Non-fiction - Blog Posts

Religions In Indonesia

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Indonesia is quite an interesting country! It is known for one of their islands; Bali, and their vast number of languages. Fun fact! Indonesia is the country with the most islands and probably the country with the most languages that belong to them. There are a lot of islands, a lot of cultures that reside with the islands in the country, like Javanese and Balinese. But there is one language that is used by everyone there is Bahasa Indonesia. Their capital is Jakarta which isn’t as known as Bali but is still the capital of Indonesia.

Another thing that Indonesia is known for is their religions! It’s actually not permitted to NOT have a religion and that you must pick a religion out of 6 religions: Hindu, Kong Fu Cu, Islam, Buddha, Christian, and Catholic. Afterall, Indonesia is a secular democratic country that has a Muslim-majority population. The Indonesian constitution guarantees all people in Indonesia the freedom of worship, each according to his or her own religion or belief. It also stipulates that the state shall be based upon the belief in "the one and only God" (a condition which also forms the first principle of the Pancasila, the Indonesian state philosophy introduced by Soekarno in 1945).

Indonesia is always open to thousands of things! But there are some things that aren’t allowed and aren’t legalized by its government. Not only that, but religions in Indonesia have conflict despite having a lot of religious freedom. And although some religions are fighting over doctrinal differences, most conflict stems from more secular causes- a desire for political power, a struggle for resources, ethnic rivalries, and economic competition.

Just like I said earlier, some religions are having conflict. And although some religions are fighting over doctrinal differences, most conflict stems from more secular causes- a desire for political power, a struggle for resources, ethnic rivalries, and economic competition. Their reasoning for this conflict had caused a lot of problems in Indonesia.

Here’s a few of the conflicts that have been going on in Indonesia:

The conflict in the Malaccas, where, according to Indonesian Red Cross data, over 500,000 people have been displaced and over 4,000 people have died in Christian-Muslim combat over the previous two years. Even if it is undoubtedly the greatest of the problems we are currently experiencing, it would be inaccurate to attribute it to a long-standing religious disagreement. The underlying causes of it are actually numerous historical, political, and economic ones.

Although West Kalimantan is currently quiescent, hundreds of people were murdered in a new outbreak that occurred in 1999. Furthermore, there was a prior incident in 1997 that resulted in numerous fatalities and involved native Dayaks and some native Malays fighting the Madurese immigrant group. The topic of migrants against indigenous people is a recurring motif in conflicts within Indonesian communities.

There is a conflict going on in Poso in Sulawesi. Again the worst episode was this past spring when there were about 300 people killed. Again there was Christian-Muslim fighting but this conflict was based more on local elites struggling over power that ended up in communal conflict.

Community conflicts occasionally break out in Couchon Pandang in West and East Java, Kupang in West Timor, Lombok in Eastern Bali, and other places where the conditions are right. Of course, the ethnic Chinese are also a constant target whenever societal turmoil occurs.

Of course, there is a way to resolve all of these problems. It won’t be easy, neither will it be quick to resolve. But with time, it can be done. There are few solutions that I know of to overcome religious conflict and receive religious harmony:

Followers of different religions should exercise moderation and tolerance towards each other and their beliefs, and not instigate religious enmity or hatred.

Religion and politics should be kept separate.

Overall, we should learn how to  tolerate and respect other religions. Considering they are all in the same country, with Bhineka Tunggal Ika has their meaning for unity in all religions. I do hope for the best outcome of  any religious conflict in Indonesia. The people and its scenery is truly a beauty.

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Here's the resources that I used!

Indonesia Investments (2019). Religion in Indonesia | Indonesia Investments. [online] Indonesia-investments.com. Available at: https://www.indonesia-investments.com/culture/religion/item69.

Jones, S. (2023). Causes of Conflict in Indonesia. [online] Asia Society. Available at: https://asiasociety.org/causes-conflict-indonesia. 

opentext.wsu.edu. (n.d.). 6.4 RELIGIOUS CONFLICT – Introduction to Human Geography. [online] Available at: https://opentext.wsu.edu/introtohumangeography/chapter/6-4-religious-conflict/#:~:text=Although%20some%20religions%20are%20fighting. 

Ministry of Home Affairs (2023). Maintaining Racial and Religious Harmony. [online] Ministry of Home Affairs. Available at: https://www.mha.gov.sg/what-we-do/managing-security-threats/maintaining-racial-and-religious-harmony.

Fall Reading Reviews '15

Fall Reading Reviews ’15

Every season I have a list of books to read; you can find out more information under the Great Book List page.  This season I slightly overdid it with my commitments, but we’ll chalk it up to a learning curve. Below the read more are reviews (with minor spoilers) of Thorn Jack by Katherine Harbour, Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, Flappers: Six Women of a Dangerous Generation by Judith Mackrell, The…

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My problem is that I'm trying to be a fictional character in a non-fictional world

:D

hello pauline, greetings from the other side✨ i have been struggling with reading non-fiction for a while, feels like my brain is rotting :( could you please help me out/ recommend things i can start with which are interesting and not that hard to comprehend. thank you so much for you help. love and light to you 🌟

I feel you, I’ve just started reading academic papers for uni again and I hadn’t realized how much I missed reading non-fiction! On this list there are some I’ve read, some I’ve started but haven’t finished and others I’m looking forward to read. I would say all the essay collections and memoirs (except maybe for that of Wojnarowicz) are pretty accessible, maybe the political writings are a bit harder to understand depending on the subject (and I guess level of specificity and/or radicalism as well)

Obligatory readings (so like, my favourites, essays/collections that have shaped who I am): - The Book of Delights by Ross Gay - All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks - The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing - Upstream: Selected Essays by Mary Oliver - Conversations with James Baldwin, edited by Fred L. Standley - The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison

Some very touching/harrowing memoirs: - Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson - Little Weirds by Jenny Slate - The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion - Bluets by Maggie Nelson - The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch - In the Dream House: A Memoir by Carmen Maria Machado - The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir by Alexandria* Marzano-Lesnevich (I think they no longer use that name but it’s the name under which it was published) - The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher - A House Of My Own: Stories From My Life by Sandra Cisneros - The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde - Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration by David Wojnarowicz

More political non-fiction: - The Fire Next Time, Notes of a Native Son, Nobody Knows My Name, and I Am Not Your N**** by James Baldwin - Women, Race & Class and Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis - Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks - Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde - The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander - Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire - A Power Governments Cannot Suppress by Howard Zinn - This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible by Charles E. Cobb Jr.

Others: - Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke - Feel Free: Essays by Zadie Smith - What Poetry Is All About by Greg Kuzma - Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari - Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer - The Crying Book by Heather Christle

The sky got darker, but not like at sunset. The sun wasn't setting, it was shrinking, smaller and smaller but always still definitely the sun, until all at once there was night, Venus was out, the streetlights were lit, and only a wispy, hollowed out skeleton remained. It hanged there for about a minute, and people set off fireworks because people are obnoxious. Then a new sun grew out of the bones of the old one, and everything was possible again.

“My arm!” he looks in shock

Nandu & Co go on a tour to Camp Cramp

Nandu, in his younger days, used to travel with his friends. On one of his winter trips, he visited Mysore. Mysore is a cool place and in the winter its even cooler (esp. to us southerners). This trip was an overnight trip, Nandu and his friends did some sight-seeing and came back to the lodge they were staying at for the night and started talking and playing cards after dinner.

Nandu had a habit of placing his arm over the chair when holding cards, as the night grew darker, the room became chilled (the room didn’t have any heating as for Mysoreans it was normal, they didn’t think it was cold enough for a heater). Nandu wrapped a shirt around him without removing his hand that was over the chair and continued playing. As it passed midnight, he started dozing off, his hand was still over the chair, sleepily he buttoned his shirt and dozed off right on the chair!

Around 3 at night he half wakes from his slumber, only to realise that one of his arm had gone missing! He tries to get up from his chair, but he can’t! He can’t feel his left arm at all, he tries to move his right hand over his left shoulder trying to see where the arm went and all he found was the empty sleeve of his shirt!

Terrified he starts yelling at his friends that his left arm has disappeared and slowly one by one they wake up. They too try to see what has happened and are shocked to see that his shirt sleeve is empty! They try to get him to move to the bed but even if 2 people tried to lift him, he’s kind of stuck to the chair! Nandu then panicked and began crying that someone stole his arm.

Scared and confused, some of his friends ran down to get the lodge manager for some advice. Then Nandu slowly got the feeling back in his left arm, he realised that as he wrapped and buttoned his shirt before dozing off, he forgot to put his left arm through the sleeve and in that cold night, his hand cramped and he couldn’t feel it!

Realising what had happened, his friends roared with laughter and the panicked manager was annoyed at being woken up at that time, but he couldn’t stay annoyed as he heard the story and went back laughing.

After the trip Nandu & co came back, but his friends never stopped teasing him about this incident for a long, long time.

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