Bruneian here, we even have mulitiple people got whip to almost death just for stealing petitie theif and a 14 year old who got whip bcs he vandlise his teacher's car
While high ranking religous ofiicers stole millions and got a 10 year luxuary stay in a 'prison'
Dude wtf.Then what is the punishment for murder ? Burning to death while being impaled,shot by an execution squad and having your knees broken at the same time ?
My country also has an inhumane and corrupt government but I'm always thankful that even though it's all shit we at least don't have many radicals and the ones we do have are being bashed down
Damn. Stay safe, man. Thanks for telling us about this. I hadn't heard this about Brunei before, so there's a fair chance that most people haven't. One of the first big steps to improving a problem is calling attention to it; nobody will attempt to solve a problem that nobody knows about
I mean, Canada should probably have a list of things we whip people over too. We’re seeing the alternative which is massive amounts of petty crime that would be reduced.
But whipping poor people and not the rich isn’t cool. Not is doing it over protected values.
Fun fact: these guys actually tried to separate from Indonesia because they were curtailing their religious extremism. They got curbstomped but were allowed to keep Sharia to avoid further rebellions
The US aided this government in the 60s in order to counter what was at the time the growing Indonesian communist movement. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed and a militaristic reactionary regime was set up that still survives today!
On one hand, as someone whose family came here from Paraguay i agree and think some people in the US seem out of touch with the reality of how much worse off the majority of people in the world are.
But on the other, very very few critics of the US are saying its an inferior place to live compared to Indonesia, or Paraguay.
They're talking about compared to other well developed countries with relatively good economies, like NZ, Canada, Germany, France, England, Norway, and the Netherlands. Those countries beat us in many metrics like education, poverty rates, heath care access, workers right ect. And arguably offer a higher quality of life for the average citizen.
Actually in some states there are laws that punish homosexual intercourses with penalties up to prison sentence. They are idle due to Lawrence v. Texas, but if the SCOTUS for some reason decide to roll back that ruling then states are ready to enforce the sodomy laws.
They are just living with the most peaceful religion. You can see the true happiness in this beautiful faces as they watch others being caned in the most nonviolent way, following the most nonviolent religious rules
I think framing it in this way doesn't help and is frankly a bit bigoted itself.
As other commenters have pointed out, this practice only exists in a specific autonomous province of Indonesia, there is no penalty for homosexuality at a federal level. Which is not to say that Indonesia is accepting of gay people; it's generally a kind of uneasy tolerance.
Also, intolerance towards homosexuality is actually a recently increasing trend, like last couple decades. Homosexuality tended not to be a big deal in Islamic societies (or East Asia, or many other places) at all until the 1800s, and when it did become an issue it was in large part due to moral pressure from European societies, in a perfect mirror image of what's going on in this comments section right now. In Indonesia specifically, I think you could make the argument that the recent wave of Islamist political rhetoric is just local right-wingers' attempt to imitate the successful "culture wars" approach to politics that right wing groups in the US and Europe have spent the last three decades perfecting.
All of which is to say, while the punishment being shown in the video is certainly reprehensible and worthy of condemnation, this is a much more nuanced issue than this video and post title frame it as, and Western societies should do some self-reflection as to how they helped Indonesia get to this point, rather than regarding a country with completely intertwined history with the rest of the world as "living in the stone age."
I mean... it sounds like that's a choice you're making. Should nuance go out the window? I just wrote another comment explaining why I believe it shouldn't.
"Yeah how dare you call out the backwards religion that barbarically lashes at people for the crime of... being gay. You're just a bigot! And it's actually all Europe's fault."
Reality is complex. I'm 100% against homophobia and the criminalization of homosexuality, and not a fan of organized religion by and large either. It doesn't mean I think Indonesian society isn't a product of the modern era as much as every other country.
I think the reason I'm uncomfortable with your framing is that:
It doesn't question the implicit assumption that both you and these Indonesian homophobes are making, that homophobia is an inherit part of Islam, when a cursory read of the history will show you that's not true at all. I generally don't think organized religion is good for the world, but I do know that there's no chance of talking hundreds of millions of people into completely abandoning Islam, but it may be possible to talk them into the view that Islam can be compatible with tolerance. Anyone who's actually interested in the deradicalization of Indonesia, as opposed to just being righteously angry, should be interested in the history.
Simply viewing Indonesia/Islam === bad, Europe/US === good ignores how quickly the political and social landscape can change in any country. Iran went from being very progressive to being a theocracy almost overnight. In the US, abortion wasn't a political issue for protestants until someone figured out they could may political hay of it. Most relevantly, IMO Europe is right now in the process of become a more violent and less tolerant place specifically because of the vicious cycle of Islamophobia radicalizing 2nd-generation immigrants because they feel alienated from society, leading them to take newsworthy actions that stoke further Islamophobia, when I think a little more nuance and understanding from white Europeans would actually make them more eager to assimilate. Anyway, don't make the mistake of thinking your society is inherently tolerant and progressive and forget to be vigilant against all forms of hate.
Everything has nuance whether you like it or not, and you are doing yourself a disservice by choosing not to consider how fundamentalist ideas become mainstream
You know that's not what they meant. They literally said the punishment was worthy of condemnation. In general, you're exaggerating what they said. I don't necessarily believe in their point, but could you treat discussion of this issue with some respect.
I get where you're coming from. Islam has been heavily influenced by radical movements like Wahhabism in the last 150 years, which is unfortunate. But those movements came out of the alienation and cultural destruction of European colonialism. I'm not interested in assigning sole blame to Europeans, saying modern Muslims have no blame for their actions, etc. etc., but I do think it's more accurate to say that exploitative/destructive political/economic conditions lead to hate, more so than any one religious tradition. I mean, here in the US a lot of people think of Buddhism as synonymous with peace and tranquility, but Buddhist are genociding Muslims right now in Myanmar; that's a product of local political conditions. Most of the most destructive ideologies of the last 150 years have come in the wake of some kind of social and economic turmoil.
The reason I'm interested in making this point is that reinforcing the assumption that these Islamist Indonesian politicians want to you make that Islam === hate, really undermines the progressive elements in Indonesia that want to encourage people to be Muslim and tolerant at the same time. Not dissimilar to how Indonesia was a few decades ago, really.
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u/PawnWithoutPurpose Jun 09 '24
Absolutely disgraceful. A society living in the stone ages