19 thoughts on “IndonesiaMatters.com against muslim ?”

1. here’s the comment that I posted there:

   patung – banu qurayza was sentenced to death due to their treachery at time of war. this is standard penalty for such act in many societies, even until now.
   somehow you “failed” to mention this in your comments, giving a totally different view on the event.

   forced conversion – there’s no such thing in islam. even when the prophet ruled medina, the jews were not forced to convert.
   if any muslim did that, they have committed sin.

   several comments here seems to be unable to differentiate between muslim and islam; keeps on attributing things done by muslim to islam; even though that’s not always the case.

   re: massacre – islam defined a very strict code of conduct during war. non-combatants are not to be harmed. even trees are not to be disturbed, unless very necessary.
   if there are muslims failed to adhere to this code, clearly this is not the fault of islam, but the fault of the men.

   dhimmitude is much better when we placed it into the proper context – at that time, countries wages war against other countries. the loser then gets massacred.
   the concept of dhimmi protects the loser, and assures their rights.

   in return, they pay jizya – because they do not pay zakat like muslims. so it’s still very fair.

   i will not reject the fact that many muslims have committed terrible acts. it happened, happen, and will still happen in the future. as with other religion’s followers.
   but i do try to differentiate between follower and the religion, because they’re not always in sync – therefore blindly blaming one for the other is potentially misleading.

   i sincerely hope this site will become better that just another muslim-hater website. sorry gotta go now, almost 23:00 and i’m still in the office, yay.

2. Hi Harry,

   I do have an “About” page that says it’s written by me, but perhaps I should make things clearer on that though. The use of the word “Indonesia” is not restricted I think and it’s pretty obvious that it’s not a government site or anything so I don’t see any problem there. What the majority of Indonesians think is not my concern, why should it be? I’ll admit I’m not sure whether I want to do it as blog (=personal) or as a straight news site, but the line between those two is somewhat blurred these days. Ultimately everything we write contains our own opinions, etc.

   I can’t immediately reply to your comment on my site as I am currently having a problem with it.

3. can you just replace the name of your blog to something more approriate ? especially if you like to make a headline story that trigger controversy !

4. Hello Patung,

   What the majority of Indonesians think is not my concern, why should it be?

   Because your website name is “Indonesia” matters.com, it’s as if you’re speaking for all of them. While, as you said earlier, it’s pretty much your own personal website.

   Different story if it’s my.patung.com or whatever, then of course you’re totally free to express yourself. But with your current website, people might get the wrong idea about the rest of us.

   Ultimately everything we write contains our own opinions, etc

   In journalism there’s this method called “reporting”.
   Basically, you just report things as it is. This is more neutral then a standard article / column.

   I can’t immediately reply to your comment on my site as I am currently having a problem with it.

   Might be a problem with your ISP ? eg: they employ a transparent caching that’s too aggressive / serves stale files.
   You might want to try accessing it again with different ISPs.

   Salam,
   Harry

5. wow, the writer seems to suffer from a really chronic islamophobia. i wouldn’t waste time on it.

6. priyadi – usually I do that, but this is also the chance to bust many hoaxes/misinformation. I saw that many contents there are the same with other islamophobic websites.
   however, the responses from muslims so far are usually of anger – not logic.

   so here’s a try for that.

   another comment I made on an article on that website, muslim radicalism in 2005 :

   church closures – illegal buildings are normal / should be expected to be closed. same thing will happen to mosques in UK / USA if they’re operated without permission from government and the community around it.

   so why the big deal here…. ?
   it’s the right thing to do !

   attack on islamic sects – try looking on the context, don’t get prejudice first.
   if you do try that, you’ll find that in most cases they’ve been bothering the people around them for YEARS.
   when they’ve been reported to the police, yet the police did nothing about it, then tension started to build. but since many indonesian are pacifist, it usually takes years before the tension finally can no longer be hold, and exploded spectacularly.

   the media then rushed and reported just this end – not the whole story from the beginning.

   here’s is an example of such case. thankfully, in this one, the authority acted swiftly, so there was no riot. unfortunately, JIL took this opportunity to deceive and make others look bad – while themselves ended up shown as “the defender of the oppressed”.

   good thing somebody informed this to geis chalifah (head of al-irshad al-islamiyyah, who happened to also monitor the arrest). he then proceeded to rebutted JIL’s false claims quite thoroughly.

   liberal islam network targeted – well, I currently have problems sympathizing to them, who so far has been proven repeatedly to be a group of liars and deceivers.

   i’m amazed and a bit amused that people still listen to them and call them intellectuals. go figure.
   i personally have no respect to liars; islam taught us that lie is the mother of all sin. (since it’s the enabler for all other sin)

   extremist groups – i think the police should act swiftly and firmly if they broke any laws. letting them do their wishes with no restraint at all is bad for everyone, including themselves.

7. Islamophobic… a new disease that not only infected westerners but also Asians and (some) Indonesians alike…

8. To counter Islamophobic is to preach the peace face of islam.
   To expect one blog to be neutral and objective is too naive.

9. To expect one blog to be neutral and objective is too naive.

   Well, naive sekali malah 🙂 tapi poin saya bukan itu. Silahkan dibaca lagi baik-baik, trims.

10. And I just found this really offensive post, about ME:

    (http://www.indonesiamatters.com/493/muslimah-gothess/)

    Why would someone put up a really cheesy post criticizing about someone’s life (in this case, mine) and put some nasty prejudice about it on a blog called “Indonesia Matters” as if my personal life really generalizes the whole thing about Indonesia. Very untolerable. And he actually took, or let’s say, stole my picture. It’s a copyright infringement.

    This is a serious thing over cyber space, and whoever this person is, I think he needs to learn his lessons alright.

    Regards, Dee

11. Dee – I’m really sorry to hear that. btw; my best wishes on your plan, hope you’ve found your soulmate.

12. hehehe, it seems setting up your own racist blog can get you featured in national magazine 🙂

    http://www.tempointeraktif.com/hg/mbmtempo/arsip/2006/07/31/SEL/
    go to article on “10 blog pilihan” 🙂

13. Quite a surprise indeed, so I have sent an email to Pak Budi regarding this. Shown below :

    Dear Pak Budi Putra,

    Mengenai artikel berjudul “10 blog pilihan” di :
    http://www.tempointeraktif.com/hg/mbmtempo/arsip/2006/07/31/SEL/mbm.20060731.sel3.id.html

    Saya cukup terkejut ketika membaca bahwa :

    “dan dibumbui berbagai komentar yang cerdas. Fokusnya lebih pada isu-isu
    politik dan hukum.
    …
    Blog jurnal semacam ini sangat bermanfaat bagi orang asing untuk memahami
    masalah penting di Indonesia”

    “Komentar yang cerdas” ? Banyak posting di IndonesiaMatters.com yang
    menjurus kepada hate-speech & Islamphobia.
    Untuk beberapa contoh, bisa Anda dapatkan misalnya di
    http://harry.sufehmi.com/archives/2006-07-18-1212/

    Demikian untuk informasi dan masukan bagi Anda. Terimakasih.

    Salam,
    Harry

    Note that the article in Tempo says “Blog jurnal semacam ini sangat bermanfaat bagi orang asing untuk memahami masalah penting di Indonesia.“.
    That’s why I’m concerned with IndonesiaMatters.com

14. Kayaknya percuma ngributin “Tempo”. Bukannya mereka sering memberitakan informasi miring tentang Islam.

15. Treespotter seems to agree on this topic as well.

16. I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you down the road!

17. Hi Harry,

    You’ve said most of them are Muslim Haters in the IM Blogs? How so? How come you are leaving out those Chinese Haters?

    Your primary motive as I see is such that you may be a Muslim and seeing that when others commenting on matters concering religious you condemned them as Muslim Hater!

    You you said that you are happy that there are a IM Blogs that speaks things on Indonesian matters and then you should be broadminded enough to swallow what other commented and not saying Patung’s commenting representing the whole Indonesian community. No he doesn’t. He simply bring up those subjects from certain publication, paper or links to the attention the the Indonesian community so as to speak.

    If we are mature enough to look on the wider kaleidoscope on the variety of comments, then you would not just pick and choose.

    Yes it is agreeable that there are many who commented on reciprocity and there are many who have reacted based on their life experience in Indonesia. Don’t you think so.

    I am one person that will ticked a Chinese Hater off anytime anywhere. So let’s not be prejudicial.

    Thank you

18. @dragonwall – How come you are leaving out those Chinese Haters?
    .
    I’m not sure I’d be able to understand you properly, your comment is pretty ambiguous.
    .
    Anyway, is me not commenting on chinese hater means that I agree with them ?
    .
    Think again.

19. yes, i found indonesiamatters.com from searching for news on Indonesia. initially i was full of joy to found a website about Indonesia written in english. but once i start reading the content i just realized that those people are nothing but a bunch of condescending smart-bule-ass. what a bunch of wankers. especially with patung and ross. yo losers, got nothing better to do in your country and decided to stick your nose to Indonesia?

    and dragonwall, WTF? .. seriously WTF? what moslem-haters got anything to do with chinese-haters??? something is seriously flawed with your logic.