Tuesday, February 07, 2012

The religion of peace

I'm seriously glad I don't live in Indonesia it seems to be becoming more of an intolerant and fundamentalist state by the year. Recently an atheist, Alexander Aan, made a defiant declaration of his personal viewpoint on Facebook saying simply that "God doesn't exist" For his troubles he's now staring down the barrel of a jail sentence for blasphemy (a victimless crime) Some Muslim groups in his homeland are even calling for him to be beheaded as apparently jail isn't good enough for non-believers. Of course many would say that these are the voices of extremists but we hear this kind of thing so often I find this point of view increasingly hard to swallow.

Indonesian law only recognises six religions (Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Catholicism, Protestantism and Confucianism) and bad mouthing any of them is a chargeable offence punishable with a maximum of 5 years in prison. Have you ever heard anything so mind crushingly backwards? Well, maybe creationism, LED watches and the x-factor.. in any case it's with sadness that I strike another beautiful country with pernicious cultural values off my bucket list.

1 comment:

Chairman Bill said...

Homeopathy - you can't leave homeopathy off the list.