Cleon said:
Indonesia, while the most populous Muslim nation in the world, is not ruled by sharia. It's actually fairly secular.
This conviction is due to ridiculous anti-drug laws, which are encouraged by the US. Islam has little to do with it.
Indonesia is not ruled by sharia, but it might be a mistake to dismiss the recent changes in their drug laws as being purely driven by their mimicry of US policy. Islam is very much part of this.
November 14, 2001
"Indonesia's President Megawati Sukarnoputri, faced with rising heroin, methamphetamine, and ecstasy use, as well as rapidly increasing rates of HIV/AIDS infection among the island nation's 230 million inhabitants, has tightened her embrace of a repressive drug war approach to drug policy. In a blistering speech at a national seminar on drugs at the State Palace in Jakarta on October 29, Megawati scolded the country's drug war coordinating agency, the BKNN, for its failure to stop illicit drug use, demanded harsher sentences for drug offenders, recommended the death penalty for some, and suggested the Indonesian military, best known for its brutal efforts to suppress separatist populations in places like East Timor and Aceh province, could be asked to lend a hand against the new foe."
http://www.alternet.org/story/11917
"Fundamentalist Islamic forces claim the drug epidemic is caused by “an attack on freedom by the ideologies of the capitalist-secularist Western nations.†In their view, drug dealers are greedy capitalists lusting after ever-increasing profits. But drug dealing also strategically weakens a generation of young Muslims. “With damaged lifestyles, bodies, minds, intellects, and with their social skills weakened, capitalist nations can easily enslave Muslim societies in the future.†Any self-respecting Muslim, they claim, can not sit in silence and witness the destruction of the younger generation. "
http://www.worldpress.org/Asia/1487.cfm
How long have these groups been within the borders of our homogenous society?
The presence of these groups is not new. For example, Hizbut Tahrir was established in 1952 by Sheik Taqiyuddin An Nabhani in the Middle East and spread to Indonesia in the 1980s. That has been quite a long time, even though their activities were carried out secretly (an underground movement) because the situation at the time did not allow it.
"Meanwhile other {Militant Sharia} groups, like Laskar Jihad, Majelis Mujahiddin and others, have arisen since President Soeharto stepped down. With reformation, they saw that social and political disorientation had happened in the community and with it the collapse of state authority and law enforcement. Sociologically, things like that are born. Understanding that when the authority of the state is no longer present and also law enforcement is absent in the community, they or whatever group there might be, try to take over that authority as an effort to restore law and order as a teaching of amar makruf nahi munkar (doing good and preventing evil) that they believed in."
http://www.persecution.org/whitepapers/indonesia-2002-06-01.html
