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An update on this story, by Peter Gelling for the New York Times:
JAKARTA, April 5 — An Indonesian court acquitted the editor of Playboy Indonesia on indecency charges today, angering conservative Muslims who have been fighting to shut down the magazine since it first appeared last year.
The trial, which lasted months, highlighted growing divisions here between a rising conservative movement and the moderate Muslims who make up the majority of the population.
Hundreds of conservative Muslims, many of them members of the Islamic Defender’s Front, a hard-line Islamic organization that has led the fight against Playboy, staged a protest outside the courtroom during the verdict, blocking traffic and shouting slogans. Hundreds of police officers were deployed, armed with water cannons, to keep order.
In the trial, the prosecutors argued that the magazine editor, Erwin Arnada, was guilty of indecency for publishing photographs of unclothed women. They sought a jail term of more than two years.
But the presiding judge, Erfan Basuning, said the prosecution’s arguments did not square with laws passed in 1998 guaranteeing freedom of the press.
“This is not only a victory for Playboy, this is a victory for all of the press in Indonesia,” Mr. Arnada said in an interview after the verdict. “This decision will become a legal precedent.”
Ultimately, that is the significance of this case, especially in light of the proposed legislation described below, which would make the matter of magazine content only the tip of the iceberg.
Unlike its American counterpart, Playboy Indonesia, which has been published monthly since April 2006, does not feature photos of models who are entirely nude, though many are wearing very little. Most of the magazine’s contents are articles about Indonesian politics and culture and interviews with prominent Indonesian artists. Far racier magazines and newspapers are available on street corners in all of Indonesia’s major cities.
But please look the other way from our double standards.
Even so, Islamic conservatives, whose influence appears to be growing in a country that is about 85 percent Muslim, have zeroed in on Playboy as a symbol of what they say are declining morals in the country.
The magazine relocated its offices to the mostly Hindu island of Bali last year after they were attacked with stones by the Islamic Defender’s Front, which also regularly intimidated the magazine’s employees and advertisers.
“Unfortunately, there is very little support for us here,” Mr. Arnada said of the Indonesian business establishment. “They are afraid of the Muslim defenders. We lost all our advertisements.”
Mr. Arnada said the magazine earns enough from subscriptions to keep publishing without other revenue.
After it published its first issue, the Justice and Prosperity Party, an Islamic political group, introduced in parliament a sweeping public morals bill that would ban all pornography and stipulate how women would be allowed to dress in public, and even dance.
The bill has since been considerably watered down, and is still languishing in parliament after almost a year. It generated a national uproar last year, with large protest demonstrations mounted by both sides, and the parliament’s failure to enact it is seen as a blow to the conservative movement.
Today’s verdict in the case against Playboy is another such blow, indicating that conservative Muslims’ support may not be as widespread as previously thought.
Mr. Arnada, 41, said today that he was relieved by court’s decision and impressed with the judge’s handling of the case.
“The judge remained objective throughout the trial, even though there was so much pressure from hard-line Muslim organizations,” he said.
Posted by Marisol at April 6, 2007 2:02 PM
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My money is on an "inner struggle" is in the making.
Posted by: Elric66![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at April 6, 2007 2:13 PM
Erwin Arnada better leave town. Street justice... like the assassination of an editor in Turkey recently is what comes to mind.
Posted by: A_Plague_on_Both_Houses at April 6, 2007 2:26 PM
The Muslims wanted to replace Playboy with the Muslim rendition called Bad Burka Babes.....(a weird magazine where all the models looked exactly alike, expecially from the rear shots where you could not see the eyes in the slit)...in this magazines there were babes in black burkas and then there were more babes in black burkas.....the sight of the phenoms sent Muslim men into a frenzy....(psch)
Posted by: exsgtbrown at April 6, 2007 2:37 PM
Check your 6, judge.
Posted by: Know Your Enemy at April 6, 2007 2:42 PM
"indicating that conservative Muslims’ support may not be as widespread as previously thought."
...I will bet the Islamic clerics have their panties drawn up tight on this revelation...
at April 6, 2007 2:56 PM
musulmans idiots….comment vous décapitez un magasin…
....silly Muslims....how do you behead a magazine..
at April 6, 2007 3:07 PM
THE INDONESIAN INNER STRUGGLE
The winner of the struggle (jihad) between proponents of a secular state and radical imams calling for a theocracy stands to capture a valuable prize -- one of the world's most strategically important countries.ALSO the fifth richest nation for natural resouces,and yet the west is pumping in millions of dollars.
All major shipping routes connecting Europe and East Asia pass through the waters off this island nation. It is precisely here, in this archipelago between the Straits of Malacca and the Celebes Sea, that a new front in the battle of cultures is emerging.
May-be it was a small victory for Playboy,there still has not been any prosecutions of much worse crimes
http://illustratedpig.blogspot.com/2007/04/good-news-bad-bad-news.html
Posted by: shiva at April 6, 2007 3:41 PM
And tomorrow we will hear about a bunch of people who were tortured and beheaded. And of course, the murderers will get a slap on the wrist.
Posted by: R_not at April 6, 2007 3:42 PM
“This decision will become a legal precedent.”
Not for long, the appellate court of the knife will overturn this.
at April 6, 2007 3:52 PM
The judge had better hire body guards, and the editor, they will both be targets for assasination. The left in England and America, had better get their semantic caps on, words like "marginalisation, poverty, social exclusion", spring to mind.
Posted by: Ian at April 6, 2007 5:19 PM
Western filth infiltrating at the heart of the Muslim world and poisoning its sons. Then they ask us, 'why all the hate?'
at April 6, 2007 7:59 PM
This is the kind of thing that will be undertaken here by Muslims. Chip away at us one brick at a time. I don't personally buy Playboy but that's an inherent priviledge in our society, I don't have to buy it or I can buy it if I want to.
Now how about selling Pork, liquor, tobacco, western (non-halal) meals, having: dogs, christain churches, jewish synagogues, religious symbols, christmas, easter, freedom of the press, public swimming pools. What about our air waves, cable TV, western magazines, books, bibles. Are all these things next?
Under Islam, you won't have to worry about any of these choices. It's their way or the highway, no priviledges or rights. We will all wish for the "old days" as this muslim sh*t escalates.
We must not offend you know. When and where does this undermining of the west and the rest of the world stop? What are the limits?. Who will be doing all of the accomodating.......us I presume.
Posted by: sounder at April 6, 2007 8:50 PM
"Muslim filth infiltrating at the heart of the Western world and poisoning it. Then they ask us, 'why all the hate?....Abdullah"
There Abdullah, I corrected your mis-wording for you.
at April 6, 2007 8:54 PM
Western filth infiltrating at the heart of the Muslim world and poisoning its sons. Then they ask us, 'why all the hate?'
No demand, no supply. There wouldn't be an Indonesian edition of Playboy - hell, there wouldn't be any porn of any kind period in Dar-al-Islam if Muslims weren't such hypocrites.
Figure that one out.
Posted by: Audacity at April 6, 2007 9:24 PM
This whole thing about Playboy is a smoke screen,nd to muh smoke has gotten into our eyes that we have been blinded and something more dangerous is slipping by
Javans fired up over reactor next to volcano
Ian MacKinnon in Mount Muria, Indonesia
Thursday April 5, 2007
Indonesia is forging ahead with plans to build its first nuclear power plant in the shadow of a dormant volcano, despite mounting opposition from environmental groups who fear a catastrophe in a country beset by earthquakes and natural disasters.
http://illustratedpig.blogspot.com/2007/04/not-to-distant-future.html
Posted by: infidel-k9 at April 7, 2007 12:10 PM
"Prisons are built with the stones of law,
Brothels with bricks of religion...
The nakedness of woman is the work of God." - William Blake.
Mohammad looks like a Hallmark card hack in comparison:
"I was shown the Hell-fire, and the majority of its dwellers are women."- the pedophile "prophet".
Posted by: profitsbeard at April 7, 2007 7:47 PM
All this hysteria about "porn." And things that matter barely register a "blip" on the radar (....
Hardly ANYONE mentions the Indonesian mosques' role in the vast illicit trafficking of stolen Indonesian rainforest hardwoods (and the terrible devastation it has wrought on the island chain). I think everyone has figured out by now that in Indonesia it is the mosques that call the shots and it is the mosques sponsoring the Indonesian "timber barons" and it is the mosques covering up Indonesia's "illegal logging" revenues which (almost certainly) are clandestinely going to terror networks around the globe (most of it it sure as hell isn't getting to the thousands of impoverished villages across the archipelago). Although hard evidence is generally lacking, with the timber barons and Indonesian legal system in the mosques' control, evidence would never see the light of day anyway(although many Indonesian timber barons ARE known to take trips to Saudi Arabia and harbor fanatical islamic views...). And no ever did really explain the violence, armed gangs doing the illicit timber harvests occurring throughout the archipelago's fast-vanishing rainforests.
Islam's OTHER victim: Mother Nature (left bound and gagged at the bottom of the Java Sea by Islam?).
How ironic that as the Middle East consolidates its hold on Indonesia and Indonesians becme ever less distinguishable from Middle Easterners, the Indonesian landscape too grows more similar to the Middle East--a hideous, eroded landscape.
at April 7, 2007 7:49 PM
"Western filth infiltrating at the heart of the Muslim world and poisoning its sons. Then they ask us, 'why all the hate?'"
....It seems like a lot of Muslim men are buying Playboy to lust after women they can't have...
....supply and demand.....
....Muslim men demand Playboy magazine and Playboy will supply the magazine...
.....capitalism in motion...
at April 9, 2007 9:37 AM
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