Word: cleric
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...majority state, insisting: "It is not Shari'a law but laws influenced by Shari'a." Yudhoyono himself has avoided any public comment on the bylaws' legality. "The President will do nothing on this because he is scared of offending the Islamic movement," says former Indonesian President and moderate Muslim cleric Abdurrahman Wahid. "If the silent majority isn't speaking out against the Shari'a-ization of Indonesia, then why should he risk his political career for them?" Even presidential adviser Agus Widjojo frets about the official silence: "The government can't just have a policy of no action on Islam...
...used to have an incidence of theft almost every day, but not anymore," says Abdul Jabbar. Now, village elders are considering barring wedding singers from wearing skimpy clothing and dancing suggestively-a common occurrence at Indonesia's marriage ceremonies. "People can dance with their fingers instead," suggests village cleric Leleng, wiggling his index fingers in demonstration. His wife Wayuni says only 5% of girls wore headscarves in high school when she was growing up. Now it's mandatory, and many women wear the covering even in the privacy of their own homes. "Some people say we should just follow...
...they represent a Muslim majority that was never well served by the capital's secularized-and often corrupt-political ?lite. "People in Jakarta may not understand this, but Shari'a is the aspiration of the people, because it makes everyone, even government leaders, accountable," says Muchsin Noor, a cleric who runs a pesantren in West Java's Cianjur regency, where Shari'a bylaws were officially implemented last year. But it is precisely the scattered nature of the bylaws' propagation that has made a concerted defense by moderate Muslims so difficult. "Because this conservatism is creeping in at the local level...
...Those who have the most to lose are the millions of Indonesians who are either non-Muslim or belong to heterodox Islamic sects. In 2005, the nation's ruling clerics prohibited interfaith marriage and prayer. The Indonesia Ulema Council also renewed an edict deeming heretical the Islamic sect Ahmadiyah, which claims up to 500,000 members. In the past year, several Ahmadiyah mosques have been forcibly closed or destroyed by mobs, as have dozens of Christian house churches. Separately, a Muslim cleric in East Java was jailed for preaching in Indonesian, as opposed to the normal Arabic. In West Java...
...More damaging, an Italian judge has decided to go ahead with the trial of 25 CIA employees, an Air Force officer, and six Italian intelligence officials for kidnapping an Egyptian cleric. The Americans aren't going to show up for the trial. And it's unclear whether the Italians really are going to end up in jail. But you can count on the Italian intelligence service thinking twice before helping the Americans with another sensitive counter-terrorist operation...