I recently visited Indonesia’s Aceh province, a devoutly Muslim territory. What is the situation five years after the devastating tsunami?
Showing all posts tagged Indonesia
The ghosts of Gareth Evans
Murdoch columnist Piers Akerman can usually be relied upon to defend the most powerful in society and belittle the least able to respond. He’s a corporate commentator, after all. But a piece this week, writing about Gareth Evans, the new chancellor of the Australian National University and former Australian attorney-general and foreign minister, surprisingly reminds…
The Jakarta Post: Changing people’s perceptions about Jews
The following feature by Desy Nurhayati appears in yesterday’s Jakarta Post: His recent visit to Aceh made Antony Loewenstein the first Jew that most people in the country’s devoutly Muslim province had ever met or engaged with. Some Acehnese he met were surprised to learn that the Jewish-Australian journalist, author of the controversial and best-selling…
Bali has become home base for the Pan-Asia literati
I recently attended the wonderful Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali, Indonesia. Here’s a good news story about it, published in the South China Morning Post on 1 November: With its old craft culture, mildly bohemian cafes and array of misty hilltop vistas, Ubud in Bali seems to have grown almost to fit its…
Right’s new radicals
My following book review appears today in Sydney’s Sun Herald newspaper: Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party Max Blumenthal (Nation Books, $49.95) Reviewed by Antony Loewenstein Christian fundamentalists have taken over the Republican Party. “It’s become the party of birthers, deathers and Civil War re-enacters,” Max Blumenthal told the Los Angeles Times…
The great pains of Aceh
For some reason, there’s an avalanche of stories in the Western media about Aceh in Indonesia (all after my recent visit there.) Here’s the latest, in the Los Angeles Times, about the significance of the two large ships that have become massive memorials to the horrific 2004 tsunami (one of my pictures is here): They…
Aceh moves to the sharia beat
Having just visited Aceh in Indonesia, this New York Times feature about the place is timely: Just before noon prayers one recent Friday — a mandatory session for men — the Shariah police’s all-female brigade hopped onto a Toyota pickup to begin patrols. Dressed in olive uniforms, the officers hewed to the city center, away…
How moderate is Islam in the world’s largest Muslim state?
Islamism in Indonesia is something I examined during my recent visit there (my thoughts picked up by the Atlantic). It’s a small issue that shouldn’t be over-estimated but the reality exists:
The Jewish background of Aceh
My following article is published in Crikey: In the shadow of Aceh’s tsunami memorial museum sits a colonial, Dutch-era cemetery. Framed by overgrown grass and red flowers, graves lie disjoined, the result, I was told by writer Fozan Santa, of time and the tsunami’s raging water. At the back of the space, behind ornate statues…
Indonesia moves a little towards America, for now
Following my recent visit to Aceh in Indonesia, this piece in today’s Washington Post is particularly interesting (though highlights the seeming inability of the American corporate media to see the world in anything other than what benefits the US): In many ways, Indonesia — a nation of 240 million people scattered across 17,000 islands —…