from Photographers Blog:
The ritual war game of Pasola
The sun was scorching hot when I landed on the southwest tip of Sumba island in mid-February. Sumba island is a small dot that makes up one of the islands of Indonesia’s East Nusa Tenggara province.
To get there I caught a small plane from Bali, and arrived at Tambulaka airport, which is small and surrounded by green hills. From there, I rented a car and drove on small paved roads that cut through villages and little wooden houses. During the journey, I discovered a strong presence of animism, in the form of respects to ancestors. At every corner of the towns and villages, the houses have a traditional worship place and the graveyards of their ancestors, and at this time of year, when it is high time to prepare for blessings from the Gods, the graveyards are adorned with offerings of beetle fruits.
After a two hour drive, I arrived at the remote Kodi Pangedo village, a place where the Pasola festivity is held each year in February and stayed for four days there without electricity and very little water for the shower. In fact, I only showered once for three days in the village.
Pasola is a ritual of the West Sumba people, a part of the local Sumba belief called Marapu, to ask the blessings of the gods for a good harvest for the year, from the rural people whose livelihoods depend on corn and rice. The Pasola ritual is a war game between two groups of 100 men from the Hill village and the lowland village, forcing the horses which they ride on bareback with no saddle to run faster, and how they strategize to win the war, with the rest of the villages as the judges.
Preaching good sex, Muslim-inspired Obedient Wives Club spreads in Asia
Indonesian Gina Puspita traded a career in aircraft engineering for a mission to preach Islam and help young women build happy marriages through good sex. The French-educated mother of three hosts religious programmes through the Obedient Wives Club which is based on the belief that a fulfilling sex life is the cure for “Western-style” social problems such as divorce and abuse.
“Wives must obey the husbands in all aspect of life, such as serving food and drinks, giving calm and support for the husband, as well as in sex relations,” Pusipita, who shares her spouse with three other women, told Reuters.
A Muslim group which espouses good sex as a foundation for healthy marriages and a strong society, the Obedient Wives Club is gaining converts in the world’s most populous Muslim country after setting up in Jordan, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore.
Founded by Global Ikhwan, a Malaysian firm involved in businesses ranging from laundromats to pharmacies, the club was initially intended to help the company’s female staff to be good wives as well as productive employees. Global Ikhwan’s officials have been linked to the now-defunct Malaysia-based Al-Arqam religious sect which was banned by the government in 1994. Before the Obedient Wives Club, Global Ikhwan had earlier established the Polygamy Club which encourages polygamy among Muslims.
The Obedient Wives Club is open to women of all faiths but says its teachings are based on the edicts of Islam which require wives to submit to their husbands and meet their needs. “When men cannot get satisfaction at home, they will seek it elsewhere,” said Nurul, an Obedient Wives Club spokesperson. “When your wife is cool towards you because your wife is busy and has no time to attend to you whereas you need it that day, what are you going to do?”
Read the full story by Olivia Rondonuwu and Razak Ahmad here.
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It is not the teaching of Quran or Prophet Muhammad. This group is misleading people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Arqam ~I have wrote a report to JAKIM.
Indonesian Islamists shift targets, religious intolerance rises
A suicide bombing in Indonesia last week highlighted a trend of militants acting alone or in small groups to attack Indonesians rather than foreigners to push an Islamist agenda, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said in a report. This has raised concern about more low-level attacks in the world’s most populous Muslim country, which has been seen as having successfully combated militancy but is now seeing a spike in religious intolerance.
“Ideological shifts originating in the Middle East have combined with local circumstances to produce a trend that favours targeted killings over indiscriminate bombings, local over foreign targets and individual or small group action over operations by more hierarchical organisations,” the ICG said on Tuesday.
Militant attacks and incidents of religious intolerance have risen in recent weeks, with mobs lynching three followers of the minority Muslim Ahmadi sect and torching two churches on Java island.
Malaysia’s Young Imam reality TV show widens reach to Southeast Asia
A hit Malaysian Islamic reality TV show kicked off its second season this week after drawing more than 1,000 hopefuls from the region in a sign of the religion’s growing reach in Southeast Asia. Combining a reality TV format with Islamic teachings, the “Imam Muda” or “Young Imam” show is a talent contest for male Muslims aged between 18 and 27 who can speak Malay, with the winner crowned an Imam or religious leader.
The prime-time show features contestants in sharp-looking black suits who are judged on a variety of tasks including reciting Koranic verses, washing corpses, slaughtering sheep according to Muslim rules and counseling promiscuous young Muslim couples.
“Young Imam” first aired last year but was then only open to Malaysians. Its popularity led the producers to invite participants from other countries. More than 1,000 hopefuls from Malaysia as well as neighboring Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei and Thailand auditioned for the show’s second season, and 10 were shortlisted, said Izelan.
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More Indonesian Islamists resorting to violence, anti-terror agency says
Indonesian militants are using parcel bombs and targeting minorities to try to push an Islamist agenda on the government and they could launch further small attacks, the country’s anti-terror agency chief told Reuters. Militant attacks and incidents of religious intolerance have risen in recent weeks, with mobs lynching three followers of a minority Islamic sect and torching two churches on Java island. Parcel bombs have been sent to people involved in promoting pluralism and counter-terrorism in Jakarta.
The head of the National Counter-Terrorism Agency, Ansyaad Mbai, said Islamic organisations that had not previously been involved in acts of terror were joining a militant network in Indonesia because of a convergence on certain issues.
“Terrorism is politics. The motive is politics, and clearly the militant network’s aim is to affect political policy,” Mbai said in an interview at his barricaded office in a former colonial building in central Jakarta.
Mbai said radical groups were putting pressure on the government to grant demands to dissolve the Ahmadi, a minority Islamic sect branded deviant by religious leaders in the world’s most populous Muslim nation. Members of the Islamic Defenders Front FPI.L, known for smashing up bars but not considered a terrorist group, have threatened to launch a revolution if the Ahmadi sect is not banned.
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Stop all investments and tourism in these regions unless they can police their terrorist/criminals! These countries are too risky for investments and tourism! Stop the money flow to these folks and they’ll wither!
Bomb hits office of liberal Indonesian Islamic group defending Ahmadis
A small explosion has hit the Jakarta office of the Liberal Islamic Network, an Indonesian group that has defended the rights of minority Islamic Ahmadi sect, a witness said. The explosion on Tuesday, which injured three people, comes a month after a mob beat to death three followers of the Ahmadi sect, considered heretical by mainstream Muslims.
Indonesia has won praise for largely defeating Islamic terror, but a recent spike in religious intolerance could heighten risk concerns for foreign investors counting on improved stability in Southeast Asia’s largest economy and the world’s most populous Muslim nation.
Ade Wahyudi, a manager at KBR68H radio that shares the office with the pluralist Liberal Islamic Network, said the office had called police to open a package that contained a book with wires sticking out of it. The police officer who opened the package was among the injured.
Rights activists and several parliamentarians said on Tuesday that military personnel in western Java island recently summoned Ahmadi leaders to identify Ahmadi followers in their area and asked them to return to mainstream Islam.
“This goes to show a strengthening movement in government institutions trying to persecute Ahmadis. This is a worrying turn,” said Haris Azhar of local rights group Kontras. Military leaders denied the allegations of attempts at forced conversions.
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Indonesia Muslims attack court, churches; mob kills Ahmadis
Hundreds of Muslim radicals set two churches ablaze and attacked a court in Indonesia’s central Java on Tuesday, calling for harsh punishment for a Christian on trial for blasphemy, police said.
The attacks come two days after a mob beat to death three followers of a minority Islamic sect considered heretical by mainstream Muslims, and at the start of so-called “Inter-faith week”, when the country is supposed to celebrate its pluralistic heritage.
Rights groups and some analysts say a decree passed in 2008 by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s cabinet as he sought the support of influential Muslim groups has actually weakened inter-faith harmony because the law is ambiguous.
On Tuesday, hundreds of men — many wearing Muslim prayer caps or scarves — hurled rocks at a court building in Temanggung, around 400 km (250 miles) from the capital, Jakarta, as it heard prosecutors demand a five-year jail term for a Catholic man accused of distributing blasphemous material.
They also pelted riot police with rocks and other missiles before attacking three churches, setting on fire two of them as well as a police truck, said Djihartono, a Central Java police spokesman.
Read the full story here. See also Indonesia says will act against brutal attacks on religious sect.
Indonesian Muslim cleric warns against over-the-top Christmas
Opulent Christmas decorations at shopping malls in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, could incite anger among non-Christians, the country’s highest Islamic authority said on Thursday. Although 90 percent of the country’s 240 million people are Muslim, the capital’s myriad glitzy malls have been decorated with Christmas lights and bunting — including faux snow, Santas and nativity scenes.
“Christmas describes a certain religion, and if the religion advertises it too overtly — even though they have only a small number of followers — it will cause jealousy and anger from other groups,” said Ma’ruf Amin, of Indonesia’s Ulema Council.
Retailers say the giant Christmas trees, paper mache reindeers and carols serve no religious purpose and are there to attract more shoppers during the holiday seasons. But Amin said over-the-top festivities could hurt existing tolerance.
Debate between moderates and Islamists is growing on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, and topics range from whether Muslims can even greet Christians by saying “Merry Christmas,” to the establishment of new places of worship and religious symbols.
Officially secular, Indonesia nevertheless marks Friday as a Christmas public holiday.
Michelle Obama dons headscarf at Indonesian mosque
U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama donned a headscarf on a visit to an mosque in Indonesia on Wednesday, not a requirement for a non-Muslim but a sign of the Obamas’ efforts to show respect for the Islamic world.
Wearing a beige headscarf adorned with gold beads and a flowing chartreuse trouser suit, she toured Jakarta’s Istiqlal Mosque, Southeast Asia’s largest, while on a short state visit to the world’s most populous Muslim country.
U.S. President Barack Obama had been expected to visit another major religious site during his Asian tour, the Sikh Golden Temple in India, but media reports said the visit was canceled after aides balked at the idea of the president wearing a scarf or skullcap required at the site.
Barack Obama is a Christian but faces persistent sniping among some members of the U.S. public that he is a Muslim and, the reports said, aides feared pictures of him wearing such headgear could fuel such rumors.
Obama, who is using the Indonesia visit as a platform to reach out to the wider Islamic world by praising Indonesia’s pluralism in a speech on Wednesday, pointed out that the city’s Catholic cathedral was opposite the mosque, which was designed by a Christian architect.
As the shoeless Obamas crossed the mosque’s wide courtyard, the president told reporters that the churchgoers used the mosque’s parking lot at Christmas and said that was “an example of the kind of cooperation” between religions in Indonesia.
Muslims say Obama failing to keep Cairo promises
President Barack Obama’s pledge on Wednesday in Jakarta to strive for better relations with the Muslim world drew skepticism in Cairo, where last year he called for a new beginning in the Middle East after years of mistrust.
Seventeen months after Obama’s Cairo University speech, al Qaeda is still threatening the West, peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians remain stalled over the issue of West Bank settlements and U.S. troops remain in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Many in the Middle East believe that Washington’s tight alliance with Israel makes it impossible to end the suffering of the Palestinians, breeding cynicism among Arab Muslims toward U.S. intentions in the region.
“As soon as Obama took over, he said he would do this and that — a lot of things. But he still hasn’t met a single goal,” said Saad Zaki Khalil, 56, who was selling cigarette lighters in central Cairo.
“It’s all speeches — in the end the same American politics, and Jewish politics, continues,” said Cairo retiree Mohamed Abdel. “This is why nothing since Obama’s Cairo speech has translated into action with Arab nations.”
“I personally had higher expectations for change” after the 2009 speech, said Cairo lawyer Hatem Khalil. “It’s ignorant to believe Obama will solve the Palestinian case… I also agree that if the U.S. takes out all its military from Iraq in one phase the country will collapse — but I think that with Egypt, more needs to be done.”
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