Islamic Fanaticism at its peak: Muslim Groups Demand Closure of Large Church in Indonesia

Samuel Rionaldo, Compass Direct News

URL: http://www.crosswalk.com/news/religiontoday/11626798/

February 26, 2010

JAKARTA, Indonesia (CDN) — Hundreds of Muslims from outside the area where a 600-member church meets in West Java staged a protest there to call for its closure this month in an attempt to portray local opposition.

Demonstrators from 16 Islamic organizations, including the hard-line Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), gathered on Feb. 15 to demand a stop to all activities by the Galilea Protestant Church (GPIB) in the Galaxy area of Bekasi City.

The Rev. M. Tetelepta, pastor of the church, told Compass that the church has had the required consent of local residents and official permission to worship since its inception in 1992.

"From the beginning we had permission to worship from both the government and the nearby residents," Tetelepta said. "We worked on the building permit and had received principle clearance from the mayor of Bekasi. We had also received permission from the Bekasi Interfaith Harmony Forum."

At the Galaxy area demonstration, FPI Bekasi branch head Murhali Baeda tried to impugn the legal status of the Galilea church by telling ANTARA, the official news agency of the Indonesian government, that he was "certain" that "a number of the church buildings" in the area "do not have complete permission."

"This is proved by the large number of posters and banners that are displayed in the alleys and public gathering places rejecting the presence of these [church] buildings," Murhali told ANTARA.

A Joint Ministerial Decree promulgated in 1969 and revised in 2006 requires the permission of more than 60 neighbors and a permit from local authorities to establish a place of worship in Indonesia.

Representatives of Islamic organizations at the demonstration shouted, "Churches are not allowed in Galaxy" and carried posters and banners declaring, "We Faithful Muslims Reject the Presence of Churches," as well as "Beware of Christianization of Galaxy."

Local organizations represented at the demonstration included the Bekasi Dakwah Council, the Bina An Nisa Dakwah Council of Bekasi and the Galaxy Mosque and Mushola Forum, but Tetelepta said he was sure that 95 percent of the protestors were not local people.

Also present at the demonstration were representatives of the Islamic Youth and Student Forum, Islamic Unity, the Committee to Enact Syariah (Law), Muhammadiyah, the Islamic Youth Movement, the Syariah Concern Society, the Islamic Youth Federation, the Bungin Dakwah Council, the Gembong River Society, Irene Centre and the Indonesian Mujahadin Council.

Baeda of the FPI accused the church of "Christianizing" local residents by distributing food "and the nine essentials at a reduced price."

"The church is distributing these things as incentive to confess Jesus as their Lord," Baeda told Compass. "We have received several reports of this from people who have accepted these distributions."

This type of activity disturbs society, he added. "I consider this wrong-doing."

The local FPI leader told ANTARA that there are at least six churches and a number of homes that function as churches.

"At night praises to their God in the form of songs disturbs the people's sleep," he reportedly said.

Tetelepta denied that the church had tried to "Christianize" people.

"We have never distributed food or the nine essentials," he said. "The only thing we have done is to spray for mosquitoes near the church."

Before coming to Galaxy the congregation had worshipped in various places in Bekasi. At the suggestion of the government, Tetelepta said, the church purchased the property in Galaxy in 2006 in order to construct a worship place.

He added that there has been an effort to discredit the church in the Bekasi area.

"Our worship services will continue as usual in spite of the demonstrations," he said. "We are coordinating things with the police."

Is Iran a Rapist Islamic Republic??!!
By Jahanshah Rashidian

Since the inception of the Islamic regime in Iran in 1979, rapes of political prisoners have increasingly been committed, although rarely reported. Many courageous victims have recently revealed their subjection to rapes. Surprisingly, however, after the controversial June 2009 election, the losing candidate Mehdi Karrubi revealed that both male and female, detained during the post-election protests, have been systematically subjected to vicious rapes.

After the conquest of ancient Persia by the Arab Muslims in 644, tens of thousands, probably, millions of Iranian female were raped, enslaved, and transported away as war-booty to be sold in slave-markets of Arab-Islamic territories. The Persian word 'Tajovoz' does not only mean 'rape' by which a man seized or stole a wife, but also means destruction and occupation of one’s environment by invaders. In a belief system that a passive nine-year-old girl can be raped by her ‘husband’, rape, as an extension of such a patriarchal societal control over females, was introduced by the Islamic Arabs as the most hideous, shameful, and submissive element in the culture of occupied Iran. Since the occupation by Arab Muslims, Iranian women, who once equated with their male compatriots, have been since viewed as male-possessions, first of their fathers, then of their husbands. In case of rape in Islamized Persia, they were subjected to blame and shame more than their rapists.

Rape of Female Prisoners:

Shortly after the 1979 revolution, many intellectuals, political activists, and Mullah-sympathisers of the leftist opposition were arrested, and many of them were summarily executed. Virgin prisoners were generally raped before being executed. The reason is that according to the Islamic regime’s interpretation of Islamic laws, killing of a virgin woman is prohibited, because a virgin’s soul goes to Heaven, not to Hell, after death. To solve the dilemma, the night before the execution, the virgin is married by one of the guards, and the marriage is consummated overnight, before carrying out the execution. Apart from such rape, the interrogators of the Mullah regime routinely use rape as a tool of torture to obtain information, confession, or, simply, to humiliate the prisoner.

Rape of Male prisoners:

The rape of a male victim typically consists of forced penetration of the anus by a penis or other object as has been reported by some Iranian rape-victims. Because of traditional self-censor, male-rape has until recently remained unreported in Iran. It is believed that a man in a patriarchal culture should be masculine, strong and able to protect himself. Therefore, nothing can be worse, more shameful, for a proud man than being forcibly raped. Young men, who have survived the post-election rapes, are now suffering from rigorous psychological injuries. Rape of male prisoners in the Mullahs’ jails has caused serious damage to inner organs of the victims and depression to them. Since male victims feel shame to identify themselves, they avoid medical treatment unless the victim is seriously injured.

It is believed that religious permission of rape, including male-rape, of opponents of the Islamic regime has been recently updated by Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, the monitor and spiritual guru of president Ahmadinejad. Islamic authorities usually deny that rape is being committed in their prisons, fearing strong reaction from the public, both inside and outside.

In an interview at the Jamkaran gathering after the revelation of rape in the Mullah’s prisons, Mesbah Yazdi was asked: Can an interrogator rape the prisoner in order to obtain a confession? He is reported to have answered:

The necessary precaution is for the interrogator to perform a ritual washing first and say prayers while raping the prisoner. If the prisoner is female, it is permissible to rape through the vagina or anus. It is better not to have a witness present. If it is a male prisoner, then it’s acceptable for someone else to watch while the rape is committed.

Zahra Bani Yaghoub, Azar Al Cana’an, and Roya Toloui are among the female prisoners, who were raped and murdered in past years under the same Islamic regime. Additionally, at least two recent teen female victims of the post-election oppression in Iran, Tahmineh Mousavi and Saeedeh Pour Agha’i, were documented by the media as being burnt in an attempt to cover up the hideous crime.

To shed light on Mesbakh Yazdi’s permission of rape, it is believed that in numerous offensive raids, called ‘Ghazawat’, of early Muslims, under the Prophet, attacked ‘infidel’ tribes; they killed men, robbed their properties, and took whichever females they wanted, raped them, and then brought them to their tribe as their slave-possession.

Tolerance of such brutalities in Islam may not be universally believed by Muslims; most might be regarded it as a myth. However, these are the mindsets of the brutal Islamic regime that rules Iran and commits such horrendous crimes.

In an ultimate psychological analysis of rape, rapists seem to come from a subculture of violence, whose values may be different from those of the mainstream. A rapist is often a poorly educated man from the lower socioeconomic strata, who had criminal records. Therefore such a man may be demonstrating his toughness and masculinity in a more violent and antisocial manner, but in the case of a rapist of the Mullahs’ prisons, this is not the dominant factor.

Rapists of the Mullahs' prisons are not necessarily the psychopathic and antisocial torturers, but most likely 'pious' Muslims, married men, and even can be kind fathers. They just follow the 'divine' guidance of the Islamic regime, and do not consider those rapes as a crime, and do not feel remorse after the assault. These sexual 'offenders' are not accountable for their sexual assaults, because rape is allowed or tolerated by Islamic clerics of the regime.

Rape in the Mullahs’ prisons is not an individual decision of an interrogator, as one may commonly believe; it is a systematic process based on a belief system, and for promoting a political agenda. In the Mullahs’ prisons, rapes are often planned. The primary motive for rape is not sexual. They regard and believe in rape as a routine duty, due to its prescription by Islamic clerics of high stature like Ayatollah Mesbakh Yazdi, and its acceptance by the entire Mullah regime.
With that in mind, their act of rape is not merely a question of psycho-criminality, but an Islamist and thus "justified" crime.