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.