Der Spiegel adds more detail to the Islamizing trend in Indonesia.
An Indonesian editor asserts that “We are on the brink of a comprehensive Islamicization of Indonesia.” That is not yet clear, but Islamic parties continue to press for an “anti-pornography” law that would actually restrict many freedoms, and impose new limits on dress, movies, and the arts.
Meanwhile, conservative Islam continues to spread in Indonesian society, inspiring more women to wear headscarves and clearing alcohol from more supermarkets. Says an Indonesian activitist, “The religious agenda is shaping more and more areas of daily life.”
The article also makes it clear that this is another example of the cultural power of Saudi Arabia, successfully using its wealth to export its version of fundamentalist Islam. Representatives of one of the fundamentalist parties sometimes speak Arabic in parliamentary committees.
As Future Atlas has noted in the past, the consequences of Islamization could be severe.
An article about Dubai in the Washington Post by the perceptive Anthony Shadid begins with this quote by a Dubaian government executive:
The only limitations are your own limitations. No one tells you that it cannot be done, that it should not be done. The only pushback has always been let’s do it bigger, let’s do it better, and let’s do it smarter.
Those are ideas strikingly at odds with the passivity and fatalism common to the Middle East, and hint at why the United Arab Emirates is seen as a potential transformative engine for the region.
However, Shadid notes the dark undersides of the place as well, and its resultant dual character:
One is a dystopic, even soulless vision of the future, where notions of civil society, individual rights and identity are subsumed in the logic of capital. The other is a rare triumph of the private sector in an Arab city that provides a model for prosperity and a force for integration, reversing decades of disappointment and defeat.
Specialized free-trade zones sound like libertarian fantasylands, with “no taxes, no customs, no restrictions on transferring funds, little red tape — in short, a capitalist free-for-all.”
Dubai is having an effect on the Middle East already:
Already, signs of Dubai’s impetus are visible around the Gulf. Qatar, in self-conscious competition with Dubai, has launched a spectacular building campaign. Saudi Arabia is planning a free-trade zone on the Red Sea. Bahrain and Kuwait are trying to recapture prestige they lost to Dubai in the 1990s. In recent months, private and quasi-government companies in Dubai have announced investments in Arab countries stretching from Morocco on the Atlantic coast to Jordan in the Middle East.
It is in some ways a fragile model: 85% of the workforce is foreign, and so instability could hollow the place out easily. And Shadid notes that some activists do not care for the rapid pace of change, and argue that it would be slower if the citizenry had more say in the matter.
That lack of freedom may be a brake on success. Limitations on what people can say and know are at odds with the goal of becoming a global economic hub, as such hubs must be open to free flows of knowledge.
Ironically, Dubai’s social freedom’s might also limit its role as a regional model. The spectable of prostitution and alcohol-fueled nightlife could turn pious Arabs against Dubai’s free-wheeling ways.
Still, it is for now one of the most interesting experiments going on in the Middle East.
Chinese economic and cultural power in the world is often exaggerated these days, as people anticipate the superpower to come, but there is a curious sign of China’s future power driving American roads.
AutoWeek reports that the redesigned Honda Civic has a more luxurious interior — and blue instrument lights — because Chinese consumers wanted these things.
So American Civic owners are unknowingly living a slightly more Sinofied existence, a phenomenon which will spread with each year of Chinese economic growth. As China becomes the largest market for an ever-longer list of products and services, they will be modified to meet the needs and preferences of that market — Google is a recent example — and serve as vehicles of Chinese cultural power.
(Via Social Technologies)
A Syrian-American psychiatrist has provoked anger and discussion in the Arab world with her harsh assessments of the current state of Islam, and unfavorable comparison of Muslims to Jews, in appearances on Al Jazeera satellite TV.
Two aspects of this story are salient:
- Al Jazeera, for all the distress it causes the United States, is a powerful vehicle for bringing new ideas to the Middle East and challenging ossified thinking.
- The tens of millions of migrants who have moved from the Third World to developed countries are an important source of cultural flows, transmitting ideas about different ways to live back to their homelands.