Word: corruption
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...more autonomous, giving local leaders unprecedented power in what, under Suharto, had been a deeply centralized nation. The bottom-up emergence of the faith-based laws lends legitimacy to those who say 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...
...1950s, Ghana's per capita gdp was equivalent to South Korea's; today it is around $550 compared with South Korea's $16,000. Nigerians still lament that they once had a massive palm oil industry but that Asian countries such as Malaysia, which were better run and less corrupt, have long overtaken them...
...Irwandi's top priority, of course. In theory he has the financial wherewithal to achieve this: Aceh is rich in natural resources, particularly oil and gas. So far, though, these riches have mainly profited the national treasury or the oil Goliath ExxonMobil, or simply lined the pockets of corrupt officials. Keeping Aceh's wealth in Aceh, and then directing it to where it's desperately needed-housing, infrastructure, job creation-will be Irwandi's biggest test...
...Jakarta has promised Aceh greater autonomy over its own affairs. But Irwandi must still win over a local legislature packed with pro-Jakarta nationalists and reform a dysfunctional bureaucracy which, with the help of greedy and ruthless men in the military and police, helped make Aceh possibly the most corrupt province in one of the world's most corrupt countries. He is well aware that a previous governor, the widely loathed Abdullah Puteh, was also in jail, in Jakarta, when the tsunami came, awaiting trial over a helicopter scam for which he was later convicted...
...side, a growing number of India's Muslims were turning to a more orthodox form of Islam and dreaming of declaring jihad against the British. In May 1857, thousands of sepoys (Indian soldiers) serving in the British army mutinied, mainly due to fears that the British were out to corrupt Islam and Hinduism. The revolt may have been inevitable, but what was wholly unexpected was that the mutineers, in their search for a leader, would turn to an institution that had been all but defunct for over a century: the Mughal Empire. As one contemporary report put it, the soldiers...