Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Frankly Mr Shankly]

This should throw the cat amongst the pigeons.

http://www.indonesiamatters.com/5453/ilusi-negara-islam/

Leaders of the biggest mainstream Muslim organisations in Indonesia have come out with this book, outlining why Indonesia should remain nominally secular and resist the hard turn sought by Wahabist/Salafist groups.

[Big_Bird]

I ended up in a very interesting discussion with a Saudi classmate yesterday. He sometimes tries to catch up with me after class to get advice about how to do his assignment tasks - he's convinced I've got some sort of 'native speaker magic' that helps me divine exactly what our (non-native) lecturer is looking for. It's all there in the bloody instructions. But he always appears so vexed and bewildered that I end up helping him [once an ESL teacher, always an ESL teacher?]. So he went and bought me coffee and snacks while I wrote him out a fairly detailed outline of how he might go about doing his task, and having done him such a favour I then felt cheeky enough to ask him straight out whether he was a Wahhabi - and then what his thoughts were on Wahhabism.

He spoke to me about it for ages. His tribe were not Wahhabi, and they've had Wahhabi practices imposed on them (this mostly happened when the government encouraged their tribe to leave their nomadic lifestyle and take up urban living). There is a lot of resentment all around Saudi Arabia apparently, because the dominant Wahhabis forced their (deviant) way of life on all the other tribes. We discussed the strict gender segregation, and he explained that it is really over the top and extreme, and totally foreign to his father's generation. He said it was quite normal for women to go out with the men to help shepherd or herd animals in the past, and lots of men from his tribe fell in love with women they spoke to out gathering water. He doesn't consider the Wahhabis to be true Muslims, as they murdered so many people, including members of his tribe. [I remember reading about how when their sect first arose in the 18th century, Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab and his followers went around seeking descendants of the prophet and killing them]. He also disapproves of the great power their clerics have, saying that in true Islam everyone is equal and there ought not to be priests with any special power. Interestingly, he said that these days the Saudi government is becoming less Wahhabi, and they are trying to curb the extremism of the Wahhabis. The rise of the internet in Saudi Arabia has also given voice to many of the non-Wahhabists who greatly resent what has been done to them, and he thinks they are heading for much social change.

It's not Indonesia I know, but it's a similar theme and I thought this would be of interest to this thread.

[Big_Bird]

[Big_Bird]

There's a struggle within Egyptian society, though the conservatives are still faring much better there than in Indonesia.

Egypt: a society of taboos

[Summer Wine]

[mithridates]

[Summer Wine]

[Sergio Stefanuto]

[mithridates]

[Summer Wine]

Sergio wrote

[Sergio Stefanuto]

[Summer Wine]