Video: Rudd gives Indonesian schools funding boost

11 Dec 2008
ABC News video.

Education versus the Koran. If I was a betting man, my money would be on the Koran in the long-term as the better predictor of Muslim behaviour. Without some concurrent Islamic reformation (mission impossible), it's probably money down the drain.

Indonesia: attack forces Indonesian Christians off campus

August 22, 2008

JAKARTA — Hundreds of Christian theology students have been living in tents since a mob of angry Muslim neighbors stormed their campus last month wielding bamboo spears and hurling Molotov cocktails.

The incident comes amid growing concern that Indonesia's tradition of religious tolerance is under threat from Islamic hard-liners.

In talks since the attack, the Arastamar Evangelical School of Theology has reluctantly agreed to shut its 20-year-old campus in east Jakarta, accepting an offer this week to move to a small office building on the other side of the Indonesian capital...

The government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, which relies on the support of Islamic parties in Parliament, is struggling to balance deep Islamic traditions and a secular constitution. With elections coming next April, the government seems unwilling to defend religious minorities, lest it be portrayed as anti-Islamic in what is the world's most populous Muslim-majority country.

Indonesian Muslim hard-liner on trial for attack

August 21, 2008

JAKARTA: The leader of a hard-line Islamic group in Indonesia went on trial Thursday for allegedly mobilizing followers to attack demonstrators at a religious tolerance rally two months ago.

Members of the Islamic Defenders' Front — many clad in Islamic robes and headscarves — were caught on video attacking men, woman and children with bamboo sticks at the June 1 demonstration in Jakarta.

The 200 peaceful demonstrators included Christians and members of the Ahmadiyah minority Muslim sect, which the hard-liners consider heretical. They were gathered at the National Monument to celebrate the country's tradition of religious tolerance...

Moderate Muslims have called for the disbanding of the group, known by its Indonesian acronym FPI. It has a history of ransacking establishments considered un-Islamic.

School program generates goodwill in Indonesia

Aug 12, 2008

School room diplomacy - that's what the Australian Foreign Affairs Minister, Stephen Smith is engaged in in Indonesia as he and his Indonesian counterpart, Hassan Wirajuda today embark on a day long trip to south Sulawesi.

They'll open an Australian supported school - one of one thousand either built or under construction. Mr Smith believes the program is a way to make ambassadors for Australia out of Indonesian children and says it's all part of strengthening an already very strong relationship.

SMITH: You can have good relations between ministers and governments but what in the end really solidifies a relationship between nation states is people-to-people contact. And in very many respects education is the best way of people-to-people contacts. So having young Indonesians educated knowing that Australia played a role in that, the prospect that in their later years they can go to Australia on a scholarship, when we take part in the education of young Indonesians they end up being ambassadors for Australia for life.

CURTIS: And is stopping any radical Muslim schools being set up is that part of the thinking behind it?

SMITH: Well no, the program applies to both state schools and to Islamic schools and of the 2000 the split's effectively 15-hundred state schools and about 500 Islamic schools, but to qualify the Islamic school has to effectively teach the national curriculum. It's not dissimilar to religious schools in Australia teaching the national curriculum or the state curriculum as approved by the various state educational bodies. So we don't have that as if you like our objective. We pursue that in a very robust way with our very strong support for inter-faith dialogue, which we do on a regional basis with Indonesia and which we've indicated we'd like to do globally.

If you want to make friends, maybe you should fund self-defence lessons for Christian schools.

Indonesia agrees to working holiday scheme

August 7, 2008

Immigration Minister Chris Evans said the two countries had finalised an agreement to establish a working holiday visa scheme, similar to one already in place between Australia and numerous other countries.

"This will facilitate the capacity of young people from each country to work and holiday in each other's countries," he said.

"I'm a very firm believer that schemes like this broaden the understanding of each other's cultures." ...

Under the agreement, Indonesians on holiday in Australia would be entitled to work for several months across all sectors, he said...

More Muslims on the loose. Unbelievable. What if their culture involves blowing us up? Is that the sort of understanding you want Mr Evans? Inch by inch, bit by bit, they are extinguishing white Australia.

Indonesian hardliners attack minority sect

August 2, 2008

Muslim extremists have targeted the mosques of an offshoot sect, spurred, perhaps, by an official decree.

The Muslim hard-liners arrived just before midnight armed with stones, clubs and flammable liquid. Townspeople cowering in fear heard chants of "Destroy! Destroy!" and watched the mob set ablaze the mosque of an offshoot Islamic sect that the attackers view as heretical.

"This time they destroyed our property. If they come back, I'm afraid they will target us," said Rina Nurlinawati, a member of the Ahmadiyah sect who was among witnesses to the burning down of the group's mosque in Sukabumi, a quiet hillside town on Indonesia's main island of Java.