Islamic Defenders' Front & Playboy...

The Islamic Defenders' Front (FPI) has an uncanny knack for knowing how to garner a headline and, most would argue, ridicule.

For some reason, the Supreme Court has decided that Erwin Arnada, the former Editor of Playboy Magazine Indonesia, needs to do two years in prison for violating Indonesian decency laws. This begs the question, "have you ever taken a sneak peek at Indonesian Playboy?" If you have, then you will know that it is the only edition of Playboy Magazine that you really do buy for the articles. The pictorials were so tame that the magazine did not need to be sealed in a plastic bag nor did it need like a "R" or even an "M" rating.

There are clearly more tabloids and magazines being sold on street corners throughout Indonesia today that are more graphic and show more skin than playboy ever did. Yet, that said, for a bunch of hard up Muslim clerics and their supporters like those in the FPI then Indonesian Playboy would have been their entry into pornographic heaven; no need to wait for the 72 virgins!

Based on the Supreme Court verdict to jail Arnada, Habib "Hey Baby" Rizieq has called on all members of the FPI to arrest Arnada wherever they find him. What? I thought that Indonesia had law enforcement agencies to do that kind of work. There is absolutely no need for a bunch of hard up thugs to be effecting citizen arrests. The police, for all their faults, are more than capable enough to get a hold of Arnada and get him to jail without the intervention of the FPI.

The criminalisation of the Indonesia press can wait for another post. I have already written a few about criminalisation of the press through archaic criminal defamation laws. But, specifically, how these relate to Arnada will be the basis of a future post.

It is always amusing in the saddest of ways that the FPI considers itself to be judge, jury, and executioner on all things moral. God must be pissing himself (or herself) laughing up there in heaven. God is having this little chuckle about the fact that we are born showing more skin than there is in Indonesian Playboy. Yet, in any event, I have always been taught to believe that God was going to be doing the judging at some point in the future and that we should content ourselves with taking care of our own personal houses.

It is probably a good idea that people who live in glass houses not throw stones.

As it turns out, a recent raid on FPI headquarters has turned up a stack of Playboy magazines. According to Hey Baby, these magazines were for evidentiary purposes. However, I can see God on Judgment Day now: "So, Hey Baby, care to explain how come (no pun intended) all the pages of these pieces of evidence are stuck together?"

It is time that the Indonesian government shows some testicular fortitude in dealing with the FPI.