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| Southeast Asia |
| Nahdatul Ulama calls for end to sharia campaigns |
| 2002-12-30 |
| Jakarta Post Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), Indonesia's largest Muslim organization, urged Muslims, in particular radicals, to cease campaigns for Islamic sharia law, as well as violence in promoting religion. "Struggling for sharia to be enforced in Indonesia is not realistic. What we need is to develop universal values for the people's prosperity," NU chairman Hasyim Muzadi told The Jakarta Post on Sunday. Well, dip me in batter and fry me for an oyster! My breath's just been taken away! "Universal values are also Islamic. This has already been adopted in the 1945 Constitution," he added. And denied at the tops of their lungs by Islamists... In a year-end news conference on Saturday in Jakarta, Hasyim said a moral movement involving national leaders of different faiths and non-partisan scholars should promote religious values that are coherent with national interests. "This is because confusing religion with the state will only destabilize the country and its people. That's why religious politicization in a narrow-minded sense will only undermine noble values and religious universalities," he was quoted by the Antara news agency as saying. Sounds like secularism to me. This guy's putting himself in line for a bullet or a carload to TNT... Hasyim further said Muslims should shed Islamic symbols and formalities in an effort to make a success of their struggle for the nation's prosperity. "The Islamic struggle should be packed with national idioms. If Islamic formalities like sharia are put forward in this common struggle, it will collide with other beliefs, and then it's a failure," he added. Apparently Hasyim has seen the light. Last June, when Singapore was urging the Indons to get off the stick, Nadhlatul Ulama complained that 'Lee is either paranoid or wants to please the United States in its international campaign against terrorism.' It's also engaged in periodic and predictable anti-American rants. Perhaps the Bali bombings were actually the wake-up call they needed... |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #2 P.s. I'm no agnostic or atheist: I'm a Christian trying to get back to the core and heart of my religion, and having to fight to clear away the barnacles, seaweed, and other BS that have accreted or been attached thereto by one religious leader or another in an effort to "improve" on the original or "adapt it" to modern times. |
| Posted by: Ptah 2002-12-30 12:25:35 |
| #1 "...That's why religious politicization in a narrow-minded sense will only undermine noble values and religious universalities," Truer words have never been said: Give a religion, any religion, state power, and they'll twist and pervert their core doctrines in an effort to add religion as an enforcement mechanism. |
| Posted by: Ptah 2002-12-30 12:21:44 |