But read what I said, Indonesia still is not a moderate haven. At the end of the day, suicide murders and terrorist acts are often considered justified by "freedom fighters" instead of outright rejecting them.
It is also a country that suffers from attacks like Bali and Jakarta.
It is also not the brain, it is but a limb in the body of Islam.
It is also but one country in South East Asia.
It has not exerted muscle on some global stage regarding Islam's direction on violence and extremism, etc.
-Rudey
Quote:
Originally posted by moe.ron
Let make it clear, radical Islam is not growing in Indonesia nor will it ever. Even Political Islam is not growing. In fact, political Islam itself is declining.
The LSI (Indonesian Survey Institute) did a poll this year which shows that Indonesian prefer to vote for secular candidate over Islamic candidate. They also found that secular nationalist figures were more popular then their Islamic counterpart.
Radical Islam's main goal in the region is to create a super Islamic state which stems from Indonesia to Southern Thailand and southern Philippines. This goal is seen by many Indonesians as foolish and insane.
Dr. Amien Rais (head of PAN, and former chairman of Muhammadiyah) made it clear that "Political Islam is not selling in this country. If I based my political support only on Muslims, there is a foregone conclusion that I will lose."
When he was asked about terrorism in the country, the former head of the 30 million strong Muhammadiyah said "I don't feel at ease if those terrorists who have been given death verdicts are given chances to appeal. This is ridiculous. We have to banish them from this earth. The sooner the better."
There was also a bill that was presented by the conservative Islamic parties which would have outlawed premarital sex, adultery and cohabitation. That bill was shut down before it even got to the committee.
There was also another bill that would have seen the implementation of Sharia law nationwide.
Here is an excerpt from the Straits Time about the result:
However, here is a study done by United States-Indonesia Society and the Asia Foundation with regard to the thesis that says radical Islam is growing in Indonesia which shows that "the vast majority of Indonesian Muslims remain tolerant and inclusive, as they have been traditionally described, and voted for secular political parties in the last elections in June 1999. Although Islamic piety has increased in recent years there has been no increase in the number of radical Muslims."
So my thesis is, radical Islam may have garner the headlines in South East Asia. That isn't hard to do. You only need one successful bombing and instant headline news. However, they failed to garner the hears and minds of the region. Election results have given us this evidence. In Malaysia, the fundamentalist party of PAS lost 20 seats in the national parliment. You may think it's nothing, but they used to have 27 seats. This is after PAS guaranteed a seat in heaven if voters voted for them. Guess they were wrong.
Then you have the Indonesian elections which resulted in a dramatic lost of seats in the parliment for the fundamentalist parties. The United Development Party proposed a constitutional amendment to turn Indonesia into an Islamic state in 2002. That proposal failed miserable. Then they also dropped the shair platform when they realized that they weren't getting the votes they wanted. Even the Justice Party didn't used Islamic platform or Sharia. Instead they used anti-corruption and economic issues as their platform.
"The Islamization of Indonesia has failed." announced Indonesian analyst Salim Said. Douglas Ramage of the Asia Foundation agreed when he said, ""When Islamists have brought their demands through the political system, they've lost every time. Voters again and again reject radical Islam." Indonesia is more religious, however, they see themselves as Indonesian first, Muslim second.
How do we define this? Well, the spread to Islam was made by Sufism. According to Azyumardi Azra, rector of the State Islamic University in Jakarta, "The Islam that was brought to Indonesia in the 12th century was mainly from traveling Sufi teachers."
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