Breakin' Rocks in the Hot Sun

Well it's been a somewhat less than enlightening time in Indonesia over the last couple of weeks. The Youtube video of the Ahmadiyah killings certainly gave me a few nightmares and made me wonder about the new religious orthodoxy sweeping the nation in a scrum of white robes, wispy beards and incandescent rage ready to boil over and be directed against anyone who has the audacity to hold different beliefs.

The philosophical argument that orthodox religion makes people less, rather than more moral is one that I, as a card-carrying infidel, fully subscribe to. Given that our morality, like our physical bodies, has evolved and is innate, we should have the courage to rely on our own convictions and judgements.

In contrast, dogmatic beliefs demand that the faithful follow rules strictly, like automatons, without thinking or questioning why they are taking certain courses of action, or why certain acts are either moral or immoral. Fundamentalists lack moral finesse and depth as a result. Their morality is merely reactive. What Nietzsche dubbed a slave morality.

Well that's enough from Atheism 101 for another week. The president is quite rightly copping plenty of flak over the incident. As the philosopher Hegel pointed out, the most dangerous ideology to any government is its own. For example, despite the still stubbornly persisting anti-communist rhetoric, I think it is fair to say that communism is not a major threat to Indonesia these days. There certainly aren't any on the political scene, as there still are in other countries.

 No, the real threat to Indonesia’s elites is the ideology that they actually pledge their allegiances to, namely secular democracy. It’s a threat because people might have the audacity to expect their leaders to live up to these ideals, and actually do what they say they're going to do.

So will the Indonesian public at large rise up once again and walk like Egyptians? Well they are certainly down with the whole social media thing that's supposed to be so potentially insurrectionary these days, although I'm not sure that for the most part it actually stretches much beyond taking a picture of the ‘soto ayam’ that they had for lunch on their Blackberries and then posting it up on Facebook under a status update that says, "This is what I had for lunch, yummy!"

And what of the actual forces of law and order, the police, what were they doing during all this mayhem? Well they were standing by in their ill fitting brown shirts, with epaulettes the size of Korans, and watching it all happen it would seem. Possibly they have sympathies with the rioters, I mean there are plenty of circumstances under which an Indonesian policeman won’t think twice about kicking seven shades of crap out of somebody, you just ask Amnesty International.

Ultimately though, what the apoplectic critics of the police force that have filled the media over the last week have failed to grasp, is that the actual law is largely irrelevant to most things that happen in this country. The police force has been essentially privatised here, and the public can avail themselves of a full range of law enforcement services, which can be bought for an easily payable, interest free fee. Simply pop into your local police station and pick up a price list. I believe there's a 30% discount this month on having a bothersome business partner arrested on the flimsiest of pretexts and then banged up in the slammer.

Thankfully, I've never enjoyed the edifying experience of having an Indonesian policeman’s size 9 wrapped around my ear hole. Although, over the years, I have been stopped more times than I care to recall in those classic, late night ID checks. If the policeman rejects your photocopy, the only way out is, as the British euphemism goes, to "Buy a ticket to the policeman's ball." God knows when this Indonesian policeman's ball is actually going to take place, but they’ll need to hire Gelora Bung Karno stadium on the big night in order to accommodate the crowds.

The main reason for such late-night tappings on the driver's side window in any normal country would be to administer a breathalyser test. However Indonesian law enforcers generally seem unusually unconcerned about being confronted with a motorist driving with one eye open, who greets them with a hiccup punctuated, "Malamat Salam." Strange really, as our brave boys in brown could surely rake in a fortune if they attempted to actually enforce drink-driving laws here.

My most recent run-in with the cops here came after I executed a U-turn I apparently shouldn't have.

"Mister, look at the sign, no U-turn."

"Ah, I see now, yes there is a sign there, not the most visible of signs it has to be said, what with it being unlit and at night time, and I also see that it's been deliberately bent behind the tree in front of it so that no one can see it."

"You can help me Mister?"

"No."

"You pay now."

"No."

"Just enough for one packet of cigarettes, come on Mister!"

"Lord almighty, have some dignity man."

Thus it ever was and ever shall be. Amen.

Phil Me Up

More comparative study touring this week folks, this time to the Philippines, somewhere I'd never been before. Alas though, Tony Fernandes' AirAsia doesn't fly to the country for some reason (you'd think he'd be a shoe in with a name like that) so I had to bag a non-budget Air Philippines flight to Manila. Four hours later I touched down at Ninoy Aquino airport and took a taxi that was every bit as dodgy as the ones down at Soekarno-Hatta into town.

It turns out that Manila is similar to Jakarta in many respects, only with more pork, booze and firearms on the menu. The capital of the Philippines is both crowded, traffic jammed, polluted and possessed of a rich/poor chasm that would turn Dick Cheney into a socialist. The people also look exactly like Indonesians, although frustratingly, and rather inconsiderately in my view, they don't speak any Indonesian.

I soon found myself taking in all the classic tourist sites, including a walk through the huge and action packed Rizal Park to the waterfront (which, I have to say, looks considerably cleaner and less likely to be incubating horrendous skin diseases than the turgid stuff sloshing around in Jakarta Bay does). Eventually it was time for a feed. I passed on a local fast food chain called Chic Boy but I felt unwilling to delve into the whole transgender can of worms that the name seemed to imply. Instead, I headed to an infamous bar called the Hobbit House and ordered up an Elvis flooring amount of pork.

The Hobbit House bar is rather unique in that its serving staff are all of diminutive stature. Basically they’re midgets and dwarves, as the not so politically correct terms for these delightful creatures have it. It was slightly unnerving to have one's beer poured by someone not much taller than the tabletop and I wondered if it was all a subtle psychological ploy to make the food portions seem larger in comparison with their tiny frames. I also speculated that naughtier Asian bars could exploit the low-on-the-ground-ness of the female waiting staff to offer customers various other services whilst they supped on their beers.

The classic rock covers band was soon shaking their locks though and, despite my usual misgivings about such bands, I had to admit that they were pretty good. The Philippines is famed for its musicians and, to be honest, the band that I saw at least, micturated all over their Indonesian counterparts from a great height.

The next morning it was time to jump on a bus bound for the beach. As I waited outside the hotel, I noticed a sign next to the security guard in the lobby saying, "Please deposit your firearms here." This is certainly not something you see in Jakarta thank God, as the place would be a bloodbath if your Budi Average was allowed to pack a piece.

The Philippines' recent history is somewhat intertwined with Uncle Sam of course, although I'm not sure that this desire to bang away like a porn star on speed is indigenous to the country or has been largely influenced by the old Charlton Heston brigade. In any case, I'm sure that Filipinos don't quite stretch to insisting, like Chuck, that they will only be separated from their weapons when they’re prized from their cold dead hands. Mind you, when Douglas MacArthur (in many respects perhaps a Heston antecedent) strode ashore and declared to the people of the Philippines that, "I have returned," presumably he was packing a few shooters in his belt.

Three hours from Manila, lays the tourist island of Mindoro and I thought that this would offer a genuine comparative study tour opportunity. It would thus afford me the chance test my firmly held belief that the people in charge of tourism in Indonesia, far from being experts in their own country’s geography and culture, would in fact find it hard to locate their own private parts without the aid of GPS system and are about as marketing savvy as a man who's just come up with a, "Honk if you're Ahmadiyah" bumper sticker.

Mindoro is a gorgeous place in fact and offers top diving, waterfalls, beaches, snorkelling, hot springs and mountains, much like any Indonesian island worth its salt in fact. Where it differed though was in its tourist numbers, which seemed to be at that Goldilocks, "just right," level. Neither creaking under the weight of sheer numbers with an infrastructure pushed to bursting point, like the comparably sized Bali is, but at the same time enjoying enough visitors give the place a bit of fun and life, unlike pretty much everywhere else in Indonesia outside of Bali, Mindoro is everything that islands like Lombok or Belitung could be, but aren't.

Alas, it was all too soon time to return to the Big Durian. I hadn't had nearly enough time to work on my pork belly, but it had been a thoroughly decent break from the psychic distress that Jakarta inflicts on me on a daily basis. Well worth a look.

Friday, I'm in Prayer

This week, I attempted something that, I have to admit, filled me with a certain amount of foreboding and trepidation. Specifically, I strolled to a mosque across the road from my office for a good old Friday prayer session. Five times per day is de rigueur for Mohammedans everywhere and Friday prayers, known as Jumu'ah in Arabic (presumably the root of the Indonesian word 'Jumat' meaning Friday, etymology fans) are considered a special part of the week and apparently attendance is compulsory for all the chaps.

Women can also attend if they want but must remain in their own section at the back (in prayer as in life, one might conclude). There is a passage in the Koran which states that, "O ye who believe! When the call is proclaimed prayer on Friday (the Day of Assembly), hasten earnestly to the remembrance of Allah, and leave off business (and traffic): that is best for you if ye but knew."

Now, I think we can all testify to the business being left off every Friday lunchtime, and the perennial shrug of the shoulders followed by the age-old refrain of, “Sorry, it's Friday prayers, cannot... no ambulances until at least one o'clock I’m afraid Sir."

The traffic part in the above quotation is perhaps not observed with quite the same fervour however and I'm assuming that double parking in front of mosques, creating huge snarl ups, is not considered a mortal sin. Mind you, I'm guessing that camel jams were infrequent in Medina two millennia ago, and so perhaps religious guidance on this matter could be considered sketchy.

And so, I joined the guys as they spilled across the road with their hats and prayer mats last Friday and attempted to remain as inconspicuous at possible. I didn't have either a hat or a prayer mat myself alas, however I doubt that the possession of said items would have helped me in my quest for a low-key presence. I was in the, "Hello Mr" zone that's for sure and soon relaxed. It certainly beats worshippers spilling out of mosques pumped up on fiery anti-infidel demagoguery, ready to burn a few flags, throw a few stones, do a lot of shouting and set fire to my trousers, as is wont to happen elsewhere in the Islamic world.

Christopher Hitchens, the world-famous polemical atheist (who is now in the throes of terminal cancer, much to the delight of his religious critics) was once told by a devout Christian that he would surely feel safer knowing that a group of hypothetical met that were walking down the street towards him had just come out of a prayer meeting. Hitchens replied that far from being a hypothetical situation, he had had this experience in Belfast, Bethlehem, Bombay, Belgrade, Beirut and Baghdad, and when you see groups of men coming out of prayer meetings in these places, you know exactly how fast you have to run in the opposite direction. And that's just the Bs!

Obviously Indonesia has yet to reach this stage, although worrying signs of religious intolerance have been creeping into the country's body politic in recent years. Radicalism seemed far from the agenda at my local mosque though, and I removed my shoes and socks and quietly made my way around the back of the congregation to observe proceedings.

There was no fiery rhetoric this time, only imprecations to do God's will, whatever that might be on any given day. After the sermon and prayers, the faithful spilled out onto the street and, instead of burning effigies of Binyamin Netanyahu, instead hit the mini-marts and local warungs for a decent wedge of divinely blessed drinks, smokes and rice.

As I chomped on my beef rendang, I asked one of the guys how he’d feel if a church was built opposite the mosque. "Well, it's okay if the locals agree," he replied, as if this position delineated the absolute pinnacle of enlightened religious tolerance. Unfortunately though, this is the law now in Indonesia and religious freedom for minority faiths is dependent on the whims of the majority. The government has set an appalling example here by demanding signatures of local communities before and by allowing members of the public to enforce this law, thus legitimizing the lynch mobs that have started to run riot.

"I saw you at the mosque Mr. want to become a Muslim?" I politely declined, prostrating myself five times a day under the auspices of a religion whose name translates into English as, "submission" runs somewhat counter to the independence of mind and thought that I cherish so dearly. No, if I had to choose a faith, I guess that I’d be strolling around the base of Mount Olympus. At least the gods up there didn't really care too much about the affairs of men, at least not in the sense of giving him a list of rules to be adhered to strictly without question. This left the Greek mortals down below free to philosophically enquire into the nature of life and reality, unmolested by religious dogma, a project that proved moderately successful by all accounts. Now where's my toga? That should turn a few heads down Mampang way next Friday.

It's Like a Jungle Sometimes...

This week, I thought that I'd return to my roots, so to speak, and I ended up taking a spin through the very first place that I ever stayed in Jakarta, namely the rough and ready district of Tanah Abang, which can be found very close to Monas. I'm not really sure what spurred this walk down a rather dusty memory lane, although perhaps it was a photo, now well over a decade old, that a friend posted up on Facebook recently. It depicted the old gang, full of smiles, innocence and joie de vivre and it fair brought a tear to my eye so it did.

Anyway, down in Tanah Abang, I strolled through my old ‘hood, namely the complex of four story high apartment blocks known as Rumah Susun in Indonesian. We used to call them, ‘The Projects’ though as it sounded more streetwise and New York hip-hop than their real name. It really wasn't such a bad place to live in however, certainly better than their equivalent in my own home of the UK. There, drugs, gun crime and evil kids shovelling dog excrement and fireworks through pensioners’ letterboxes are the norm. The Indonesian projects though, perhaps like their Singaporean counterparts, are pretty friendly places on the whole.

It's a wonder more accommodation like this isn't built around Jakarta, as it is in Singapore. God knows that this city of 1000 'kampungs' could do with it. I for one certainly didn't regret my year spent in my third floor, small but not absolutely rabbit hutch like flat. In fact the only down side of the whole experience was the morning bread seller who used to ride his bicycle around the towers at five o'clock every morning gleefully honking his horn. I used to entertain fantasies of performing electroshock torture on this poor unfortunate, who would disturb my sleep every single morning. Honk, honk honk, honk, “Roti, roti, roti” honk honk honk. Jesus.

The next part of my voyage through all of my yesterdays took me up the road into the still quite dodgy Tanah Abang market area. This all-time gangsta zone was once the stomping ground of an Indonesian hoodlum and his gang, who, rather humorously, went by the name of Hercules. I believe that Hercules is now out of business and I always used to imagine him as looking like that beefy guy in the Phantom of the Opera mask who’s on that Indonesian crime show every morning, trying to keep people on the straight and narrow and out of clink. I wonder what Hercules is doing these days? Writing his memoirs perhaps, and tending to his begonias.

Tanah Abang market has always been a huge lower class retail scrum, with a specific focus upon the textile industry. The original market burned down a few years ago in somewhat suspicious circumstances, as so many buildings do in this country when plans for new construction are afoot. In its place there now stands an absolutely gargantuan edifice containing a maze of literally thousands of clothes shops. It's all very organised, well, considerably more so than it used to be. Outside however, the area still more closely resembles the refugee camp type ambience of old and there are crippled beggars, piles of garbage and public minivan jams galore to enjoy before you finally reach the hallowed entrance to the market proper.

I headed inside and quickly became lost in the labyrinthine passages filled with bra shops and T-shirt vendors. Prices are amazingly cheap in the new market and I came away with a genuine leather belt which, remarkably enough, genuinely seemed to be made from leather.

I took my leave of the market and headed back out into the heaving, sweating atmosphere of downtown Tanah Abang, an area of the capital that builders of luxury apartments have so far, perhaps wisely, chosen to sidestep. Once this area of Jakarta becomes gentrified then you’ll know that things are really changing. For now though, Tanah Abang remains not so different from how it looked over a decade ago. Just another one of those dusty, timeless Indonesian urban streets blissfully alienated from the mad rush for condominiums and iPhones.

I couldn't really imagine living up in Tanah Abang again these days though. As one gets older one becomes increasingly desirous of a little peace and quiet and to leave the most hectic of urban areas to the younger blades. Mind you, if I really applied the logic of this statement fully, then I most surely wouldn't be living in Jakarta at all. Perhaps it's time for me to go and live halfway up a mountain in Sulawesi then. I could do it, so long as there was a Circle K on the lower slopes.

Get off Your Milk and Drink Your Horse

Jakarta is home to a lively selection of foreign cultural institutes such as the CCF, Erasmus Huis and the Goethe Institute, which all put on classical music concerts, lectures, exhibitions, film festivals and the like. Now though, Uncle Sam has also got in on the act and has come out all guns blazing by setting up the incredibly high-tech @america centre, the first of its kind in the world, down in the suitably high-tech surroundings of Pacific Place mall. The propagandist platitudes of Voice of America are no longer deemed adequate in these ideologically charged times, and so a glitzy, tech wonderland has been constructed, which more closely resembles the Epcot Centre or even the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, than any of the city’s other cultural centres. 

@america's mission is to boldly go where no US embassy has gone before and disseminate an ideology of truth, justice and the American way to eager visiting school kids (before Obama is ignominiously booted from office two years hence and the centre is closed and replaced by a more traditional new world cultural artefact, such as a branch of Starbucks).

First things first though, in order to penetrate into the digitally wired inner sanctum of Pax Americana central, I first had to breach the Fort Knox-esque security detail, which included an x-ray scanner, a full body frisk (my socks came under particular scrutiny for some reason) and the storage of my bag in a clear, Perspex locker. One could perhaps forgive the Guantánamo style vigilance however, as there are no doubt many in Indonesia who would wish to see @america blown into rubble.

I entered the main @america auditorium and was simply staggered by the technological wonderland that had been constructed. There were screens everywhere, multicoloured lighting, an iPad lending centre, interactive touchscreens on stands, a DJ and a huge six screen surround Google Earth to try. I felt like an ant that had accidentally crawled through the USB port of high end smartphone.

All very impressive, but was there actually any substance behind the semiconductor pizzazz? Or would @america proved to be more Shania than Mark, Twain wise that is? I strolled over to one of the jumbo, three foot wide iPad style touch tablets and fired up a quiz about the US. "What's the name of the American national anthem?" the screen said. I was presented with four options, "The Star Banner, The Star Spangled Banner, Stars and Stripes Forever or The Pledge of Allegiance." Smarty-pants that I am, I correctly stabbed the second answer and was mildly disappointed that Jimi Hendrix's stratospheric rendition of this iconic piece of music didn't fire up over the speakers in celebration.

Time for another question: "Which of the following US presidents never visited Indonesia: George Bush, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter." Well, I knew that the first three had all washed up on these shores during their time in office. On his 1986 visit to Indonesia, Ronald Reagan famously described Suharto as a, "longtime friend of the US," and talked of how, "the winds of freedom are blowing," through the region, which I think it speaks volumes about the US’s purported goal of spreading democracy overseas. 

I touched the last name on the list, Jimmy Carter, the one-time peanut farmer who ironically never found time to make it over to the land of satay sauce during his single term in office. However I remember him being here in 1999 as part of a delegation sent to check the impartiality of the country's first post President "Winds of Freedom" Suharto election.

After browsing some groovy interactive science and eco-consciousness raising software, I headed into @america's other main room and chanced upon my favourite part of the whole place, namely a version of Google Earth rendered on six large surround screens. (The screens themselves were made by that most celebrated of US tech brands...erm... Samsung). I'm sure that most of you reading this have enjoyed a good click around on Google Earth before, and the new 3D street level views are particularly amazing and allow you to zoom right up to your old geography teacher's front door and fantasise about lobbing a grenade through the letterbox.

The six screen surround version was simply jawdropping though and I could have spent all day clicking around, burning through the Grand Canyon and wondering exactly why Google's London buses had all been rendered hovering two feet above the road.

I finished off my @america afternoon in front of a web cam, which took four pictures of me covered in digitally rendered snow and then sent them automatically to yours truly via e-mail (although at the time of writing they still haven’t arrived in my inbox. Julian Assange may have got to them first perhaps).

@america may not be the most intellectual of environments but it perhaps offers some insight into the school of the future. There is an increasing mismatch between the traditional, analogue classroom, in which the teacher stands at the front and drones on and on, and the new tech savvy, touchscreen jabbing younger generation, who are having their central nervous systems rewired and accelerated by interactive digital technologies. In this regard, perhaps @america is a glimpse into the future. Definitely Shania though.

It's a Holiday in Cambodia...

This festive season I thought that I’d leave the somewhat dispiriting anti-Santa vibe being promulgated around Indonesia and go on an ASEAN voyage of discovery. My comparative study tour to Cambodia went without a hitch, although it wasn't at the taxpayers’ expense, as such jaunts so often are here (when politicians undertake them at least).

Shame that, but no matter because the Rp.1,000,000 fiscal exit tax has now been abolished (as of January 1st) which, along with the continued expansion of regional carriers, particularly the ever ambitious AirAsia, should open the region up to Indonesian travellers like never before. I wonder what they'll make of cities such as Phnom Penh and Ho Chi Minh in comparison with their own urban centres? 

Certainly Phnom Penh was quite delightful and I'm sure that at least two or three of my six and a half regular readers must have been there before. The city makes for a pleasant change from Jakarta's demographic black hole that's for sure. However Phnom Penh and the country of Cambodia beyond has a dark recent history, one in which demographics also played their part (25% of the population were offed, that's two million people).

I thought that I would get the dark side out the way first and check out the Khmer Rouge's genocidal Killing Fields. Perhaps in retrospect though, this was a rather un-life affirming way of spending a jolly Christmas Boxing Day (December 26th). “Ho Ho Ho, happy Christmas Mister Cambodian 'tuk-tuk' driver, and how are you this fine day Sir?”

“Genocide Mister? You waan see genocide?”

“Erm...will there be turkey?”

I soon found myself checking out the many skulls on display at the Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre (a memorial and museum), which lies some 15km from town. Most disturbing of all was the tree behind the memorial, upon which thousands upon thousands had their brains smashed out (why waste bullets, ay?). The victims included kids who were swung by their feet headfirst into the trunk. Nice.

On a neighbouring tree hung a sign written in stuttering English which said, "Magic tree: the tree was used as a tool to hang a loudspeaker which make sound louder to avoid the moan of victims while they were being executed." Words fail me. During periods of wet weather in this now peacefully bucolic part of the world, teeth and fragments of bone still find their way to the surface of the mud from the now exhumed mass graves below. Appalling as such scenes are, events like this and the Nazi Holocaust still manage to exert a ghastly fascination in the face of humanity pushed to its extremes.

The Khmer Rouge’s reign was almost certainly, despite some pretty stiff competition, the world's worst stab at communism to date. These guys promulgated an ideology so pure that even redemption was ruled out and the slate had to be wiped completely clean in order for a fresh start. Religion may well be an opiate but at least you get to reach paradise after a lifetime of obedience. By the Khmer Rouge's account, you have to die in order to realise a paradise in which you will play no part.

Mind you, at exactly the same time as all this was going on, Indonesia was, percentage wise at least, offing similar numbers of East Timorese, and certainly not in the name of communism. I think it's fair to say that Marx's critique of capitalism didn't include a discussion of how not enough kids were having their brains smashed out against trees. Where Marx differed from those other turn-of-the-century arch atheist provocateurs, Freud and Nietzsche, however was that he ultimately believed that humans were fundamentally rational creatures, and could therefore achieve a peaceful and egalitarian brotherhood of man on Earth. Boy did the Khmer Rouge prove him wrong on that score.

Cambodia is now a country reborn however and a fantastic place for a holiday. Tourism and the economy are booming and the capital is a fun place to spend a few days, checking out the amazing temples and enjoying the riverside bars and restaurants. In fact, the sunny, easy going and historically rich Phnom Penh vibe is far closer to Yogyakarta than Jakarta.

I also followed the well worn tourist trek up to Siem Reap in order to check out the breathtaking Angkor Wat complex. Like Java's iconic Borobudur, the temples here sit in a beautiful area of countryside, however the sheer scale of the complex itself is something else entirely. That people managed to build things such as the pyramids and the temples of Angkor without forklifts, pneumatic drills, huge trucks and hard hatted workmen with their bum cracks showing over the top of their jeans drinking tea out of flasks, always seems completely implausible to me. The temples can be cycled around in a couple of days via lovely, shaded, leafy lanes and well deserve their so called “Eighth Wonder of the World” status.

And so the skies continue to open up over the ASEAN region, the fiscal tax is gone and there's never been a better time for Indonesians to check out their near neighbours. Will this adversely affect domestic tourism though? Your move RI.

Mistletoe and Whine

Deck the Halls with boughs of holly, fa la la la la la la la and further more la. I have no gift to bring, parumpa pum pum. Let's hope (but not pray, as that can get you into all kinds of trouble in this blessed country at the moment) that things remain peaceful this festive season. To be frank, it's not been a very good year for the country's religious minorities and a few months ago, I even found myself joining a group of demonstrating Christians up at Monas as they protested their increasing persecution.

I should stress that I myself am a non-believer, but that I believe it's important for people to be able to sustain their delusions of heavenly redemption unmolested by the tragically confused, stick wielding members of a rival religion (surely a worse experience than waking up on Christmas morning to find that Santa has clambered onto your roof, dropped his handsome, red felt trousers, sat on the chimney and let loose a volley of miniature Christmas puddings down onto the living room below.

Non-Muslim worship is indeed getting trickier here. For believers, plan A is obviously to build your own church (or temple, or synagogue... actually, scratch that last one, that's not going to happen). Current Indonesian law enforces a tyranny of the religious majority though and so that's not working out. So frustrated faith heads turn to plan B, namely inviting a few people over to their homes for a prayer session. Attempts at this have also resulted in a lot of purple faced shouting by various types claiming that the practice is both illegal (saying prayers at home, illegal?) and noisy (this complaint is certainly a case of, "Physician heal thyself.").

And so we moved swiftly along to plan C, i.e. trudge into a muddy field, hope it doesn't piss down with rain, and say a few prayers there. Alas though a couple of weeks after the aforementioned Christian demonstration that I attended, the vicar who had led the demo was stabbed in the stomach as he led his flock in muddy worship. So I think it’s fair to say that plan C hasn’t panned out too well either. Proselytizing to decent, Allah fearing earthworms is clearly not to be countenanced.

This leaves, most chillingly of all, plan D, which has been offered to the much persecuted Islamic Ahmadiyah sect over in Lombok. The local governor there can't understand why the Ahmadiyah community hasn't embraced with open arms an offer to relocate them all to a nearby island. Apartheid? Jewish ghettos? The Gulag? Concentration camps? Well, you can select your own ghastly historical parallel. I guess though that really committed orthodox militant types could still boat over to the island and have a go at them. Although a more striking image of a suicide bomber wearing a green helmet with a crescent moon and star symbol on it climbing into a cannon and being shot onto the island from the mainland as a human cannonball has just poked its way into my head.

I guess that moves us on to plan E, whatever that is. Several disused submarines anchored together on the ocean floor perhaps? This is all getting a bit negative though. Tis the season of goodwill towards all men after all (which is this Christmas to be secured by 87,000 police officers and security personnel. Warning: actual amount of goodwill towards all men may vary according to local factors, and the management and shareholders of Christmas PLC can't be held responsible for any disappointment caused by any of its products).

Last week however, I had the pleasure of attending a charity Christmas dinner, complete with a perhaps rather unconvincing Indonesian Santa Claus sporting a comedy beard that seemed to engulf his entire face. It may have been 30°c outside but I had no problem at all in scoffing several colon stretching plates of midwinter grub, and then came the entertainment. A group of kids from a local orphanage who were the beneficiaries of the charity dinner came up on stage to serenade us all with some jolly Christmas Carols.

It was a touching moment made all the more impressive by the fact that the kids couldn't speak a word of English and had clearly learned the carols phonetically, much like many of the rock covers bands that play in bars around town (not to mention people reading holy texts all over the country). What with Indonesia, and indeed many other places, currently flushing Enlightenment philosophy down the toilet, I half expected some FPI stormtroopers to barge in and trash the tables of turkey. Getting these presumably Muslim orphans to sing Christmas carols surely can’t be something they’d approve of.

It's depressing isn't it folks? And silly. As John Locke once noted, if human beings really are going to be judged by a god when they die, then you have to grant them the use of their own free will, so that they may choose a path through life from which such a judgement about them can then be made. Thus the very nature of religious faith itself is contradicted by compulsion. There you go, apply a bit of logic to the situation and the problem is solved. Anyway, happy midwinter solstice one and all. And pray hard for a peaceful New Year my children. Very hard indeed. Amen.