The recent fatwa against voter abstention issued by the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) would not affect voter behavior, a senior political researcher said Monday. "The effect will be insignificant," said Syamsuddin Haris of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI).
Your comments:
You fail to mention in the article that according to Ma'ruf Amin of the MUI, "It is forbidden for Muslims to vote for a non-Muslim candidate or leader." That you chose to ignore such obvious sectarianism is disgraceful.
Highlander
Of course people will vote for those who are qualified to lead, but unfortunately it is not that simple. People don't vote because they don't know anything about the candidates, so even if they do vote, they simply vote randomly.
Therefore, there is no incentive for them to vote.
Confus
How many articles is The Jakarta Post planning to print on the ulema and their fatwas? I'm getting a little ulema- and fatwa-weary, and I'm sure many others feel the same. What a nonsensical organization.
Ekyah
Surabaya
Honestly, I'm more afraid of voting for the wrong candidates - the kind who promise everything but then forget everything once they succeed. Some of these jerks hide behind "religion" to prove that they are holier than other people.
R. Astari
The MUI have banned abstention if "qualified candidates exist?" It sounds plausible until you read the fine print. Totally discriminatory and divisive because it makes it illegal for Muslims to vote for non-Muslims, no matter how qualified they might be.
It is a further example of the paranoia of an inward-looking forum that is trying to involve itself in politics.
Nairdah
I note that the Islamic court once had credibility, but now it addresses issues so petty it is irrelevant.
Sharia is not agreeable to Westerners, yet neither is the corruption and despotism of Indonesia's current judicial system.
We ask if Islamic law might posit a viable replacement, only to find it might have in a prouder past, but not at the level to which is has now sunk.
The object of Western missions in Islamic states is to end lawlessness, despotism and fanaticism and to replace it with the rule of law and secular process.
But incidents like these attest that you cannot give the rule of law to a people who do not want it enough to stand up for it themselves.
It has only a short period in which to clean up its own corrupt judicial system.
If religion is meant to lead the way and set examples on reform issues, then the irrelevance of the Indonesian Ulema Council rulings accord us little hope this will happen.
Ken Maynard
