Well Rick, the Islamic fanatics are on a rampage in a country where you have spent some time. A prayer for the Christian brothers and sisters living in that country is certainly in order:
The SBY cabinet includes a few members who are known to be advocates of
Islam law and practice, inter-alia, the vice president himself and the
national secretary. Now already, banks have a department for deposits
without interest, because in the Islam, interest is taboo. The big foreign
banks however, do not know how to apply that in its business operation.
Likewise, insurance companies, they have a department for giving profit
commissions, instead of keeping company's profit for themselves, because
insurance is prohibited at all by Islam. In the insurance world however,
Arabian insurance companies are known to be operating like the others still.
On the Jakarta streets you now see more and more of the women wearing
"cadar" head scarves -- but fortunately, not the closed black ones like what
Iranian women had to wear. Anyway, the general tendency is that more and
more of life is being islamitized and nobody knows where will be the end of
it. For us lawyers it would be disaster if the Burgerlijk Wetboek (from the old Dutch lawbook) is repelled and replaced by an Islam code altogether. Regarding the quran translation, this is my first time of hearing from you that in the translations thereof in English, the word God must be changed into Allah.
That however, according to me we need not to worry too much about -- as long as they do not touch our bible. But again, will they stop at their own
quran? I am worried about the fact that the cabinet includes such fiercely
Islam advocates like the Vice President himself and the Secretariaat General. As a matter of fact, I do not envy Mari Pangestu (a Christian of Chinese origin), the Minister of Trade. HG |
