Thank you for all the additional information and interpretation. Indeed you provided me with the kind of background I was looking for. Ironically it confirms the wisdom of “the more you know, the better you know, you know nothing”.

Indonesia seems to be enigmatic in many ways. Which of course is not unlike most complex societies. And is one of the reasons to love it. For sure, on the face of it, the country is vast, complicated and sometimes totally incomprehensible to outsiders (and just hard to understand even for insiders I guess). I wonder for instance whether religion furthers social cohesion in the country or is it quite the opposite: is it centrifugal and disruptive? There’s not clearcut answer here either, I suppose.

If I were young, ambitious and studying political sciences however, the situation would make my choice of the thesis easy: “Why is it that specifically religion is at the focus of political conflicts in this modern developing country”?

But it did happen at a rather convenient time, when the government was being criticized heavily for failing to keep the fuel price stable.

The impact seems echoed quite internationally, with US embassy also commented about it. But it was then pretty much told to “shut up & mind your own business” by several (irritated) parties. (seems like people are still unhappy about the NAMRU business)

So yeah, like many other cases, it’s not really clear. There are many angles to this incident.

Anyway – It’s always interesting around here (if you have a rather morbid definition of “interesting”)

a guy in one of my mailing list told me that this is just a camouflage to distract people from fuel price increase incident.

and yes, Indonesia is like a puzzle. i believe earlier we were geographically set together. but over centuries, the earth quake shook the plate and change Indonesia to be the largest archipelagic country in the world.

so here we are now, a puzzle of 17670 island.