Tom Pepinsky

Category: Current Affairs

  • Yes, I Admit, It's Getting Better

    I’ve been talking to a lot of people since I’ve been here, and a conclusion that a lot of people have been making about Indonesia is that things are getting better.  The economy is growing at a healthy rate (the question is, is it growing unhealthily fast?), democracy is stable and consolidating (no one will overthrow SBY, the army is formally out of politics, elections are free and fair), corruption is under attack (no great results yet, but the effort is clearly there and it’s taken seriously), and radicalism is being contained (no major terrorist attacks lately, civil conflicts are mostly over, Islamic parties realize that they have to offer substantive good governance rather than pleas to sharia if they are to get votes).  This is really interesting stuff, and as a pessimist, I wasn’t quite prepared for this.

    One way to notice this is by looking around you.  Having not been here in about 20 months, I was unprepared to see that for the first time since I’ve been coming to Jakarta, people are actually developing new property in the city.  I was talking about this with some friends in a mall over lunch today, and it struck me that the mall wasn’t there last time I was here!   The Transjakarta Busway and "traffic-free" days seem to be making a difference with the crowded streets and perhaps the smog a bit too.  I think that the streets I’m most familiar with (Wahid Hasyim, Sabang, Thamrin, Sudirman, Yusuf Adiwinata, and Cokroaminoto) are noticeably cleaner in the beginning of 2008 than they were in 2004.  I see fewer beggars.  These are all good things, and make me feel proud of Indonesia.  I wouldn’t pretend that I’m satisfied or that everything is fixed now, because there are still huge problems with corruption, illegal economies, pollution, and income opportunities for all Indonesians.  But, it’s getting better all the time.

    My plan before dinner is to take my American cell phone with me down the street, where I believe I might find the madrasah that Barack HUSSEIN Obama attended back when he was Indonesian, and try to take a picture of it.

  • A Whole Boatload of Awesome

    This is great.  I see commercials on the news here all the time for this album, which are strangely paired with public service announcements that Indonesians should respect intellectual property rights in order to safeguard the national treasures of Indonesian cultural life.  Don’t worry SBY, I won’t be downloading "Good Luck With Your Struggle" illegally.

    To continue our theme from yesterday, two other things I’ve seen on TV that are interesting for discussions of Islam.  First is a television program called Halal? which tries to help Indonesians figure out whether or not certain things are permitted or not under Islamic law.  (Don’t forget, Islamic law is open to interpretation and legal scholarship (fiqh)).  The discussion yesterday was whether or not Islam prohibits body-piercing.  I thought it was going to be very much opposed, given that it started off with videos of tons of Indonesian schoolgirls with pierced tongues and big thick bars through their ear cartilage, accompanied by a soundtrack that would have been appropriate for any telenovela.  But it turns out, according to Hasyim Muzadi, the leader of the Indonesian Council of Ulamas, body piercing is not necessarily that big of a deal.  The only things that would make it forbidden are whether its done out of pride and self-centeredness, in which case it violates injunctions against immodesty, or whether it is harmful to your health, in which case it violates injunctions against self-injury.  So body piercing is OK unless it’s done "excessively" (berlebihan) or makes you sick.  Given that these are very fuzzy concepts, there’s an interesting amount of personal discretion there.

    The other was a news piece on a village in Central Java that was carrying out a ceremony to ward of disasters, given that Indonesia’s current national disaster is floods.  They slaughtered a cow and buried its head with a bunch of medicinal plants, then banged on some gongs and did a bunch of chanting that I did not understand.  Then the local religious leader said an Islamic blessing.  This is a good illustration of how Islam coexists rather easily with pre-Islamic religious practices in Indonesia.  Although I’m not sure why this should surprise most Americans, with their yearly Saturnalia festival and all.