And if true, not before time!
Rhrosty.

Interesting. Let's hope that Indonesia stays on the democratic path, however, given the lessons of history, I wouldn't put money on it. Turkey was the other example of a secular and 'tolerant' Muslim-majority country, instead under Erdogan, the country is Islamising rapidly

Quite so. It's worth reminding ourselves that the people who suffer most from Muslim extremism are Muslim moderates, and that the governments spending the most in time, lives and resources on controlling extremism are the governments of majority-Muslim nations.

But let's also not forget that choice in religion is part of the Indonesian constitution. If we could make that -- or better still, freedom of religion -- a starting-point for offering aid and support to other majority-Muslim nations, that would be a major step in the right direction.

morning Roger,

An interesting but disappointing article which sadly ignores the multidimensional dynamics of Islam.

We are faced with complex parameters in trying to understand Islam and I don’t believe there is a simple answer.

The first set of dynamics is Islamic nations that are either developing nations such as Indonesia, undeveloped nations such as the Morocco and much of north Africa and those nations ruled by some form of totalitarian dictatorship, such as Saudi Arabia.

Add to this the way Islam acts differently in each of the above scenario’s. Within some Islamic states, radicalization can occur almost instantaneously by insurgency. The imposition of brutal, barbaric savagery of a medieval doctrine. These benign Islamic nations you refer to as part of Islamic “Reformasi” are just nations that have not yet become targets of radical Islam, but when they are, the transformation is very rapid as we have seen.

Within developing nations such as Indonesia, Islam gains at a regional level by opportunism, such as Ache which is now governed by Sharia law. Indonesia has also reportedly made one of the biggest contributions to foreign fighters in the middle east and is home to dozens of Islamic variants associated particularly to Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Within the democratic, industrialized west, Islam grows by stealth, (the Western Model). It creates grievance based victimhood under the cover of anti-racism and political correctness, both made available to them by our own politics.

These so called moderate or “Reformasi” states to which you refer might not currently be a seen as a threat however, like the rest of Islam, they are part of the control structure of Islam and are always vulnerable to rapid radicalization.

Every single conflict within Islam in Islamic countries exhibits these same parameters and resultant variations. Outside Islamic countries, the western model applies.

I cannot agree with your hypothesis that Reformasi countries are capable of resisting a serious push by radical Islam. They are not even capable of protecting their borders, their society, their economy or their interpretation or application of their religion.

They are just low hanging fruit

Onya Spindoc.

Turkey was once considered the most advanced and tolerant Muslim country in the world. It became that way because it's military realised just how backward Islam was, and that Turkey could not compete militarily with the western powers unless they took over and imposed some sort of largely secular regime which could create an industrialised economy.

Turkey is now slipping backwards into Islamic fundamentalism because, like in Egypt, the majority of Turks want that to happen. Like most Muslims, they think that the only reason why they are not prosperous and the rulers of the world is because they are not devout enough. They need to pray to Allah a lot more and obey his violent laws and he will reward them. The generals are being arrested and jailed because the mullahs want control of the country and the military is an impediment to their desire for a theocratic republic like Iran. But unlike Iran, they think that a Turkish theocratic state will prosper and rule Europe because Allah loves Sunnis while those Iranians are just Shiite heretics.

The rule of thumb is that counties that are prospering are more tolerant and less radical than those going backwards. Indonesia is an increasingly prosperous country because it's economy is run by Chinese. That does not mean that the Chinese think of themselves as 'Indonesians." It is illegal for Chinese to read or write Chinese in Indonesia, but all the Chinese read and write Chinese because they are Chinese. They are so Chinese, that they once had a coup where they tried to make Indonesia part of Red China. The Indonesian military gained the upper hand in that fight and beat the Chinese. The military regime responded to the coup by marching a million Chinese into the killing fields and machine gunning them.

Please don't portray Indonesia as some sort of Islamic multicultural success story. Even ISIS hasn't executed one million people yet.

Continued

Continued

Perhaps the Indos are more successful than the Arabs because they are Asians, and Asians are smart? They are smart enough to realise that Islam is a vehicle for Arab cultural domination, and they don't like that. They are nationalistic and ethno centric and they don't like Arabs, even though they accept Islam. They don't like Chinese either, but they need them. Well, some of them anyway. They would probably be happier if most of the Chinese in Indonesia migrated to Australia and Australia can have the coup and the civil war next time.

Anyhoo, the Indonesian brand of Islam is a bit different to the Arab brand because the Arabs are far less intelligent and their cultures are far more backward. And they don't have any Chinese or Jews running their economies. They killed off the Jews or they ran them out. But unlike the Indonesians, the Arabs were not smart enough to leave a few Jews around to run their economies.

Could I leave by mentioning this authors claim that Indonesia suffered under Imperialism? Well, they did. The Dutch were bad colonists and they were only concerned with the bottom line. The aborigines in Australia should be glad that the Dutch, the Germans or the Japanese did not colonise Australia or there would probably be no aborigines at all. But anyhoo, Indonesia can hardly cry about it's status as a colony of Holland when it is busy doing a bit of Imperialism itself with the western half of New Guinea. Not that I disagree with Indonesian imperialism, it is just that I do mind crass hypocrisy. Australia should probably encourage Indonesia to invade PNG to restore the rule of law and save the Aussie taxpayer $500 million a year in aid that we can no longer afford.

We need to be cautious when interpreting developments in Indonesia: Jokowi won last July - but only just. More than 30 per cent of the electorate didn't vote. Jokowi has been a huge disappointment and his failure to rise to the position and deliver on the promises he made to get into power are serious worries. He has yet to be tested on a religious issue. There are liberal Muslims quietly pushing for reformation, but they are numerically small and often threatened. There is no freedom of religion - you must belong to one of the six government approved faiths. Atheism is not an option unless you want to serve jail time. There are occasional flickers of sunlight but a change of weather seems unlikely at this stage.
Finally, one correspondent is misinformed about the use of Chinese characters and language. Those restrictions vanished more than a decade ago - we even openly celebrate Chinese New Year.