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To: marshmallow

Indonesia, while majority Muslim, is a patchwork quilt of different religions and even of degrees of severity in Islamic beliefs. This region has long been a hotbed of fundamentalism. Christianity is widespread but under great pressure. I think everyone recalls Timor.


4 posted on 02/18/2014 9:01:47 AM PST by JimSEA
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To: JimSEA
Aceh, the north end of Sumatra and directly adjacent to the earthquake zone affected by the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004, is easily the most fanatically Muslim region in the Indonesian archipelago.

Bali, that idealized island east of Java, is as Hindu as one can imagine. Djakarta is too teeming a modern Third World megalopolis for any one Muslim sect to lord over, for the moment. Islamic mass movements and oppressions can and do arise in these islands like regional outbreaks of malaria. Pray for the local churches.

Then there's Timor.

Those wishing to understand the differences between our relations with Islam now and before 911 can learn from the Timor-Leste war for independence. I wonder whether East Timor would have succeeded today, for example. They may have been "lucky" to have been assisted in their independence by modern world powers less tolerant of militant Islam than it seems to be today.

6 posted on 02/18/2014 9:41:03 AM PST by Prospero (Si Deus trucido mihi, ego etiam fides Deus.)
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