French Muslim war graves defaced (more…)
April 2, 2008
I remember being surprised by the sheer bluntness of anti-Jewish propaganda when I looked at the postcards with caricatures in the Jewish Museum in Berlin. The grimaces of big-nosed men with greedy eyes and the claws with which they took the good Germans’ money away.
Now I just watched Fitna, the film by Dutch parlamentarian Geert Wilders and I’m distressed because I don’t know what to do so that not one day I will have nothing to say when the next generation asks me what I’ve done against this baiting.
This disgusting piece of propaganda is the product of an elected politician and it is also the product of free speech. I’m horrified. The film is of the cheapest kind and it’s like one of the caricatures from the Jewish Museum has come to motion, just this time we have a different victim. Suras of the Qur’an (which, according to politician Wilders, should be forbidden) are mixed with disgusting pictures of 9/11, bombings, dead bodies and even a filmed beheading. The comments in youtube underneath the film are almost worse than the film. Sure, one could say all this is too extreme and ignore its seriousness but this has happened before. I can watch it around me, I can see the creeping hatred around me and I feel helpless.
Of course Muslim extremists are a danger, just as any extremists; and one certainly shouldn’t ignore this danger and the problems that fake tolerance has caused us, but what is happening right now is that Islam, Muslims and basically everyone with dark hair and a beard is connected to violence and that’s just horribly wrong. I can tense this anti-Muslim racism everywhere, in academia, in the press and even in the comments of the people around me.
A classmate of mine in a book presentation at class: “This book gives a good overview about Islam in Indonesia.” - But it was a book about Indonesian Islamist terrorist groups! Nobody protested. The other day my mum referred to ‘the Buddha statues that were destroyed by the Muslims’, lumping together the Taliban and her own neighbours.
I’m scared. I’m scared of what I see and of my helplessness. I’m scared also of how subtle it sometimes works and that I might myself fall into little traps.
What will I say when I’m asked why I haven’t done anything? Sorry, I was busy with my own life. Sorry, I was busy reading the newspaper. Sorry, I didn’t know, nobody thought it would become that serious.
March 24, 2008
What scared me in this context was the ignorance of some of my classmates. I was in a program paid by the German National Merit Foundation, which enables so-called high achievers to attend extra classes, receive financial support and join programs like this language course. One day we discussed the affair of Omar Rarrad and the murder of Mme Marchal, where the French judiciary imprisoned someone without any proof, quite a horrible example of practised racism. During the lunch break a girl reminded us of the case of former vice superintendent Daschner. Daschner had threatened a kidnapper to be tortured if he didn’t reveal his victim’s whereabouts. My classmate, supported and paid by the German tax payer, said without hesitation: “How awful that Daschner got a fine for this, of course it’s perfectly understandable that he acted this way!”
In a Rechtsstaat, where rule of law is to protect the citizen from the state’s arbitrariness, torture and the threat of it are illegal and can’t even express how important this is (I have already in several entries..). Of course my classmate is right when she says his action is completely understandable and probably morally correct although I’m not sure of this. But it’s against the law and if a vice superintendent acts against the law he must be ready to face the consequences and not plead ‘not guilty’ afterwards. It’s like this crazy idea of shooting an airplane full of civilians under ‘certain exceptional circumstances’.
What I was most shocked about was not the controversy but the easiness with which she stated her opinion. No pondering, no hesitation. The German National Merit Foundation is a loose network of people who make the decisions and their offsprings. Scary.
I’ve spent three weeks in the lovely town of La Rochelle benefitting from a scholarship for a French course. What I will surely treasure for a long time is the memory of my way to school: Every morning at eight, I would get onto my bicycle and pass the old towers at the harbour and the sea. Looking at the horizon while the cool morning breeze woke me up was the purest luxury. Everything else became a little irrelevant when I passed the towers which have marked the city’s entry for hundreds and hundreds of years. When looking at this endless water, all these personal small troubles shrink till they fit my hand.
I absolutely miss this ride to school and the ride home. Here, it’s looking at people’s grumpy faces, rubbish, adverts and traffic. I’m grateful though, for those souvenirs, for those pictures in my head. I can take them out and admire them whenever I’m in need. That’s a huge part of what travelling is all about: treasuring the reassuring knowledge that there’s something else that the here and now.
February 14, 2008
I’m in the cutest place ever, following a language course, AGAIN trying to improve my pathetic French. Besides my educational frustration, the place is gorgeous and I’m all happy with my ‘host mother’. : )
There’s two other trips following, Inshallah I’ll be back middle of march.
check out, how pervert is this
January 8, 2008
Ah, I’ve just come back from almost nine hours at office without food and even without having had any breakfast, how stupid of me… I need to sit down and read texts for uni, but this thing has been on my mind since last night and I can’t get it off until I’ve scribbled something.
The other day, at the demonstration or rather afterwards, I had that discussions about the stones again, about whether it is not only understandable but in any way justifiable to throw stones at the police people. Everything inside me resists against this: you just don’t use violence against humans. The contra argument was that this system only works with repression and when you want to overthrow it, you have to use force. Sounds exaggerated for our supposedly democratic context, but is not that out of question for other structures. But no, you don’t, you don’t purposely hurt someone like this. That sounds simple, but there’s more to it. The old and crucial question that it all comes back to in the end is: Does the end justify the means? Is it allowed to stop violence by using violence?
To refine my thoughts on this, I’ve gone back to a book I read in school, ‘Moralische Grundbegriffe’ by the philosopher Robert Spaemann. I promptly found the right chapter and although I’d be lying would I say that all my questions are answered, I’m grateful for his clear answer and argumentation (if I have correctly understood him that is…).
I’m not sure how it works in English, the German terms are ‘Gesinnungsethik’ und ‘Verantwortungsethik’ (Max Weber). In ‘Gesinnungsethik’ you orientate your action at your attitude, your ethos. If you honour human life and you act according to ‘Gesinnungsethik’, you will not kill anybody . If you act in terms of ‘Verantwortungsethik’ you will kill someone to save another life, e.g. that of a child threatened by a soldier.
With Gesinnungsethik, you think of the very action itself, with Verantwortungsethik you take the consequences of you action (or non-action) into account.
Max Weber, who in his work refers to politicians, demands Verantwortungsethik. Utilitarianism, which I was fascinated by when I first discovered ‘ethics’ in school, seems to be a synonym (=The greatest good for the greatest number of people, if I remember correctly).
I will here offer three arguments against this and in this basically follow Robert Spaemann (99:67):
1) Utilitarianism fails through the complexity and unforseeability of the consequences of our actions. If we wanted to consider all the possible implications of what we do, we could never actually start doing anything because we’d be busy thinking and calculating. Often good motivation doesn’t help the situation to worsen and sometimes bad moments grow into good turnouts.
2) Utilitarianism leaves the moral judgment of people to experts. Spaemann here comes up with an example that I personally would not have chosen, but I don’t want to falsify his line of argumentation by making up another one:
If one young SS-man is to kill Jewish children, he may be conscience-stricken, but he is told that this disturbing order is to be carried out in order to serve a much higher purpose, the good of humankind. If this man now is too stupid to understand the insanity of the whole thing, at least he should see that killing a child is a wrong thing. Utilitarianism wouldallow the validity of such a simple argument.
Famous in this context is that experiment where people are asked to give electroshocks, I’ll look for this another time.
3) Utilitarianism exposes people to be easily blackmailed. “If you don’t kill this one, I will kill these ten.” But the one who refuses to kill is not responsible for the murder of the other ten.
—
This is why it is wrong to allow torture even in extreme cases and this is why it is wrong to shoot a plane that is about to be run into a skyscraper. Of course, also to me it’s a different story altogether if I am confronted with someone helpless being attacked and me having the possibility of stopping this though a violent act. BUT: If I do torture someone to get out information that will save someone else’s life, I will still have to face the consequences of my action as a torturer. I can for my own conscience maybe defend this, but it does stay a wrong action.
January 6, 2008
 Went to the demonstration on the occasion of the suicide of the young Tunisian who killed himself in the deportation centre in Berlin Köpenick a couple of days ago. Can’t describe the moment when the inmates, who haven’t done anything wrong except for not having the right papers, waved from the windows. We were there - but after all, we left again, able to go home, have a beer, go for a walk, do anything that we wish and go to every fucking country in this world. For them, their flights are being booked so that they can be sent away.
I read of someone who is being deported at the age of sixteen, after having arrived in Germany 16 years ago, when he was 8 months old. How could one find an argument that makes sense? How does any of this make sense? I do hope with all my heart that all this will one day be in the history books of a more sophisticated species.
January 5, 2008
Again and again. I watch these detective stories on tv once in a while and the last two left me with a bad feeling. Not in terms of quality, but regarding the dangerous potential…
Last time, the German speaking family of Turkish origin had two parents and two daughters who spoke perfect German without an accent, but the son, who was a criminal, spoke pretty bad German with a thick accent. Okay, the father was the worse criminal, but the audience was not supposed to find out till the end so he had spoke clear German.
Today, we had the topic of trafficking in human beings with a young girl from Bangladesh as main character of a whole lot who were smuggled into the country. The girl (who by the way had an Arabic name and of course a violent and crude brother) was hidden in a dark room and raped by her smuggler; the police had to rescue her, obviously before deporting her. The way in which trafficking in human beings and forms of slavery are being intertwined here are systematic! While corpses are being washed upon the beaches in Spain and EU money is being spent for “reception” death camps in North Africa, people are being suggested that it is just for the better of these migrants to keep them were they are. (Surely it must be better where they came from. We’ve just had another suicide in a deportation centre in Berlin two days ago.)
The way in which our minds are blurred are scary. Also, I’ve just begun reading a book on Orientalism and anti-Muslim racism and although I’m not absolutely convinced by some generalisations, some insights do make me feel very uncomfortable, especially since I wonder how I could ever be able to communicate them if I myself understand them only partly.
For example the way in which Western feminists attack Islam: Iman Attia, the editor of this book, confirms my suspicion that this happens, among other reasons, to idealise the own position. Of course it is easier to locate sexism in the ‘other’ ‘culture’ rather than to acknowledge that women in Western societies are far from given equal rights not only on paper but in reality.
Right, I know it looks like I’m mixing things up but I am convinced that these topics are much more linked than what it looks like and this isn’t some conspiracy theory but looking at a society without chopping what I see into bits and pieces. Any booing s or questions to help me sort out my line of argumentation are very welcome.
December 28, 2007
Honestly, I’m just writing because I have this fabulous new flat screen, all my pictures and even my writings look a lot more interesting now. At the moment I have two screens flickering on my desk and to me it looks like I’m someone extremely busy and important. What I have to say is less of such character; no anger, no poetry, no wannabe-meaningful suggestions, but I’ll continue anyways, my little try of a description of new re-discovery I have just recently made: my own physicality, if I can put it that way. (more…)
December 25, 2007
A rather boring entry to get started after long absence. These are the first couple of days that are completely free for months, suddenly there’s time at my hands, what a luxury. It has indeed been months since I’ve last written and I’m afraid my fingers and thoughts are a little rusty. I’m also afraid there’s not much to say, I seem to suddenly be absorbed by a life I never thought I wanted. Honestly though, it leaves less to worry if your main elements are working and spending money. A little holiday once in a while, nothing too big, not too far…. okay, no, it’s not that bad, besides my studies I’ve now worked about 15-20 hours a week, not an amount of time that doesn’t leave space for anything else, but the last time I read a book that touched me is months ago, the last time I wrote a piece that will make me happy when I discover it years later is a year ago, the last time I had a conversation that moved me is long ago. My tears are now for things more common, I’m afraid, my annoyance for things ridiculously trivial.
It’s not that I’m not content, I am, I’ve learned a lot during this year and I’ve had a lot of fun, but at the same time it looks like I have left this adventurous path that I imagined my life would be. I always admired the Huxley’s savage for his ‘claim to the right of unhappiness’: “But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.” - but here I am, all comfortable and lazy, not in terms of what I formerly thought to be laziness, I’m on the contrary rather busy most of the time, but my mind is lazy. I work, I eat, I study, I worry a bit, then I work and study again, do my bit for amnesty international to calm myself and then continue work, pretending to myself that this is what needs to be done right now and that the big questions are tacky and nothing for the small me. A feel like the protagonist of Turner’s song ‘After work’. (Maybe I’ve listened to it too much, I don’t actually work that much ;))
It’s easy to concentrate on everyday issues and pretend to be incompetent for the big stuff. But we’re not and I actually know it and should act like I know.
While keeping myself busy with work and uni, I’m seeing less of my friends and much less of myself. I’ve lost my prayers also, God and I are not very much in touch and haven’t been for a long time.
Guess this is getting older, adjusting to the world around me, fitting in and practicing the best hiding techniques…
Anyways, you have to try out some things to know what you think of them. I’m trying out what I think of comfort, I just have to make sure I don’t get used to it too much.
October 21, 2007
Guten Tag, ich heisse Doktor Fung.
Hiermit moechte ich Sie ueber den Erfolg einer
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unbeschreiblich, nur in zwei Jahren ist es dem Unternehmen gelungen,
auf den offenen Markt aufzutreten und eigene Aktien den
Privatunternehmern anzubieten. Durch Knut-Geschichte hat sich die
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October 1, 2007
I notice how fast everyone walks, even compared to other parts of Europe. I notice how I begin to walk hurriedly, as if two minutes really mattered.
What a rush, this road trip, by car through Albania, Montenegro, quick stops in Sarajevo, Belgrade. What pity to not be able to communicate and how strange to see not only the cities, as I do when I travel by train, but also the hinterland. How many questions are being raised that I won’t have the time to trace! And how shameful my little knowledge is on what happened in the countries my parents called Yugoslavia and which I don’t even have a name for because I still don’t quite understand the break lines… War, in a city as European as my first hometown, under bombardment, and never once was anything mentioned in school, although the refugees were right in these very classrooms, having grown into a new society within just a couple of years. We memorised all these names of the European Union’s institutions, we spoke about how West Germany rescued East Germany (ignoring the other perspective) and never once did we hear a single word on what had just happened in this southern corner of Europe, never heard of its ugliness nor of its beauty, nor of our inabilities. How shameful.
September 25, 2007
Just to pose around a bit: greetings from the youngest country of the world! 
September 18, 2007
Went to Italiy for the first time ever last week, yey : ) To Naples, what a city, wild traffic and someone called it a mixture of Delhi & NYC - well, it°s not big enough for that but certainly it°s quite different from any other European town I know…
Now we°re in Durres, Albania, where power cuts are normal and communication is difficult. The sound of the azaan over the socialist buildings and the ancient ruins has its very own charm though. I discover how different it is to travel with less time and more money, everthing is somehow a bit like under polished glass, not quite at my fingertips but more comfy. Getting older it is?
August 27, 2007
I don’t regret a single day, it’s been a good thing, I think I did work on my French and actually had conversations in a language that I never really spoke before, but: this trip was the most predictable thing I’ve ever done and I haven’t ever met so many dull people in one place. Partly because most of them were still really young, but that’s not a good enough excuse because one of them was very young and still interesting to talk to. Partly also because most of them were rich kids, but I also know interesting rich kids, so that’s not an excuse either.
I felt an interesting ambivalence in my brain: In terms of language, my brain was overstrained, I used the same small amount of words all the time and was hardly able to understand much, let alone to express anything interesting. At the same time, all these light small talk conversations and the superficiality which was applied to everything let me intellectually unchallenged. I sat in a classroom for five hours a day without actually learning anything of interest apart from words. Nothing to change my worldviews, nothing to explain anything to me. It became incredibly dull after a week.
2 weeks was good, but I wouldn’t have needed a single day more, it’s been just fine like this. The city is beautiful - but even the nicest place is not worth much if you’re not happy with your solitude and don’t thoroughly enjoy the company that you have.
August 11, 2007
Bloß das gut-angekommen Geblabbel: (more…)
August 9, 2007
Tomorrow morning I’m off to France for the next two weeks, a decadent language course in Montpellier, (with a not so decadent 30-h-bus trip tomorrow…uääh!!) - anyone near do send me an email, everyone else please excuse I didn’t say goodbye, but it’s oh so short, so see/hear you in a bit…
August 2, 2007
Ich frage mich immer, wie diese Menschen ihren Kindern Gute-Nacht sagen und sich selbst im Spiegel ertragen können.
Ein Deutsche-Welle-Artikel (http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2717556,00.html) :
Afrika | 01.08.2007 : Profit mit afrikanischen Schulden
Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Ernähren sich von Aas: die Namensgeber der verrufenen Fonds
Sie kaufen Schulden und machen damit das ganz große Geld: Die so genannten Geierfonds. Oft kassieren sie genau da ab, wo am wenigsten Geld zur Verfügung steht: In den Entwicklungsländern.
Der Fall Sambia erregte vor einigen Wochen Aufsehen. Der Investmentfond Donegale hatte 1999 Rumänien seine Forderungen an das südafrikanische Land Sambia für gut drei Millionen US-Dollar abgekauft. Die Schulden waren Altlasten aus den 1970er Jahren, als Sambia 15 Millionen US-Dollar für den Kauf rumänischer Traktoren geliehen hatte. Der afrikanische Staat war so verschuldet, dass er seine Schulden an Rumänien nicht zurückzahlen konnte, als der Kredit in den 1990er Jahren fällig geworden war.
Prozess gegen Sambia
Bei den G-8-Gipfeln 1999 in Köln und 2005 in Gleneagles wurde schließlich den so genannten hoch verschuldeten armen Ländern (”Highly indebted poor countries” HIPC) ein großer Teil ihrer Schulden erlassen. Die Länder sollten das eingesparte Geld in Schulen, Krankenhäuser und andere Infrastruktur-Projekte investieren. In Sambia schlug stattdessen der auf den britischen Virgin Islands ansässige Geier Donegale zu. (more…)
July 31, 2007
Yesterday I went to the evening service in the Berliner Dom and again was reminded of how biased my language is.
The priest spoke about John 9, where Jesus heals a blind person. BUT the bible says it in a different way:
John 9.1: As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth.
The point is, that we usually refer to a disabled person as exactly that: a disabled person. First ‘disabled’, then ‘person’ (In German: ein Blinder, eine Taubstumme, ein Behinderter) But in this sentence, the priest pointed out, the man is first of all a man and then only in the more detailed discription he’s referred to as being blind.
This reminds me of how you say ‘A woman, a man’ in Indonesian: ’seorang wanita, seorang lelaki‘ : A person who is a woman. She’s first of all a human being, and only after this her gender is relevant. Interesting, I think.
July 7, 2007
they’re bit by bit killing what if left of our democratic ideals…
Neuer Schäuble-Vorschlag
Gezielte Tötung im Kampf gegen den Terror? (more…)
July 6, 2007
THE Western woman, THE Islam - I know I’m walking on thin ice here, feeling my way into something that I might not be predestined to speak about, but I want to give it a try anyways. Earlier I went to a workshop-discussion about ‘Feindbild Islam, Feindbild Westen?’, the concept of an Islamic/ Western enemy (Feind=enemy, bild=image) and how and why such images, in particular this one, are being constructed. The workshop consisted of three panels with each 2-5 speakers and the topics that were touched upon were so diverse that we all felt a bit run over and exhausted in the end, but one thing has been stuck in my mind since and before I find the time to search for articles about it, I’d like to pour out what has been swirling around in my head. This has already started last Tuesday when I went to talk about Da’wa and Christian mission. When it came to the discussion, the people in the audience suddenly debated in such heated and headless way that one couldn’t help but thinking of the so often cited clash of cultures. A Muslim was wondering what is so bad about Da’wa, about Muslims coming to Europe preaching Islam. Without letting him finish his sentence, a woman from the back furiously shouted “Because everything that we have fought for is being countermanded, our whole emancipation is being ruined!” Another woman gave her applause. So often I’ve seen that Western women are very passionately hating the veil.
Also if one goes into a bookstore and looks around what can hardly count all the books written by and particularly for Western women, telling them horror stories of suppressed Muslim women. The newspapers are full of them. Of course, they do exist, there’s thousands of them, suffering suppression right now. But also there are thousands of Westen women suffering from discrimination, sexism, domestic violence, rape, abuse, etcetera.
I wonder whether all this energy that many Western women put into stabilising this stereotype wouldn’t be much better used if they fought for their very own emancipation instead. These women humiliate the Other to convince themselves of their own emancipatedness. ‘I don’t earn as much as a man would for the same amount of work, I have to be attractive to be seen as a real woman, I am a sexual object, BUT I don’t have to wear a veil and I can take my own decisions. I might have to quit my job if I want to have children, but I am allowed to go to university before that and I’m not imprisoned and domesticate. Actually I have gained complete freedom and emancipation, compared to these poor victims. I am lucky for being Western and not born into a Muslim family and culture.’
Often I feel these women see their mission in rescueing Muslim women from their brutal Muslim men or at least in feeling sorry for them. This othering and victimisation serves to distract from problems that Western women have in their own surroundings. (Is that a kind of divide and rule or just part of patriarchy?)
I’m not saying that Muslims should be left alone to deal with ‘their’ problems themselves, every abused woman in our society should be a focus of our attention (’our society’ being user-defined) but it does make sense to start from my very own self. From there I am to explore the underlying structures of my society, of which Muslim women are as much part as Polish women, Christian women, Kurdish women.
We can hardly resist from using the Other as a mirror, but it makes no sense to lash out at the mirror because I don’t like the reflection. I shall rather use it, turn my face and see the scars in it, use the reflection to see more clearly what is happening to me. And the Other, of course, but by asking, by looking more closely, not by pointing and shouting at it.
July 5, 2007
Filed under: Uncategorized — saskialouise @ 3:30 am
June 20, 2007
The long expected new double decker Airbus A380, which will be almost as big as a football field and could fit 840 passengers, has been ordered by a private person. He will have to employ special pilotes and an pay an unimaginable rent to keep his new toy somewhere. This is disgusting.
June 19, 2007
Sometimes I have the impression that most people still believe the story of the underdeveloped world needing our help. ‘And when we send them our money, their corrupt elites keep it all to themselves.’ -Before thinking about helping third world countries*, it’s time to acknowledge and to stop exploiting them. The G8 are pretending to be talking about how to help Africa - but at the very same time they’re robbing the African people by destroying their local markets actively.
One recent example is summarised by George Monbiot in his article about the milk subsitute discussion in the Philippines: The government put up posters, educating the people that milk formula is not healthier or better than natural baby milk. Many babies die because their mothers use dirty water to prepare the subsitute. The government forbade companies to hand out free samples and to aggressivley advertise their milk substitute. Then, I paste a paragraph from Monbiot’s article,
“The US embassy and the US regional trade representative started lobbying the Philippines government. Then the chief executive of the US Chamber of Commerce in Washington – which represents three million businesses – wrote a letter to the president of the Philippines, Gloria Arroyo. The new rules, he claimed, would have “unintended negative consequences for investors’ confidence”. The country’s reputation “as a stable and viable destination for investment is at risk.”(15) Four days later, the Supreme Court reversed its decision and imposed the restraining order PHAP had requested. It remains in force today. The government is currently unable to prevent companies from breaking the international code.”
In the US and here, these people get respected for the high numbers they have achieved for their companies. Nobody is going to count the dead bodies they’re leaving behind. As Monbiot also concludes later, it’s not as much as to how the G8 countries could help the world, it’s rather first of all to stop the exploitation that is carried out in our very names.
*the expression ‘third world’ having been coined by a Frenchman, in reference to the Third Estate of the French Revolution. I find this term less colonial than ‘developing country’ as this indicates the West to be the standard which other countries are supposed to reach, while this is not possible due to the unsustainability of Western industrialisation and ‘development’. Since the term ‘third world’ is a bit ambivalent aswell, it might be most appropriate to speak of ‘the Global South’ instead…
June 18, 2007
Yesterday, a year ago, I left Adit at Dhaka Airport. Today, a year ago, I was rushing to pack up my stuff in his empty flat in Kuala Lumpur, not wanting to go anywhere, just exhausted. Tomorrow, a year ago, I said good-bye to my little Penang. I can still taste the cheese-naan bread, I can still smell the garlic that my flatmate fried in the morning, I can still feel my back hurting from carrying my bags to the bus station every weekend, I can still hear the cars from the highway that I heard while I smoked my cigarettes on the balcony, overseeing the long and beautifully glittering bridge. Remembering one thing brings back so much that it starts hurting. It feels weird how fast everything goes. A whole year again. Time flies, it’s scary.
A year ago I wrote that I was scared that my little life would absorb me here and exactly that has happened. The more I think about it, the more I feel Heimweh, longing for home.
June 10, 2007
Filed under: Uncategorized — saskialouise @ 10:47 pm
One of the girls living in London told us how she became scared when, after the bombings in London, she saw a Muslim on a tube, clad in a wide dress, reciting the Qur’an loudly and rocking his body back and forth. She got off the tube and waited for the next one. She said she is not being islamophobic, and of course this man can do what he wants, but at the same time she found it not sensitive of him to do that in public while he must know what affect it will have on people. (more…)
Filed under: Uncategorized — saskialouise @ 10:41 pm
I’m in Paris at the moment, participating in a two-week seminar on Southeast Asian studies organised by the University of Leiden and the European Union’s Erasmus Program, hearing lectures about identity politics in Southeast Asia. Sadly it’s more like a lecture series than discussions among the participants, which is a shame, because I quite enjoy meeting other people from other cities and countries with the same ‘weird’ subject.
The topic is: “Transnational, national and regional identities in Southeast Asia, so it’s pretty vague but one could still fill it with a lot of interesting discussions. It’s a shame though, the lecturers mostly just talk about whatever they have already had prepared for other occasions, or so it appears at last. The participants are from the Universities of Hamburg, Frankfurt, Berlin, Leiden, London, Naples and some French city, University La Rochelle. There are about 2-5 people from each uni, altogether we’re 24.
One of our topics the other day was ‘cultural identity’ and since the lecture was unfortunately lacking of any theoretical basis, there was a lot of room for random thoughts. Is cultural identity that of an individual or of a group? How is it connected to national identity? (more…)
May 17, 2007
It as if the air is different and all tense. A friend visiting me from another city also noticed it. While we were boarding the tram, some drunk 14-year-old stepping out of the door pushed his shoulder against mine, immediately shouting at me that I should watch out. While getting into the tram, I instantly shouted back to him to shut up and fuck off, he then hysterically screamed he’d beat me up, all this within seconds until the doors shut again. My friend was shocked, especially over how normal I took the incident. (more…)
April 8, 2007
It’s good to be typing, my fingers have missed the keyboard. Had trouble accessing the net as someone broke into our flat on monday and took what they liked, my laptop is gone. And with it went the writings and audios from five weeks Indonesia, of course I didn’t make a back up, of course not…
At least they left my external hard disk and therefore everything from before the trip is still here, otherwise I probably would have given up or gone mute or something.
I’m now trying to dig up my little brain for leftovers and reconstruct bits of what is gone.
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Went to church service for Easter and am scared about how little I can connect to the whole Jesus-died-for-us-thing. I don’t feel part of the rituals and wonder whether I have ever been. I’m just observing and am tired of that role, I don’t want to be observing and thinking and analysing, I want to be part of it, I want to sink in and let go, want to be absorbed.
March 30, 2007
Coming back to Berlin is a bit scary as always, because life here doesn’t seem to have moved a lot while I feel I have. I am quickly absorbed in normal life here and the last five weeks seem to not have happened, although they’re still very much there with me right now and I know that they were important for me. People speak of here and my there is fading with every second.
“Everthing is as it used to be….”
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The book I bought on Yogya airport is a waste of time and money so far. I’ll finish reading it and then properly comment again, but so far it really is not clear to me why someone published it. The story is interesting, but the style is bad, so full of cliches… and the worst is that it’s all based on the life of the author, who doesn’t manage to get a distance to his main protagonist: he describes him as the complete hero, good at everything and loved by everyone. What a waste!
love about being here:
-having time: I can stay in bed without feeling guilty for not being on the street, doing something, being awake, absorbing… I can just hang around my room and do nothing, surf for hours, it’s brillant.
-my bathroom, it’s nice not to share it with dozens of people
-my bed, it’s great to have a proper blanket and six pillows to hug instead of just two.
-my kitchen, having a fridge is great too.
irritating about being here:
-the quietness when I shut my window
-the dry air
-the noise from the street when I open my window
-not being able to sit in front of my door to chat to my neighbours
-knowing that nobody will randomly smile at me when I’ll go to the supermarket
-having to unpack all that stuff that I brought while my room is already bursting
Airport Jakarta, 28th oMarch, 1:30 pm, one hour before scheduled departure
Heavy rain behind glass doors, I know the beauty of this wet air, her smell and sound, how she strokes my lungs and skin, but right now I’m breathing air-condition. My eyes fill with tears if I think of leaving this air, humid and thick, full of life, so different than the dry air in Europe that doesn’t allow plants to develop the lush green of the tropics… (more…)
March 27, 2007
Last day, flight is tomorrow, I’m trying to sort out last bits and soaking in the busy streets, not much time to suffer from the usual pain of leaving…
afternoon: Suddenly all kinds of meetings popped up, I had to cancel two, a shame, but it didnt work out… 
Arrival in Berlin scheduled for thursday morning, insha’Allah we’ll see/hear/read each other in the next couple of days.
Terimakasih :).
March 26, 2007
I stopped Uni, I’m not copying any books and not tying to meet anymore people, I want some free days and am taking them…
Went to see Javanese traditional dance and Kraton again, all alone, being alone is getting a bit boring; then Moni and I went on a very girly day for make up and fotoshooting in traditional Javanese dress and hair, pretty funny. I was useless though, the photographer didn’t like me, too stiff, well how come, had never done that before.. Then Moni’s office-farewell party, couldn’t believe it, they mixed vodka and beer in big jugs and just got completely wasted.
And finally managed to see Bodobudur :). Meeting someone who was to take me there by motorbike I decided last minute that I find bike to risky and decided for the ugly bus trip and went by myself instead. “But I have travelled all over Bali with this bike, and Sumatra also, nothing ever happened…You’ll miss the countryside, I know the best route!” mmhmh, my Dad has talked me into feeling guilty for considering the bike ride yesterday and I found the helmet was too plastic …I also had a bad feeling because it used to be purple but is painted with black colour. Also I woke up having two cockroaches in my room, I thought all these are signs enough to stick to the apparently safer busride.
Borobudur was good. :).
Afterwards ruined my cash card at an ATM and need to find a way to get money now or otherwise I have to sneak out of my hotel at night ;). I’m again asking my poor brother for organising my failures.
Then Moni and I extended our posh days and went for a ‘creambath’, which is hairstuff (ginger and avocado, smelled mmh) and head and neck and shoulders massage…beautiful, I have missed out on something, that was my first ever ’salon’-massage since Thailand four years back, when I was so embarrassed by someone kneeling down and washing my feet that I never went to a massage again afterwards. But nice it was, nice nice, especially after an exhausting day wandering around the temple ruins and spending three hours on a bus that is as dusty and also loud as my brother’s stereo. Also I was sent into wrong directions a couple of times and spent some frustrated time standing by busy roads looking for transport.
Hmh, I got my hair washed with warm water, I had forgotten how nice warm water feels, am looking forward to my shower and bathtub now. Afterwards they blew my hair so tidy and bourgeois that I couldn’t stop giggling looking at myself in the mirror. My hair and skin still smells so nice, I want that every week! Getting girly ;).
Have booked my flight to Jakarta also, not going by train after all, too lazy to be bothered. It’s booked, I only have to pay it and find some cash for that ;).
Looking forward to coming home, for several reasons, the most important one being most of those who are reading this, can’t wait to see & hear you.
March 24, 2007
Sorry, this entry is just a list of things I’m doing at the moment, I’m typing quickly, taking no care of how.
I’m busy saying goodbye to people and keep meeting new people still, it’s chaotic. Yesterday finally met with Yulia’s friends from the social science faculty of Gadjah Mada University, we”ve ben trying to fix an appointment for a week, finally happened, we were supposed to meet up for ‘discussing about my research’ because they are running some program about human rights education and Islam, I still don’t know what it exactly is. I only had one hour (I feel so decadent, I’m having all these “appointments” and take cabs all the time to reach roughly in time, I’m behaving like a businesswoman with the big difference that I don’t earn any money but spend it!) and so everything was pretty rushed. After ten minutes introduction talk someone came in and said: “Please, everything is ready for your presentation, do you need a laptop?” Eh!? Presentation!? So there I was, suddenly drawing Merkel”s model on the white board and talking, for I guess just fifteen minutes and of course not in any good order, just chaos and just touching upon things, but still, I was quite impressed, had I been asked a day before what I’d do in such a situation I’d have answered that I’d have insited on a ‘discussion’ in a circle, rather than a ‘presentation’ where I’m standing and the others are listening.. Thrown in water, you have to swim and sometimes it’s surprising what we’re able of. Although it was really short they said they’d like to ‘host’ my further research and help me to meet people and everything. When asked when I’m coming back I’m a bit hesitant…what do I know when I can come back?? ASAP…
It was good, I got proper criticism and had I had more time, we would have had a discussion I’m sure. Next time, insha’Allah.
Thursday night had a farewell dinner with Nur, Alim and Rison; tomorrow Moni’s Farewell as she’s leaving next week too.
Still haven’t been to Borobudur, awful.
Finished language classes yesterday, no more, I want some free time also, at least in the end…went to a poprock concert with Moni, Eka and Hario yesterday. Have to do my laundry and sort out my chaos today.
March 22, 2007
Seltsam wie nah sie beieinander liegen, wenn ich alleine bin, diese Momente des totalen Enthusiasmus und der Leere. (more…)
March 21, 2007
Tuesday evening, 20th oMarch 2007 Just read what I’ve written yesterday and noticed again how much I write about food, about either having or wanting it. At home I take food for granted and although I do appreciate and seriously enjoy eating, it’s abroad that I find it worth writing about.Just had Soto, rice and noodles soup, with a friend of Moni’s. Hario is really nice and very patient with my Bahasa. He’s Muslim, but interested in Hinduism. (It’s awful, I have the religious labelling stuck in my head, I can’t get it out!! I’ve asked people for their religion and they looked at me as if I’d had asked them for the size of their shoes…This reminds me of how I hard I have to force myself to not ask for the ‘race’ when someone speaks of a S’porean or M’sian, I always want to know which label, it’s awful..) (more…)
March 19, 2007
Saturday evening, 17 oMarch 2007
Culture & Religion, Campuran Agama
Went to the Kraton this morning where a friendly guide who plays in the Sultan’s Gamelan orchestra and claims to own over 600 keris explained everything to me. The Kraton is the Sultan’s palace, he still lives there with his family. We could therefore only visit the very entrance, which includes the Gamelan (music performance) hall, the coronation hall and the hall for wedding and circumcision ceremonies.What I found most interesting was how the Sultanic culture is of such un-Arabic Islam: the princes wore no shirt until their wedding and the princesses went strapless. The pillars of the Gamelan hall combine elements of Javanese culture: the colour green representing Islam, the basis resembling an elephant’s foot which stands for Hinduism and the pink lotus flower symbolising Buddhism. The royal mosque looks like a Buddhist temple.
I think clothes are something that is not well enough being analyed, in my opinion the way people and cultural groups dress says immensely much about them. I for example noticed that women here wear a set of clothes that is similar to the Indian Salwar Kameez, just with a tight headscarf instead of a shawl. When I asked a woman about the name of that dress, she replied ‘Muslim dress’ ;).Pak Ratno, the Shariah-law-specialist, told me that this kind of dress is new to
Indonesia. I find that very interesting. (I also find it interesting that people who study the same subject as I do, Southeast Asian Studies, and who therefore have also spent some significant time either in SEA or reading about it, look at ‘Ethno dress’ in askance. I wonder whether it’s not just as ‘ethno’ that people in
China wear blouses and trousers, having abandoned their traditional way of dressing for the Western way. Western clothes in this view, I think, is perceived as the ’standard’ and everything else as ‘Ethno’.) Afterwards I went to a Batik school/shop by becak (bicycle-rikshaw) and was absolutely stunned by the beautiful batik they had. Batik in the sense of pictures, paintings on cotton and silk. Heaps of amazing colours and motives…massive ones that make me wish I had a big house to decorate.The colours they originally used were from Safran, Ginger and so on.By one of the painters I was directly taken to a shop where they produce the puppets for wayang, shadow-puppet-shows. They use ox-skin for making the figures which are usually out of the Ramayana or Mahabarata. (Epic tales originally from India which have been retold for hundreds of years all over
Southeast Asia.)
Mas Kelik, who showed me around, proudly emphasised that they don’t use cow skin because of respect for the Hindus. He himself is Muslim and the handicraft of puppet making has already been learned and taught by his father.The puppets were absolutely beautiful and I for the first time in a long while felt like I want to possess something, felt like I should earn money to buy stuff.Had Soto for lunch, rice and glass noodles soup, with tofu. Then went to the Shopping Mall cause I needed an ATM and felt like aircon and some plastic after all these cultural highlights. While trying on shoes I got to know Mbak Vero and Mbak Tri who work at Matahari, the big department store. They invited me to go to their churches and I waited for them to finish their job, so two hours later Mbak Tri took me along to her church. I liked the singing and all the purple fabric for easter everywhere, but was very confused with all that Catholic sit-stand up-sit-stand up procedure and very irritated with all this Jesus-concentration. I was not asked whether I want to eat Jesus’ body and I didn’t want to be impolite so I just ate that ‘thing’ and felt uncomfortable. Jesus has more and more become a human being for me, I don’t pray to him anymore and he has lost his Godly glimmer. I also don’t believe that he died for anyone’s sins, I can clearly state. I guess this makes me a Non-Christian, in the common understanding, which feels strange, as I used to be very happy to be one or to call myself Christian. But I guess I never was a follower of Christ but always a follower of Jesus, the Bible-Jesus, the one who never himself claimed to be anything special or to die for people’s sins.So I really felt awkward when praying to Jesus for the first time in aaaages, it just happened somehow. The sermon was about the lost son coming back, funny, hm?It doesn’t feel right though and I’ll perform a proper prayer to my Creator before going to sleep. Jesus does remain close to the centre of my belief, he is the ‘model’, he is the one who makes my heart soft, but he’s not God and although he is alive, he’s not to pray to and he’s not my redeemer, not my Christ.
Like Mas Thomas said to me the other day: “Saya tidak punya agama, saya hanya punya Tuhan” - I don’t have a religion, I only have a Lord.
But it’s hard without rituals and a crowd! I’m too young to be without structure and gurus in my faith.On the other hand I really don’t find any of the religions I know sufficient, they’re all man-made constructed ideabuildings, far away from what I’m reading in the scriptures. After service Mbak Tri invited me to her place and we exchanged the ‘Our Father’ in Indonesian and German and prayed together, silently. She says she prays to Jesus and Maria, not to God directly. Mas Thomas also said he prays to Maria a lot. I don’t understand this, why do people pray to Mary!? Who is Mary? Mbak Tri seems sad, she’s still really young and already has such a serious face and tone in her voice. She said she likes being alone, that’s very weird for an Indonesian. She also lives and appearantly usually eats on her own. We spent some time quietly together, not saying anything. Afterwards we went for nasi goreng and she took me home.
Sunday, 18th oMarch 2007
did my laundry and got help from the guys to clean my room, it was in a pretty rough state… Now everything smells fresh and clean, it’s really nice. I’d really rather bake my own bread than clean my house myself, I’m just not good at it. Standing in the court yard to hang up my clothes I am again amazed by the intensity of the tropical sun. It’s overwhelmingly strong and -merciless-. It just burns everything away and stanging in the scorching heat for five minutes makes you aware of the importance of the rain forest, seriously. This sun is absolutely amazing, I love the sun here.
abends: Regen (abgestipptes Voice-Recording, gesprochen während ich vor meiner Tür saß und dem Himmel dabei zusah, wie er die Erde berührte)
Voran: “Vor die Tür zieht’s mich, in dieser Regennacht. Gibt es eine bessere Möglichkeit, den Himmel auf der Haut zu spüren?”
Ich werde ihn vermissen diesen Regen, der gewaltig knallt und alles unter Wasser setzt. Diesen Regen der sich den ganzen Tag über aufgeladen hat und der sich zum Schluss dann über die Stadt ergießt und alles verschluckt. Nichts ist mehr da außer Wasser. Die Hitze des Tages ergießt sich in die schmutzigen Sraßen, spült Staub und überfahrene Rattenreste in die Straßengräben und durch die offenen Kanäle. Pflanzen schwimmen im Wasser und sehen aus als könnten sie sich nie mehr davon erholen, doch in ein paar Stunden schon wird die Erde den Regen aufgesogen haben, alles wird wieder trocken sein und die Sonne wird auch die letzten Reste noch auflecken.Ich werde den Geruch nach feuchter Erde vermissen der plötzlich in jede Pore dringt. Es hat abends um acht angefangen zu regnen, der Tag ist plötzlich vorbei. Alles was ihn ausgemacht hat wird fortgespült, die Luft ist mit einem Mal ganz weich. Kein Mensch ist mehr zu sehen. Wo sonst Straßenhändlerinnen, Fußgänger und Bettler jeden Winkel füllen, sind nur noch Wasserstrippen. Alles hat sich verkrochen, jeder hat irgendwo Schutz gesucht. Ich sitze hier und kann gar nichts anderes tun als in den Himmel zu gucken und auf den Boden. Der kleine Weg vor meinem Zimmer hat sich in einen Fluss verwandelt. Blätter und Blüten schwimmen vorbei wie von Kindern ausgesetzte Boote.
Acting against principles can be scarily refreshing…. I’m drinking delicious Jasmine tea, bottled by evil co.cacola and eating soft German Ritter Sport, after having spent the afternoon at the Plaza, the newest shiny shopping temple in town. This afternoon I suddenly felt the urgent need for Western food. I cancelled all my home work and my church appointment and took off and travelled for one and a half hours by bus to Piz.za Hut to treat myself to a pan pizza. It was delicious and tasted exactly the same like everywhere else in the world, only that I had sambal, chili sauce, instead of crushed chili. I give Mc.D.onald’s dirty looks but travel for ages for a pan pizza, it’s bad, I know. For the way home I had to take a cab, busses already finish as early as six o’clock. With all this money someone else in this country could have fed his family for three weeks. Before eating, I spent some twenty minutes at Car.refour to extend my excitement a bit and then finally had salad and pizza and now I still feel good, four hours afterwards. It’s been my first non-rice-meal for two weeks. Carref.our always reminds me of the weekly family trips to the big supermarkets. In
Malaysia I bought all my furniture at one of these big chains and we went there every week to stock up on biscuits and cupnoodles and instant tea. Today I imagined what I would buy if I was moving in here. For ten minutes or so I imagined to be shifting my flat to Jogya right now, chosing furniture, buying my first food supplies… I love playing What if…? :).I’d want a big shelf for all the new books that I could buy, was I not restricted by my travel bag. I’d want a water cattle so I could make cupnoodles and I’d buy beer to put in the fridge I’d have. I’d buy noodles and vegetables to cook and show the people I’ve met here that vegetarian food doesn’t have to taste as dull as what they make, that people in Thailand and
India know how to make good veg food ;). I also tried to imagine what it would be like to have a family to take care of, kids who don’t like this and don’t like that and cry for sweets and plastic stuff when you’re shopping. I wondered if I could ever be bothered or if I’d send a maid for shopping and then kept thinking about whether this would be wrong. The crowd in the shopping mall is completely different from what I observe outside. The clothes are different first of all, people here dress up to go to the mall. You see less headscarves and the ones you see are fancy middle-class ones, making the women even prettier. People hide the fact that they are watching me and they smile less. The kids are often fat and look spoilt. (I might be exaggerating, but this is what I see!) I like shopping malls, they’re like safe little islands where the rules are clear: spend money and you’re part of it, dress neatly and the salespeople are friendly, however fake; you can buy their smiles. Only after half an hour I have enough of it, my batteries are recharged and I’m happy to leave again.
Monday, 19th oMarch
I’m not at uni, it’s a holiday, a Hindu one appearantly. I’m staying home again, doing Indonesian course homework. Because I always sleep for so long, the one who always brings me tea has now explained to me how meditation works. He says he sometimes meditates for three hours, sleeps for two and still feels really good and “fresh” the next day. He learned how to meditate from his friend who converted from Islam to Buddhism. He emphasised that this is only for refreshing body and mind and had nothing to do with prayers. He’s Muslim, but he can integrate other useful things to in his routine, he says. After the Muslim prayer, he sits there for hours and meditates. Interesting.
March 16, 2007
My stay here is getting to an end already, it’s crazy, I have just arrived.
I’ll quickly explain what I’m up to at the moment, the last entries are all pretty long and confusing for those who don’t want to go into details…
I’ve been to Yogja for three weeks now, doing a language course and looking for a topic for my MA-thesis. I want to do something related to democracy and Islam in Malaysia/Indonesia and find out what really are the issues that are being discussed here before I start my ‘desk work’ in Berlin. I’m spending the month at the Center for the Study of Islam and Social Transformation which is just being established at the Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University. The basis of this centre’s research is a perspective from the social sciences and humanities rather than from a theological point of view. I’m talking to people at this uni, spend some time at Gadjah Mada university and ask basically everyone I meet for their opinion. I don’t know enough yet to ask detailed questions, but I’m rather absorbing what people have on their minds and what is being discussed. It’s not very sophisticated, but I’m trying and it already now feels much better than just reading what other people have written about this country..
I’m amazed by how interested and open everyone is, by how people love to debate and discuss. I cannot help but to compare Indonesia to Malaysia and although it might be true that in Malaysia I didn’t speak to the right people, I am glad to see that here, even people on the street are ready to discuss ’sensitive issues’ and are not afraid to speak their mind. Especially the students are so interested, it’s really fun to speak to people.
There’s groups who organise mass demonstrations for the anti-pornography law and groups who want to abolish the nation state to build one massive caliphate and there’s Muslims who tell me that all religions are the same. There’s completely blackveiled women who turn my stomach around and there are mixed marriages…there’s everything!
I’m staying in a guesthouse near a hospital where loads of different people stay for a couple of days, so I get to talk to them and therefore am not totally locked in the academic/ educated bubble. Of course these conversations stay on a simple level due to my limited language skills, but at least I get an idea.
I spend the morning at uni and the afternoon at language school, in the evenings I usually don’t do much, by then I’m already tired and only do my homework… exciting, hm? ;).
Thursday evening, 15/03/07 Just came home, it’s eight o’clock in the evening and I already am droptired. I’m afraid my hard disc is going to burst of overload… Spend the morning chatting with the Centre’s director again, then went to meet the Sharia’ah law lecturer for about an hour, afterwards went for lunch with the director and straight from there to language class, which again was three hours today. After one and a half hours we stopped grammar and Mas Thomas, my teacher, was explaining his views of society and religion, which we continued for over an hour after the class had already finished. It’s really interesting to get his Javanese-Catholic view on things. I find it irritating that in the fourth year of my studies I still know so little about Indonesia. Now coming home I was really looking forward to have a moment of quietness to let everything sink in, because my brain is exhausted from listening and because I’m afraid I can’t remember it all. As soon as I got home the guy whose name I still don’t know brought me tea to sit and chat with me and again he comes up with his view on the Chinese minority, which of course is also extremely interesting. Now I’ve managed to withdraw myself with the excuse that I have work to do, which I have, but I need a minute for myself really before I do my homework…I am hungry and want to go and find food but I know that he’ll accompany me the second I step out of the door, so I don’t go. My brain already feels like mashed potatos after over four hours of constant Bahasa. I don’t know how I managed two years ago when Bahasa was my only language for two weeks in a row! And without Internet access and without writing and even proper food also…. humans can adjust to anything really, it’s fascinating. Time is running so fast here, there’s no way I can only do half of what I still want to do…and then sometimes I wonder why I spent so much time online while I should be doing other things, but I guess this is also just my time off…. I got into the rhythm of sleeping in longer in the morning, while still going to bed at around ten or eleven. I don’t sleep very well, it’s too hot and too noisy and there’s so much on my mind when I go to bed. Four five days now there has this disgusting person been staying here who gets up at four thirty and spends half an hour in the bathroom cleaning his throat from slime with such noise that I wake up from it. The bathroom I am sharing with about 20 people is four metres away from my bed. This disgusting noise is after construction noise definately the ugliest way to wake up that I have experienced. Pak Nurhaidi was today emphasising the role of economy within the democratisation process. He cited scholars who are sure that Indonesia will be more democratic, once a certain economic standard is reached. A classical modernisation-theory-argument that I don’t like so much, knowing Singapore. But I’m lacking facts and arguments to support this feeling. Is China now becoming more democratic, is the life situation of the Chinese majority improving? What about India? And is democracy an improvement anyways, even in its normative understanding?Afterwards, the talk with the Sharia’ah law lecturer reminded me of the importance of understanding law.. I don’t even know anything about the law in my own country. I just read that the German law in fact permits polygamy, in the sense that a man who has married a second wife in his country of origin, where polygamy is allowed, can take this second wife home to Germany and have her insured within the normal family insurance, which also covers his first marriage. This means that polygamy is somehow de jure accepted. Surely this regulation is somehow initiated for the benefit of this poor second wife, but it extremely strange. What about ethnically German men, can they also go on a holiday trip to Saudi Arabia and bring a second wife home? There is so so much that has to be considered and understood!!
Somehow this world is spinning too fast for me. It’s frustrating to accept that however much I learn, see or do, it will never be enough. One could just as well give up!As a child, I liked this book about a little insect that never gets enough and always wants more food. I think it’s “The hungry ‘caterpillar’” or something like that, I don’t know the English word (Die kleine Raupe Nimmersatt). I’m afraid I am like that insect. Mhm, I think I will go and search Nasi Goreng now, typing the word hungry makes me want to eat ;)! Später:
Auf deutsch weiter, ich bin zu erschöpft um auf englisch weiterzudenken. Ich frage mich welche Rolle diese ganzen liberalen foreign-sponsort-NGOs spielen und ob das alles nicht doch imperialistische Infiltration ist. Pak Nurhaidi hat davon berichtet wie viele Unis eigentlich Policy-makers sind und das finde ich schon unheimlich.Neulich hab ich ein Interview mit Lily Munir gelesen das mich nicht mehr loslässt, sie bemängelt darin dass all diese liberal-Islam Gruppen zwar mit dem Finger auf die religiösen Hardliner zeigen, aber nicht die Probleme ansprechen, die die westlichen Einflüsse mit sich bringen. An den einen zerren die Saudis mit ihren kranken Hududgedanken, an den anderen die Amerikaner mit ihrem wahnsinnigen Plastikconsumerism. Die eigene javanische Kultur wurde von Suharto missbraucht und wird nun unter Fremdeinflüssen in ihrem Erholungsprozess zugeschüttet.
Ich glaube mir ist diese Welt eine Nummer zu groß. Hoffentlich krieg ich die nächste besser erklärt.
March 14, 2007
BBC News: Eight killed in southern Thailand
Several passengers were shot in the head
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Eight people have been killed in an attack on a minibus in southern Thailand, police have said. The incident, which also left one person injured, has been blamed on suspected Muslim insurgents.
The minibus was taking people from the province of Yala to Hat Yai, the south’s major city, in the neighbouring province of Songkhla.
About 2,000 people have died in Thailand’s restive south since a resurgence of unrest in January 2004.
In contrast with the rest of Thailand, the south is predominantly Islamic, and most of the people living there have more in common with Malays, who live over the border, than with Buddhist Thais.
There are almost daily bombings and shooting attacks targeting representatives of the Thai authorities - police, soldiers, teachers and sometimes ordinary civilians.
Officials blame Muslim insurgents for much of the unrest, although criminal gangs are also thought to be behind some of the attacks.
Wednesday’s ambush took place a day after the anniversary of the founding of the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), one of the main separatist groups in the region.
Police had warned that insurgents might try to mark the anniversary by launching attacks in the area.
Already this week, a Burmese migrant worker has been beheaded, several schools have been torched and a bomb set off in a morning market.
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I’m pretty cut off from the news and just now read how bad the situation in South Thailand is again…..just ten months ago I took one of these minibusses through Hat Yai and now such a bus has been attacked and its passengers killed and someone beheaded earlier this week! We just spoke about the large influence of da’wa in Souththailand last week, and how years ago that was an ethnic conflict which has now (been) turned into a religious one..ah, it’s so sad, what is it that is happening over there!?
Tuesday evening, 13th oMarch 2007
This morning was so typically me and I somehow don’t know how to change it: I was invited to join a class on spirituality in the other university, but I didn’t find the room. I saw someone whom I thought to be the teacher but instead of following him, just asking him (he actually smiled at me when he passed me, it would have been so easy!) or calling the student who had invited me to the class I just didn’t move and stayed where I was, missing the class. After ten minutes the girl texted me I should come but I didn’t want to come late and have them all look at me. I don’t know where that comes from, it happens pretty often, this sudden inability to act, to move, to take responsibility, to use the very moment.
Yulia, the student, is so friendly, I hope I haven’t insulted her by my weirdness.
Afterwards I went back to the Islamic university where I was supposed to meet the director of the centre I’m currently ‘connected to’. When I arrived, I saw the room to be full of people and hesitated to go in, so I just sat in front of the room with my laptop and continued writing my summary. After a while someone left the room for a phone call and a minute later Pak Nur came outside, suprised that I was there. He called me inside to introduce me to the director, the others left and we chatted for a bit. He was so friendly and is working on such interesting topics! Soon we were involved in a really interesting discussion about how Malaysia and Indonesia are comparable or not, we talked for over an hour. I am constantly ashamed of how little I know but then it’s so refreshing when I meet people who don’t give me weird looks |
