A banner with a picture of a young, bespectacled Christian man is draped in front of a mosque, a fiery noose around his neck and the words, "This man deserves the death penalty!"
Churches are shut down. And an Islamic youth militia held its first day of training.Though the events all occurred less than nine miles (15 kilometers) from Indonesia's bustling capital, making headlines in local papers and dominating chats on social networking sites such as Facebook, they've sparked little public debate in the halls of power.
...Members of the Islamic Defenders Front, or FPI, have been known to smash bars, attack transvestites and go after minority sects with bamboo clubs and stones.
Now, they are targeting Christians in the fast-growing industrial city of Bekasi.
Outsiders have steadily poured into the Jakarta suburb in search of work, bringing with them their own religions, traditions and values. That has made conservative Islamic clerics nervous. Some have used sermons to warn their flock to be on the lookout for signs of proselytization.
So, when 14 busloads of villagers arrived on June 30 at the home of Henry Sutanto, who heads the Christian-run Mahanaim Foundation, rumors quickly spread that he and Andreas Sanau, the condemned man whose face appeared on the mosque banner, were planning a mass baptism.
... "He should be executed!" said Murhali Barda, who heads the Bekasi chapter of the FPI. "He tried to carry out mass baptisms!"
Days later, Barda's group joined nine others in recommending at a local congress that Bekasi mosques help set up youth militias to act as moral police and to intimidate Christians who are trying to convert Muslims.
They started training Saturday morning, about 100 young men turning out on a field wearing martial arts uniforms. Barda stressed there was no plan to arm them.
"We're doing this because we want to strike fear in the hearts of Christians who behave in such a way," he said. "If they refuse to stop what they're doing, we're ready to fight."
A regional leader of the Indonesian Muslim Forum, Bernard Abdul Jabbar, said the youths were given physical training and taught about Islam. "They will guard the Islamic faith and preach the right path to the people," he said.
...Mobs have forced shut two churches this year. Last month, a statue of three women was torn down by authorities after hundreds of hard-liners wearing skull caps and white robes took to the streets, claiming the monument symbolized the Holy Trinity.
Weeks earlier, black-clad youths attacked a Catholic-run school over an anonymous blogger's "blasphemous" website...
I blame Bush. Or the militant Quakers. I forget which.
By the way, even moderate muslims would be insulted by this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knRLJp-nqSg
ReplyDeleteAnd what about the following (a big hit in Belgium – a song in the Antwerp dialect about becoming horny when seeing muslim girls wearing a jilbab – hijab, because of the current lack of catholic nuns (who also look like muslim women) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE6Y781Atqg
Come on, FPI, read this forum, it will give you a reason to boycott Belgian and Dutch products. Find out the colour of the Belgian flag, and BURN it ! Don’t forget to burn things in front of both the Dutch and the Belgian embassies.
Belgium and Spain are about to ban the niqaab (maybe France too), so the FPI (and their cronies) once again will get high blood pressure and stage protests.
Do these FPI people ever relax ? Do they think about other things, like a beautiful sunset, a good (non-islamic) novel, a nice (non-islamic) movie ? Do they have a romantic evening in a candle-lit restaurant with their wife or wives ?
Do they swim naked in a secluded part of the beach at midnight ?
Do they think that earth quakes are caused by Allah because Allah was angry ?
How can Allah have human-like qualities like anger, jealousy, etc ?
I pity them.