Word: indonesianness
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...Indonesian woman gave birth to a 19-lb. 2-oz. baby behemoth on Sept. 24, but that was only the second weirdest pregnancy tale of the month. The strangest belongs to Julia Grovenburg, a 31-year-old Arkansas woman who has a double pregnancy. No, not twins - Grovenburg became pregnant twice, two weeks apart. Isn't that supposed to be impossible...
When she was widowed two years ago, most people in the Javanese village of Babakan Ciwaringin expected Nyai Yu Masriyah Amva to marry again. They also assumed that the local pesantran, or traditional Indonesian Islamic boarding school, would close with the death of her husband, its head Islamic scholar. Neither happened. Bucking tradition, Amva decided that she would run the school. "If men can do it, then why can't I?" the 48-year-old recalls praying. "If you, Allah, are the source of all power, then why do I have to find someone else to run it? Just give...
...extremist teachings, others have been incubators for a more benign trend in the world's most populous Muslim nation: the development of feminist readings of the Quran and Islamic traditions. Indonesia's two largest Muslim political parties - the Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah - have intricate campaigns promoting women's rights. Indonesian feminists, male and female alike, have worked with progressive pesantran to develop women-friendly interpretations of shari'a - a radical break with the conservative notions of shari'a across the Muslim world, which tend to be heavily reliant on the world views of medieval - and male - jurists...
...strong tradition of male authority in Indonesia, as well as a more recent trend towards fundamentalism, so feminists have to be careful to pick kyais who will be open to their teachings. Jakarta-based feminist activist Lies Marcoes-Natsir says much of her work is protecting indigenous Indonesian Islamic culture from the spread of stricter, Saudi-style Wahhabi interpretations of Islam. "The good thing is that [Indonesia's religious scholars] are also worried about Wahhabism, so we can work hand-in-hand with them," she says. Tellingly, Marcoes-Natsir finds that traditional scholars are easier to get through to than...
...Finally, as the ICG report also pointed out, there's the worrisome specter of foreign funding, which appears to have been a crucial ingredient in the July bombings. In particular, Indonesian police are zeroing in on possible money flows from Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The increased integration of Indonesian terror into a global network will make it harder for even the most diligent of Indonesian anti-terror task forces to monitor extremist Islamic activity at home - despite the reported demise of a man as influential as Noordin Mohammed...