Comment: Up in (bare) arms over statue’s removal

June 22, p. 1: Three years after locals started falling in love with their charming presence, three young ladies from Bekasi have to leave home following protests from local fundamentalist groups. Their sin? Perhaps their bare copper arms and shoulders.  After a month of pressure from a number of Islamic groups, the Bekasi municipal administration instructed the developer of Kota Harapan Indah residential complex to remove the Tiga Mojang (Three Ladies) sculpture last Saturday.  The 17-meter-high copper-and-brass sculpture of three women in traditional West Javanese clothes, facing three different streets on a traffic circle, suddenly hit the headlines after the groups demanded the removal of the statues, labeling them obscene and symbolic of the Christian Trinity. The groups included the Islam Defenders Front (FPI), the Bekasi Movement Against Apostates and the Islamic Ummah Forum.

Your comments:

No amount of viewing of this wonderful work of art could persuade me that it has any religious symbolism.
To reach a conclusion that somehow it is a religious object is pure fantasy and is surely not the result of logical reasoning.
I can only conclude that the interpretation was a convenient invention for political purposes.
If the objective of the FPI was to get attention, they succeeded. If it was to get the community to comply with their extremist views, they succeeded. Psychological terrorizing of the population was a feature of the Dark Ages and into the Middle Ages, used by all manner of religious and other groups to terrorize the population into submission.
It seems that just when we think we are entering a modern, informed, enlightened and tolerant world, someone tries to switch out the lights and plunge us back into the Dark Ages.
Nairdah
Sydney

Extremist Islamic groups like these will bring the development of Indonesia to a standstill and, eventually, destroy the country and its democracy. They should use their funds to educate and help their people, instead of trying to dominate them in the name of Allah. Shame on them!
Maria
The Netherlands

I find it disgraceful that a few hard-line groups can bully the Bekasi administration into the removal of this statue. They are already forcefully closing places of worship and slowly eroding the rights of women in this country. When will people be brave enough to stand up to this form of tyranny? Hopefully, before it’s too late.
Simon
Surabaya