Back in Jakarta

I'm very surprised to be able to post to my blog given the disastrous disruption to the Internet caused by the broken fibre-optic cables near Taiwan. The paper today predicted that Indonesia would have only 40% of its usual Internet capacity by January 8th! The past couple of days have been distressing with no access to Google, Yahoo and most of my other commonly visited sites. 

Today, I've even managed to upload a photo to my blog. The photo is taken in Bali and shows Desy doing what she loves best: shopping. In Brisbane, she did a lot of shopping as well and I got tired just following her around. In Bali however, I not only got very tired but very hot as well. It was very humid. Desy is curiously oblivious to fatigue when she is indulging in her favourite pastime. 

Now that I'm back in Jakarta, I'm recuperating in my air-conditioned study which is a permanent no-shopping zone. Tomorrow is the dreaded Idul Adha or Islamic Day of Sacrifice (or as a friend of mine put it: Dead Goat Day, because that is the most animal most commonly slaughtered). While it is difficult to extract humour from such an imminent and senseless carnage, I'm reminded of a recent incident that I read about in Turkey, involving the sacrifice of a camel on an airport tarmac. On December 13th, The Guardian reported:

Bosses at Turkey's largest airline took a dim view today of maintenance workers sacrificing a camel at Istanbul airport to celebrate the delivery of a batch of planes. The country's national carrier, Turkish Airlines, suspended its chief of maintenance after the unusual celebration. Maintenance staff had banded together to buy the animal and then killed it to mark the delivery of 100 aircraft. Turkish newspapers carried pictures of the camel, two rugs thrown over its hump, before Tuesday's sacrifice. They also showed pictures of the animal chopped into pieces.

Strange but true. Is it any wonder that Turkey is finding it hard gaining entry to the European Common Market? Naturally, I'll be staying indoors tomorrow and lighting some candles and incense as part of a little ceremony celebrating Ahimsa (the philosophy of revering of all life and refraining from harm to any living thing).

Sadly, too many Muslims nowadays focus only on unthinking ritual, the extrinsic as opposed to the intrinsic aspects of their religion.

As it is proclaimed in the Holy Qur'an:

"It is not their meat nor their blood, that reaches Allah; it is your piety that reaches Him."

(22.37)

Some Muslims realise this of course and have set up Internet sites interpreting the words of the Qur'an in a deeper and more symbolic way. Some sites actively encourage Muslims to embrace vegetarianism because they regard modern factory farming methods as not being halal (acceptable under Islam).

At http://www.veda.harekrsna.cz/bhaktiyoga/islamveg.htm, the following remarks are relevant to this issue:

Thus Allah does not require the flesh and blood of animals, much less of human beings. No one should suppose that meat or blood is acceptable to God. It was a Pagan fancy that Allah could be pleased by blood sacrifice. But Allah does accept the offering of our hearts.

Actually qurban, the animal slaughtering process ordained for Muslims, have an esoteric and exoteric meaning. While qurban externally refers only to Muslim dietary laws, inwardly qurban requires that we sacrifice our life to the devotion and service of God, and that we sacrifice our beastly qualities instead of the life of an animal.

"Qurban is not slaughtering chickens and cows and goats," explains Bawa Muhaiyaddeen. "There are four hundred trillion, ten thousand beasts here in the heart which must be slaughtered. They must be slaughtered in the qalb [the inner heart]. After these things have been slaughtered, what is eaten can then be distinguished as either halal [permissible] or haram [forbidden]."

Ultimately, the great ustad [preceptor] concludes, "everything that is seen in the world is haram. What is seen in Allah [God] alone is halal. Please eat that." (M. R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, Asma'ul-Husna: The 99 Beautiful Names of Allah, 1979, p. 181)

Yes indeed, please do eat that and not poor, hapless animals. Of course, such is the sensitivity and defensiveness of Islam nowadays that any comment on the interpretation of the Qur'an by a kafir (someone who is not a Muslim) could easily provoke unreasoning hostility from self-proclaimed defenders of the faith. I'm safe however, here in my air-conditioned study, I think.

The Dimming of the Lights

The last time that I stayed in this fine establishment (almost exactly one year ago), I injudiciously covered the lamp, that you can see at the side of the bed, with a towel. I then went to sleep but I awoke to the screaming of a smoke alarm that had been set off by the smoke generated from the slow incineration of my towel. 

The only visible reminders of my near-death-experience were the very warped lamp and a towel with a hole in it. I disposed of the dead towel in my brother's garbage bin but the warped lamp remained. Even though I admitted to the accident and I wasn't chastised or fined at the time, it would seem that I am only now being penalised. 

If you look at the photo on this post, you will see that this time around we have been given only one lamp. One for Desy, none for me. Worse still, it is on the wrong side of the bed. That is Desy's side and if I want to read in bed, the normal order of things has to be overturned. Even worse, I managed to knock the lamp over last night. It seemed as if no harm had been done at the time but this evening, the bulb gave out and so there is no lamplight tonight.

Tomorrow, I'll buy a new bulb to replace the dead one. I don't have the courage to face the manager, Elizabeth, and ask for a new bulb. I know what she'll be thinking: what is it about you and lamps? I just seem to be accident-prone in the current accommodation. Remarkably, I've managed to create a web album of photos taken since arriving. The address is www.picasaweb.google.com/reeves.sean. Have a look.

Terra Australis Incognita

This is a photograph of the guest house where we are staying in New Farm. You enter via these heavy wooden doors (visible to the left of the tree). So far our stay has been very pleasant. I guess one of the most visible differences between Indonesia and Australia is the height of the people. In Indonesia, I don't feel "height-challenged" but in Australia I definitely do. It's not just men that tower over me but many of the women as well. Desy describes it well when she says that she can always spot me in a mall in Jakarta by scanning heads, but not here in Oz. 

It has become for me terra Australis Incognita, "the unknown land of the south", full of people who are growing younger, taller and more purposeful with each successive annual visit. Sitting at pavement cafes, I wonder why Tony isn't smoking his rollies and then remember that the practice is now prohibited. He tells me smoking is also banned in pubs and clubs now. There are a great many rules and regulations in Oz and they all seem to be enforced. 

It wasn't long after I applied for a driver's licence last year, using Tony's address, that mail arrived asking why I hadn't registered as a voter for the recent State elections. Before long probably, the police will arrive at Tony's door with a summons for me to appear in court to explain why I didn't vote. The government's efficiency in extracting fines from it citizenry for all manner of offences is certainly impressive.

Return to Oz

After a seemingly interminable plane journey from Denpasar to Sydney and onwards to Brisbane, Desy and I finally arrived at our destination. There is a broadband Internet connection in the place where we are staying and thus I am able to post this blog entry. The speed is blindingly fast compared to what I'm familiar with in Jakarta. 

Last night, my Norton Antivirus wanted to download over 6Mb of updates and I hesitantly agreed (not wanting to tie up the connection for other people). I needn't have worried, the download took no more than a few seconds. In Jakarta, the same download would have taken several minutes. 

I noticed later, when I was shutting down, that Windows also had 31 updates to install. These updates had been downloaded, unbeknown to me, while I was accessing the Internet. I know realise that there is broadband and that there is BROADband. The reason for all these updates of course is that I now have a brand new laptop: a Toshiba Satellite to replace my poor old ECS laptop that died a few days earlier. More postings from Down Under shortly.

Polygamy

The big news in Indonesia this past week revolved around the very popular Muslim preacher A.A.Gym whose photo appears above. It came to light that he had taken a second wife about three months ago. His first wife broke the news after supposedly agreeing to the marriage. He already had seven children from his first marriage and his second wife has three children. So now he has two wives and ten children. What was interesting was the reaction of the public. 

Attendance at his weekend meeting fell from the usual 3000 to 800, he was bombarded with SMSs denouncing his new marriage and the government proposed extending an existing ban on polygamy in the military to include civil servants. Women's groups and liberal Islamic groups denounced him and all in all it wasn't a good week for him. He had been seen a model of progressive, moderate Islam but not anymore. Desy was an ardent admirer of A.A.Gym but when I broke the news to her on Sunday morning, the first word to escape her lips was "bastard". Needless to say she won't be listening to any more of his talks and nor will a lot of other women around Indonesia. 

Only a week of school remaining and then it's off to Oz with Desy to visit brother Tony in Brisbane. We'll stay until Christmas Day and then fly to Bali for a couple of days before heading back to Jakarta. The last time I spoke Tara had agreed to visit in January so let's hope she does. It's been eighteen months since we last met and that was when she and Ali dropped in to visit us on their way to England. 

I'm planning to buy a new laptop in the new future because my poor old ECS notebook that I bought in the middle of 2004 is showing its age. The optical drive no longer works, nor does the LAN connection, but because I have an external optical drive and Wi-Fi connectivity, I can get by more or less but lately it's been rather temperamental in terms of starting up. I can always coax it back to life but it is time to move on. I'll get it repaired however, and install Linux on it and that will be an opportunity to gain confidence in using that operating system. The notebook I'm inclining toward at the moment is the HP dv6000t. It's been getting pretty positive reviews.

Sagittarius Rising

Today marks the first day of Sagittarius and with it the birthdays of Tara and her mother Ali. They are currently in Madrid. I've included a photo obviously taken a long time ago when I had a lot more hair than I have now and when Tara was only knee-high to a grasshopper. Even though I wasn't in Madrid, I did manage to escape another dull day at school and instead attended an education conference in South Jakarta. It was hosted by Microsoft and Toshiba and was basically aimed at promoting both their products to a country that can ill afford them. A Toshiba representative actually came up and chatted to me for a while. I got him to admit that the cost of Microsoft Windows is built into every Toshiba laptop whether you want to use the operating system or not. 

When I arrived at the venue, I registered and was handed a folder containing, unbeknown to me, a lucky door prize number. Being innately polite, I handed it to the teacher who had accompanied me and took the next one offered. Later we sat together and as the time for the lucky door prize drew near, we both looked at our lucky numbers for the first time. My number was 00015. The other teacher's number (which should have been mine) was 00023. So there you go, the number 23 strikes again. Unfortunately, neither of us won a prize. The top prize was a Microsoft X-Box.

While being driven to the venue in the school car, I had the luxury of being able to read The Jakarta Post in more detail than I normally do. I came across this interesting piece of information:

Sheriff came from Shire Reeve. During early years of feudal rule in England, each shire had a reeve who was the law for that shire. When the term was brought to the United States it was shortened to Sheriff.

Reeves of course is an abbreviation of Reeveson or son of Reeve.

There were more interesting bits of trivia such as this one relating to the word POSH:

The word posh originated when ticket agents in England marked the tickets of travelers going by ship to the Orient. As there was no air conditioning in those days, it was always better to have a cabin on the shady side of the ship as it passed through the Mediterranean and Suez area. Since the sun is in the south, those with money paid extra to get cabin's on the left, or port, traveling to Asia, and on the right, or starboard, when returning to Europe. Hence their tickets were marked with the initials for Port Outbound Starboard Homebound, or POSH.

All this is relevant to Tara because at one time she was a great admirer of the Spice Girls, and I can't remember which one of them was her favourite. Could it have been Posh Spice?

My leisurely reading of the paper made me realise how little of it I really read. I only have about half an hour in the morning to read the paper and it's really not long enough. There was a most interesting article about Yusman Roy who was recently imprisoned here in Indonesia for leading Muslim prayers in Indonesian and not Arabic. I've included the full article because it is so interesting:

Yusman Roy: Fighting to pray in peace

Duncan Graham, Contributor, Lawang, East Java

In 1517 in Europe, seven people were burned at the stake for teaching their children The Lord's Prayer in English rather than Latin.In 2005 in East Java, Muslim preacher Yusman Roy was jailed for two years for leading Islamic prayers in Bahasa Indonesia rather than Arabic. After remissions for good behavior an unbowed Roy is now a free man. He's back at the Islamic school he runs with his wife Supartini at Lawang in East Java, still determined to keep praying in Indonesian.

"The problem with many Muslims in Indonesia is that they don't think for themselves," he told The Jakarta Post. "They just follow whatever the leader says. "They stand in the mosque and mumble, but they don't understand what the clerics are saying because they don't know Arabic. What's the problem with using Indonesian? God understands everything we think and say, whatever the language."

There's little doubt the feisty Roy had been trying to pick a scrap with Islamic traditionalists, particularly the Indonesian Muslim Scholars' Council (MUI), for some time. Not content to lie low in Lawang where he's left alone by the locals, he published and distributed a little book on his philosophy. No takers. He then spent Rp 10 million (US $1,100) on promoting a public meeting in Surabaya's State Islamic University to debate the issue of bilingual prayers. Not surprisingly, the fundamentalists turned up and gave him hell. For them, God's instructions to Muhammad in Arabic had to be forcefully defended. "Why can't we discuss these issues?" Roy asked. "There's no commandment to use Arabic. We should debate, not fight."

Yet ironically, fighting had long been Roy's job. The only son of a Catholic Dutch woman and a Muslim Javanese father who fathered 11 kids with four wives, Roy seems to have had a rocky childhood. He lets his guard down on most personal matters -- though not his upbringing and schooling in Surabaya. His ethnicity was clearly an issue; his Indonesian nationality was constantly challenged and he tended to give knuckle answers. "I was naughty," he said. "But I could fight. I like to fight. From the age of 16 I earned money by boxing -- Rp 5,000 a round. I was fast on my feet, a 60-kilo lightweight." Aged 25, battered and with a broken nose, the pugilist quit the ring. He then became a debt collector -- and a thumping success. If you found this young preman (street thug -- and his term) leaning on your architrave calmly lighting a Dji Sam Soe you'd be paying up pronto. The tattoo on his rippling forearm of a thoroughly aroused stallion would mightily assist discovery of the mislaid wallet.

But Roy's soul was on the ropes. What he was doing wasn't morally right. He knew there was something else -- yet it remained elusive. He sought God, but didn't know where He resided. A come-and-go Catholic, Roy looked for help among priests and found some answers. Though not enough. His friends were Muslim. Slowly he made the transition to Islam but was lax in maintaining his religious obligations. "It took me about 15 years before I became fully Muslim," he said. "I read widely and thought a lot. I saw contradictions between what was written in the Holy Book and what people were saying and doing. "I couldn't understand Arabic and neither could my friends. The clerics were saying it doesn't matter what you pray as long as it's in Arabic. That's wrong. We have to know what's being said when we talk to God."

Soon after the Surabaya meeting in April last year the police called at his home. Friendly fellows all they asked if he'd like a lift to nearby Malang for a chat. "It was a trick," he said. "When I got there they arrested me." They may have saved his life. While he was in Malang three truckloads of allegedly aggrieved men from the Islamic Defenders Front arrived at his school intent on God knows what, but left when they found him absent. While accepting the truth of this proposition, Roy doesn't like it. If he'd been murdered his bid for bilingual prayer would have caught public attention and reform in Islam might have been hastened: from zealotry to martyrdom. He faced two charges -- deviating from Islam in his teachings, and inciting hatred by challenging the clerics in the MUI who had prohibited him from using Indonesian in prayer. He got verbal support from former president Abdurrahman Wahid, legal aid and publicity in Indonesia and overseas. Not enough: He was acquitted only on the first count.

At first, life in jail was tough with many wanting to test their skills against the 50-year old former prizefighter. But instead of flexing the foaming stallion he showed a new tattoo on his right arm. This had the words "Patience, Prayer and Emotional Control". "What I did was right -- I don't regret going to jail," Roy said. "I could not have done this without Supartini's help." She said she was proud of her husband and backed his beliefs. With Roy behind bars she had to run the free school -- known as Pondok I'Tikaf, Arabic for "meditation" -- and its 300 students alone. Where did the money come from? "God provided," she said. "All the other men in jail were criminals. My husband was the only person there for religious reasons."

Despite fears the self-appointed warriors of Islam will return the couple seem unperturbed, putting their safety in the hands of the same Deity their attackers would invoke. The home and school are at the end of a downhill street, above a ravine. The police have cut their phone lines to stop verbal threats, but there's no security and no easy escape route. "Prisoners and warders kept away from me at first, but later joined me," said Roy. "I never went to the mosque because that made me angry. "I'm not afraid of being charged again, but don't expect it. the government's job to protect all citizens whatever their views, and I demand that protection.

"The government should be allowing space for public dialog and I want to encourage that. The people who attack me don't know right from wrong -- they don't understand the prayers in Arabic so they don't pray properly. Quality matters. "These people are losers. There are many terrorists in Islam -- they've lost their way. They've become criminals and anarchists. Prayer is the foundation of Islam. When that collapses everything else goes down.

"This is what I believe. There's a group in Indonesia that wants to keep Islam backward. This is a political issue. I'm angry at what they've done to me, but I forgive them. "Many say they support me, but don't help. I'm fighting this cause as a pioneer with my soul and property. It's difficult being alone, but I'm sure God will protect me. "I want my good name restored. I'm an Indonesian Muslim, not an Arab Muslim! Why would anyone want to stop me?

Good on him! His imprisonment is only one example of the religious madness that prevails here. The legislators here recently reaffirmed the need for everyone to declare their religion out of the six on offer: Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Hinduism and, recently added, Confucianism. If your religion isn't on that list, bad luck.

Talking of religious madness, there was another gem: an article from Turkey that established a disturbing and improbable link between Christian and Islamic Fundamentalists. The article begins:

"A lavishly illustrated "Atlas of Creation" is mysteriously turning up at schools and libraries in Turkey, proclaiming that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is the real root of terrorism. Arriving unsolicited by post, the large-format tome offers 768 glossy pages of photographs and easy-to-read text to prove that God created the world with all its species."

Of course, what's being pushed is not God is behind creation but that he created the whole show instantly without any evolution and differentiation of species. It is Creationism, pure and simple.