Word: indonesianness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...while I was reporting on the civil war then raging in the Indonesian province of Aceh, rebels of the separatist Free Aceh Movement (G.A.M.) opened fire on a car carrying me and three colleagues, almost killing us. Afterwards, furious, I called and text messaged my G.A.M. contact, code-named "Iskander," to tell him to get his trigger-happy men to stand down. Iskander's role as a G.A.M. operative was secret-until I unwittingly blew his cover that day. When I called, he was being questioned by the police, who saw my incriminating messages arrive on his phone. Iskander...
...tsunami tore through the prison, drowning inmates in their cells, Iskander punched his way through the roof and got away. We know the rest: nearly 170,000 people dead in Aceh, a gargantuan relief effort, and-amid the tragedy-a historic peace deal between G.A.M. and the Indonesian government. But Iskander's story didn't end there. In fact, it's just beginning. Irwandi Yusuf-his real name-was last week sworn in as the first directly elected governor of Aceh province...
...Guerrilla movements tend to form shaky governments; just look at the other end of the Indonesian archipelago, where East Timor is still mired in poverty and violence years after its hard-won independence. Yet Irwandi was never a gun-toting guerrilla. A veterinarian by training and a university lecturer by profession, he led a double life as an underground G.A.M. campaigner based in Banda Aceh. That, hopefully, has equipped him with the wiles to navigate Aceh's complex political and religious scene...
Women, explained the elegantly dressed Indonesian cleric, are like jewels. TIME's Indonesia stringer, Tatap Loebis, and I smiled. We are both women. Being compared to jewels is nice. Muhamad Ikhwan, who runs a conservative Wahhabi-style Islamic boarding school in the eastern Indonesian city of Makassar, continued. "Westerners treat women like flowers. They bloom, and everyone can see they are beautiful. But then they fade quickly and die." The Wahhabi treatment was different: "Women are like precious jewels," Ikhwan repeated. "They should be kept in a box, where only a special few can see them and cherish them. Then...
...notion of immortality certainly beat Botox. But Ikhwan was using his jewel vs. flower analogy to explain why it was preferable for female students at his Islamic boarding school to wear the chador, a flowing black dress that covers everything but the eyes. Indonesian women, though living in the world's largest Muslim-majority nation, have traditionally worn somewhat sexier garb: a loose, lacy veil, a cleavage-hugging blouse and a tight sarong. But over the past few years, as Southeast Asia's moderate forms of Islam have struggled to hold sway against the challenge of a more conservative, Middle...