Indonesian gambling convicts escape before caning, Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

Indonesian gambling convicts escape before caning

Three Indonesian men convicted of playing dominoes for money have escaped from jail moments before a public caning in devoutly Muslim Aceh province.

Local Islamic police chief Muhammad Rusli said Saturday the men bolted during an unguarded bathroom visit minutes before the punishment for violating anti-gambling laws.

The men were caught playing dominoes for 1,000 rupiah ($0.10) per game. They were to be caned six times each outside a mosque on Friday.

Aceh adopted Islamic laws banning alcohol and gambling after gaining semiautonomy from the secular central government following a decades-long civil war. Last year, lawmakers there imposed stoning to death as a punishment for adultery.

The majority of Indonesia's roughly 200 million Muslims practice moderate Islam.

http://newageislam.com/indonesian-gambling-convicts-escape-before-caning/islamic-world-news/d/2436

Aceh's Sharia Law Still Controversial in Indonesia, Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

Aceh's Sharia Law Still Controversial in Indonesia

Katie Hamann

29 December 2009

Lawmakers in Indonesia's Aceh Province recently passed a law that imposes death by stoning on Muslim adulterers. Aceh was granted the right to implement Sharia law under a peace agreement with the national government that ended a long separatist struggle. But the laws and punishments are unpopular and, many argue, at odds with Indonesia's national laws.

Banda Aceh's grand mosque is a soaring monument to Islam.

It is here, on the northern tip of Sumatra, that Arab traders brought Islam to Southeast Asia. And it is here today that conservative Muslims seek the establishment of full Sharia law.

Under an agreement with the Indonesian government to end three decades of separatist fighting, the province received the right to implement Sharia. For instance, caning is used to punish Muslims caught gambling and drinking, and for unwed couples engaging in sexual activity.

In September lawmakers went a step further, passing a law that would punish Muslim adulterers with being stoned to death.

Prosperous Justice Party member Moharriadi Syafari was a sponsor of the bill. He explains that it is difficult for people in the West to understand Sharia, but the stoning law has the support of Acehnese people.

He says they do not understand why in America there is death by injection and in China execution by shooting. Syafari says that stoning is what is ordered by God and when they implement Sharia they will receive blessings."

http://newageislam.com/aceh-s-sharia-law-still-controversial-in-indonesia/islamic-world-news/d/2300

American Band of Sufi Mystics Aims to go Global, Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

American Band of Sufi Mystics Aims to go Global

DEPOK, Indonesia: With a discombobulating mix of blonde hair and ecstatic cries of 'Allah, Allah!', the members of Islamic band Debu sway on stage at a strip mall on the edge of Indonesia's capital.

Led by a clutch of American siblings, the band of adherents of Sufi Islamic mysticism have become a perennial hit during the holy month of Ramazan here in the world's largest Muslim-majority country.

The band - who live communally under the tutelage of a 60-something California-born Sufi teacher in Jakarta's southern sprawl - make an often confusing blur of the lines between the West and Islam.

A tour of Iran last year netted the band wildly popular TV appearances and an audience with President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, though bureaucratic red tape over their US passports meant they were unable to perform live.

'One of the things that totally blows them out of the water is that, okay, there are these Americans and the women are all in hijabs (head scarves), singing in Indonesian,' lead singer Mustafa Daood, a 28-year-old with an American accent and a blonde ponytail, told AFP.

'Or in Turkey we're singing in Turkish, from Indonesia, so they have no idea where to put us,' Daood said, laughing.

http://newageislam.com/american-band-of-sufi-mystics-aims-to-go-global/islamic-world-news/d/1766

INDONESIA: Alleged brutal torture and sexual abuse by the Banda Raya police, Islam and Human Rights, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and Human Rights

INDONESIA: Alleged brutal torture and sexual abuse by the Banda Raya police

According to information I have received, Haryoto with his partner
were taken to the police station by the accused at about 1:30am on
January 23, 2007. They were made to strip down to their underwear,
and were then viciously beaten and verbally abused by the accused.
Hartoyo said that the officers forced his partner to perform oral sex
on him. When he refused Hartoyo was again kicked and scolded. Then,
the victims still in their underwear were dragged to the courtyard in
the police station, made to squat on the ground and were sprayed with
ice-cold water. When he asked permission to go to the toilet, the
officers forced his partner to urinate on Hartoyo's head.

http://newageislam.com/indonesia--alleged-brutal-torture-and-sexual-abuse-by-the-banda-raya-police/islam-and-human-rights/d/881

Indonesia: From a terrorist commander to a terrorist counsellor, Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

Indonesia: From a terrorist commander to a terrorist counsellor

His remorse over the massacre of civilians and the Indonesian police's careful handling of him transformed Abbas. From a terrorist commander he became a terrorist counsellor, working with the police to try to convince other captured militants that their interpretation of Islam is wrong.

"I (came to) understand that the Bali bombings were a crime, not a jihad," he says.

Today, Abbas is the most famous alumnus of an Indonesian government initiative that fights terrorism by persuasion. Authorities try to "de-radicalize" militants, debating religion with them and reconnecting them with their families instead of relying on the high-tech weapons and harsh interrogation techniques that have characterized President Bush's approach since Sept. 11.

"Because terrorism is an ideologically motivated crime, it is not possible to stop it using mere physical operations," said Ansyaad Mbai, the head of the Indonesian government's Counter-Terrorism Coordinating Desk. "Based on our experience, the harder we hit them with military force, the more radical they become." Mbai is critical of the Bush administration's approach to fighting terrorism. The war in Iraq, in particular, has made the job of handling terrorism in Indonesia harder, he said: "Even the moderate Muslim leaders find it difficult to explain that the war taking place in the Middle East is not a war against Islam."

http://newageislam.com/indonesia--from-a-terrorist-commander-to-a-terrorist-counsellor--/islamic-world-news/d/931

Islamic Malaysia in Asian club?, Radical Islamism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Radical Islamism and Jihad

Islamic Malaysia in Asian club?

BY FARISH A. NOOR (Asian Edge)

2 August 2008

One factor that has prevented any country in Asean from unilaterally making such drastic changes to its internal politics has been the checks and balances offered by the region's plural character itself: A quick look at the map of the Asean region would show that this is a region of many faith communities living together and overlapping. Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei remain predominantly Muslim, but they are flanked by predominantly Buddhist Thailand, Burma, Laos, Cambodia and even Vietnam. In turn there is the Philippines, which is Christian as well, and in all these countries -- Singapore being a case in point — there are also large pockets of cosmopolitanism mixed with multiculturalism and multi-religiosity too.

Historically this may have been one of the factors that prevented countries like Malaysia and Indonesia from unilaterally upping the stakes in the Islamisation process, for it would have raised eyebrows in the neighbouring capitals.

How long this state of affairs will remain unchecked, however, is anyone's guess. In Malaysia and Indonesia the rise of political Islam has also given birth to radical new Islamist groupings like the Hizb'ut Tahrir that are now calling for a pan-Muslim Asean super-state, far-fetched though their ambitions may seem.

http://newageislam.com/islamic-malaysia-in-asian-club?/radical-islamism-and-jihad/d/389

Why sectarian religio-political groups inevitably fall apart The mujahideen are not Islamic enough, Islam and Politics, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and Politics

Why sectarian religio-political groups inevitably fall apart

The mujahideen are not Islamic enough

BY FARISH A. NOOR (Asian Edge)

18 August 2008

Things, however, have not been going so well for Ustaz Ba'asyir of late, as the movement he helped to form and lead — the Indonesian Mujahideen Veterans' Movement, MMI — has also been drawn into the complex web of Indonesian politics. Perhaps one of the most unique features of Indonesian normative Islam is the fact that even the most conservative Islamist groups have members and leaders who are willing to play the game of realpolitik and get involved in the political debates of the country. MMI members are known to include academics, journalists, businessmen and other professionals who somehow reconcile the calls for Jihad while making a daily living as professionals. Furthermore, the MMI has always operated on the basis of collective consensus and is run by a high executive council of leaders.

Apparently it was this 'democratic' element of the MMI that turned Ustaz Ba'asyir against his own movement and followers. At the recent MMI general assembly Ustaz Ba'asyir was conspicuously absent, having withdrawn himself from the movement at the beginning of August. Ba'asyir's argument is that the MMI, despite its blatantly sectarian and conservative leanings, has been 'contaminated' by the evil influence of modern democracy, thereby making it a 'secular' movement that is haram by his standards.

http://newageislam.com/why-sectarian-religio-political-groups-inevitably-fall-apart/islam-and-politics/d/582