Word: easternism
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...That message is being broadcast from thousands of new mosques and Islamic schools, or pesantren, now proliferating across the 17,000-island archipelago. Many are funded by Middle Eastern groups that see Indonesia as fertile ground for spiritual purification. Clerics at these religious institutions preach the Salafi strain of Islam, which advocates a return to the religion as practiced in the era of the Prophet Muhammad. (Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia's strict form of the faith, is considered an offshoot of Salafi Islam.) By contrast, most Indonesians, like other Southeast Asian Muslims, had for centuries practiced a far less orthodox faith...
...accelerated since Sept. 11, 2001, with the Internet bringing together Muslims worldwide in condemnation of Western actions in the Middle East. "With the hegemony of the West, we have so many problems," says Muhamad Ikhwan, director of Wahdah Islamiyah, which runs a 1,000-student Islamic academy in the eastern city of Makassar, where many girls wear chadors that cover everything but their eyes. "The world was safe when it was run by Islamic civilizations, so we want to bring Islam back to its former glory...
...road to Bulukumba, a rice-growing hamlet in eastern Indonesia's Sulawesi province, is rutted and worn. But just past the district line stands an ornate, three-meter-high marble edifice festooned with Arabic calligraphy. "Religious Crash Program," announces the massive signboard, before detailing the four Shari'a bylaws Bulukumba has implemented since 2002: no alcohol; mandatory wearing of Islamic attire; required payment of Islamic alms; and Koranic proficiency for students and prospective married couples. As some of the first places to pass such bylaws in Indonesia, Bulukumba and five other regencies in southern Sulawesi have served as an inspiration...
...Fodome, a small village in the eastern Volta region of the new nation, 22-year-old Kwame Deh and his family and friends gathered around a radio and listened through crackling static. "I felt very happy," remembers Deh. "The future was ours...
...Shuwetij cannot remember the last night no patients arrived in the emergency room of his small hospital in eastern Baghdad. Just two years ago, when the things were more normal, Shuwetij or other doctors working night shifts would pass many evenings snoozing or watching television as nothing happened. Not any more. Now Shuwetij, the senior doctor on staff at the al-Kindy Teaching Hospital, works the overnight shift most every night. Usually about five or six patients arrive in Shuwetij's emergency room every evening. Most have gunshot wounds. Others have burns and lacerations from explosions. Shuwetij rarely asks what...