010
The Third Choice — Interview of Mark Durie by Mark Tapson for FrontPage Magazine
EXCERPT:
'MT: Dr. Durie, I’d like to begin talking about The Third Choice by asking what inspired you, as an Anglican priest, to write a study of Islam and dhimmitude?
'MD: I first became interested in Islam when doing linguistic field work in Aceh, Indonesia, in the early 1980’s.
'The Acehnese people are proud of their Islamic identity, but despite enjoying countless discussions about religion with them, I made no attempt to study Islam formally; my whole focus was on linguistic research.
'**But I couldn’t escape learning about jihad , because it played such a large role in the historical consciousness of the people. An amazingly large number of works of Acehnese literature are jihad epics. ** {MY EMPHASIS - DDA].
More:
'Another aspect of my experience was contact with local Christians [that is, in Aceh - dda]; this is how I came to know of the difficult circumstances of non-Muslims living in an Islamic society.
'When I left academia to become an Anglican minister, around 1998, I thought I was leaving Islamic jihad well behind me.
'I had no idea of the depth and breadth of the global Islamic movement.
'Then as I watched the burning World Trade Center towers collapse in the New York morning sunshine, I knew there was no ideology on this earth other than Islamic jihad which could have inspired such an attack.
'It was no surprise when verses from the Koran reportedly found in the backpacks of the terrorists **were exactly the same verses which had figured so prominently in Acehnese jihad epic poems from over a century ago** {my emphasis - dda}".
It sure is lucky Indonesia is a moderate Muslim nation. :)
A bit of potted biography from a wikipedia entry on Hurgronje.
"Christaan Snouck Hurgronje was born Feb. 8, 1857, Oosterhout, Netherlands, and died June 26, 1936, in Leiden
"A professor and Dutch colonial official, Snouck Hurgronje was also a pioneering and prolific Western scholar of Islam.
"He visited Arabia (1884–85), including a stop at Mecca, while serving as a lecturer at the University of Leiden (1880–89). Hurgronje’s 2 vol. classic work “Mekka” (1888–89), describes the history of the city, and expounds upon Islam’s origins, and the traditions and rituals of the earliest Islamic communities. Translated into English as “Mekka in the Latter Part of the 19th Century” (1931), the second volume includes many details of daily life in an Islamic culture, and also discusses the Indonesian Muslim colony at Mecca.
"From 1890 to 1906 Snouck Hurgronje was professor of Arabic at Batavia, Java. He also served as an advisor to the Dutch Colonial Government for Arabian Affairs, and in 1891 he was sent for a year to Sumatra **to study the Acheh uprising** {nota bene - 'the Aceh uprising' - betcha this was basically a local Jihad raised against Dutch non-Msulim rule - dda} —the subject of “De Atjèhers”, 2 vol. (1893–94; published in English translation in 1906 as “The Achehnese”), his ethnographic account of the people of northern Sumatra, a standard reference work."
Now, two excerpts from 'The Acehnese', as shared here some time ago.
(It's a book that has to be tracked down in university libraries).
“…most Muslims are absolutely ignorant of the details of the doctrine of jihad.
"But so long as not one single Muslim teacher of consideration dreams of regarding these laws of the middle ages as abrogated,
"while a great proportion of the people exhibit the strongest inclination to restore the conditions which prevailed some centuries ago,
"so long does it remain impossible, however anxious we may be to do so,
"to omit the jihad from our calculations when forming a judgment on the relation of Islam to other religions.” (from C. Snouck Hurgronje’s “The Achehnese,” 1906, Vol. 2, p. 348)
And more:
from “The Achehnese,” (i.e., the English translation version published in 1906, Vol. 2 p. 340):
"…European ideas and sympathies have gained as yet but little ground in Muslim countries. But the same cannot be said of European customs. He was a wise man who placed in the mouth of the Prophet the declaration that he who imitates another nation or another community in externals is fairly on the way to join their ranks for good and all.
"With good reason does the Mohammedan law ever impress upon the faithful the necessity of distinguishing themselves from the unbelievers in dress and in their manner of eating and drinking, standing and sitting.
{Note: this exhibits Hurgronje's awareness of what others have called 'the power of context', and the principle that is also encapsulated in the phrase 'broken windows' - dda}
'Many of these distinctive rules were till a short time since treated as a matter of ordinary discipline in Muslim countries.
'In their political and to a great extent in their social life, Mohammedans have been compelled to sail with the stream of the time or take the risk of being left halting behind; the course of that stream, however, is shaped by other hands than theirs.
It need not, however, be imagined, that as a result of this change, the Mohammedan will be compelled to embrace another creed, or to sacrifice that innate allegiance to the name of Islam which he esteems his highest honor.
'There is no ground even for the supposition that he will gradually reform his religion. The necessity for such a reform is not felt, and even did such a tendency exist in some few cases its fulfillment would be thwarted by insurmountable obstacles.
And the commenter (in this particular case, alas, I did not retain the reference - but all due thanks to the sharer of this material) -
'Earlier, in Vol. 1, p. 170, Hurgronje offers this blunt assessment of the consequences of such [Muslim] irredentism:
"For we must always recollect that **reason, education and other similar influences gain no hold upon the self-esteem of Mohammedans until they find themselves opposed by irresistible force.** {nota bene: this reminds me of certain statements made by John Quincy Adams and by Sir Winston Churchill - dda}.
" Such is the tendency of their doctrine and their practice accords therewith."
John Quincy Adams: "As the essential principle of his faith is the subjugation of others by the sword; it is only by force, that his false doctrines can be dispelled, and his power annihilated." [passage to be found on pp 274-275 of the following item - “Unsigned essays dealing with the Russo-Turkish War, and on Greece, written while JQA was in retirement, before his election to Congress in 1830”
[Chapters X-XIV (pp. 267-402) in The American Annual Register for 1827-28-29. New York, 1830.]
Sir Winston Churchill, in the original (1899) unexpurgated edition of 'The River Wars' (which covers the campaign against the slave-taking sharia-pushing 'Mahdi' in Sudan):
"No terms but fight or death were offered. No reparation or apology could be made. . .
"The red light of retribution played on the bayonets and the lances, and civilization—elsewhere sympathetic, merciful, tolerant, ready to discuss or to argue, eager to avoid violence, to submit to law, to effect a compromise—here advanced with an expression of inexorable sternness, and rejecting all other courses, offered only the arbitration of the sword." [apologies for not being able to give volume, chapter and page ref; but when the upcoming long-promised **complete unexpurgated** modern re-edition of 'The River War' comes out, and I get it in my hot little hands - don't ask how much it's costing me!! - then I will be able to give those references, and doubtless provide many other juicy quotes, besides - dda].
**The arbitration of the sword**.
And Hurgronje:
"...we must always recollect that reason, education and other similar influences gain no hold upon the self-esteem of Mohammedans until they find themselves opposed by irresistible force."
Adams, Churchill..and C Snouck Hurgronje.
An American abolitionist, an Englishman from the high days of the Raj, and a sober scholarly Dutchman, all - faced with Islam, Islam red in tooth and claw - drawing the same grim conclusion.
Moslem pirates in the East Indies, operating mainly out of territories that are now parts of Malaysia and the Philippines, were the scourge of the eastern seas for centuries just as the Barbary pirates were the scourge of the Mediterranean.
For a good fictional account of the situation see G. M. Fraser's "Flashman's Lady", in which the fictional Flashman fights Malay pirates in Borneo alongside the [real] Rajah Brooke of Sarawak.
Aceh: Punk rockers' mohawks shaved as "threat to Islamic values"
................................
I'd take "punk rock values" over "Islamic values" any day of the week.
Islam has been targeting "punk rock" for a long time. Marjane Satrapi recounts her run-ins with the Iranian "morality police" during the 1980s when she was a teenager there.
She was accused of being "punk rock" for wearing a Michael Jackson button at one point, and for carrying a cassette of Kim Wild's "Kids in America". The "morality police" may have been pretty unclear on the concept of "punk rock", but they knew they didn't want anyone having fun...
I must say i am not too happy with Punk Rock and its anarchist type adherents. They do nothing to advance Western Civilization and although I in no way support Islam, I can understand the Indonesian concern. However, Gravenimage is right Punk is preferable to Islam and Sharia.