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The New Face of Indonesia's Islamic Fundamentalism: Pornography Ban Ignores the Starving

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Andre Vltchek
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Here it goes again. Uncles with harsh oversmoked voices from Indonesia's House of Representatives - that is synonymous with corruption and laziness – droning on about morality and about “how to protect the nation” from the ills of pornography. This time they have succeeded. While the nation was off guard, distracted by soaring food prices, a collapsing road system and general hopelessness, the House of Representatives on March 25th 2008 passed a bill banning all pornographic websites, threatening to jail users and providers who will now face up to three years in prison or a substantial fine. To be sure, Indonesia is still “softer” than Saudi Arabia, but the new bill is as tough or even tougher than anti-pornography laws in many other Muslim countries. What are the nation's priorities?

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , April 2008 , e5
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2008