Full disclosure: This was an ARC (Advanced Readers’ Copy) given to me through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers’ program. In exchange, I agreed to give an honest review.

“Mosque is not a good word. It is like mosquito. It is taken from the Mexican language. You know we do not like mosquito. This is deeply propaganda …”
Herry Nurdi to Sadanand Dhume (p. 136)

It’s all too easy to point and laugh while dismissing the ignorance of people.  But we should take care because this sort of ignorance from religious extremists (not just Muslim) is what fuels the fires of intolerance.

Sadanand Dhume’s My Friend the Fanatic, is filled with examples of stubborn ignorance and hypocritical thinking.  It is also filled with examples of how this fuels the move against equal and civil rights in favor of sharia law.  So far, this could be the story of any nation struggling with identity politics.

But Dhume’s book is set in Indonesia and reflects what he encounters in his travels under the auspices of Herry Nurdi, editor of a Islamic fundamentalist magazine and fan of Osama bin Laden.

The extreme differences between secular life and religious ideology are most striking in the first section focusing on events in Java.  A pop star who has popularized a dance move called drilling (something akin to twerking), a Muslim televangelist, and what passes for literati are in stark contrast with those who live in abject poverty living in shacks with dirt floors begging to support their family.

It took over one hundred pages for My Friend the Fanatic to become cohesive.  Not only were the familiar stories of poverty, ignorance and zealotry told but so were the struggle for identity as a nation.  Although Dhume begins with the 2002 bombings in Bali, the story begins earlier in Indonesia’s history, with Indonesia winning independence from the Dutch in 1949.

Simplistically put, Indonesia’s problems can be seen as the growing pains of a young nation searching for identity.  What is it to be Indonesian?  I found My Friend the Fanatic to be an interesting look into these issues from the point of view of an atheist journalist from India seeking answers from Islamic fundamentalists fighting against secular values.

Dhume writes of the stark contrasts in Indonesia and the conflicts in politics and ideology.  His work has made me curious about Indonesia and its history.

Full disclosure: This was an ARC (Advanced Readers’ Copy) given to me through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers’ program. In exchange, I agreed to give an honest review.

Part One – Part Two
Pages 197 – 271

I don’t know how to argue with people who cannot question themselves, who don’t say the words, “I was wrong.”  It’s like playing football with someone who says, “Only I can score goals.”  There’s no basis for conversation.  (p. 210)

Dhume says this to a Muslim woman on a ferry who insists sharia law is good for everyone because she says so.

It’s easy to pick on people who have little to no education, live in abject poverty and whose survival often depends on help from groups whose politics and ideologies don’t match ours.  But what then to make of those who have had access to education but are still moored to an extreme ideology like sharia law?

In the case of Indonesia, as I suspect in other countries struggling for identity, those with an education weren’t educated to western standards.  They may claim a degree in industrial engineering, most likely from a Muslim school funded by Saudi petrodollars.

In these final pages, Dhume visits Ambon, one of the largest cities in eastern Indonesia.  Here, the violence has been rampant.  Indonesian against remnants of Dutch and Portuguese colonialism, Muslims against Christians and secularists.  Girls in modest uniform skirts killed for being immodest, women against women because the Jilbāb is not also hijab.

Again, poverty is rife.  The second best hotel in Ambon, which Dhume and Nurdi stay in is perhaps the worst place they have stayed in during this journey.  A bucket stands outside the hotel room door to catch the water dripping from above.  Nurdi shows their guide from Ambon packages containing letterhead envelopes and stationery.  The guide is very impressed because such things are considered a luxury in Ambon.

Related in these pages is more of the same grim story.  Poverty, politics, a search for personal and national identity.  Are they laid-back, anything goes Indonesian or secular and democratic?  Or are they some version of strict Muslim which takes a dim view of anyone not adhering to their strictures?

Nurdi, and those Dhume interviews, continue to show their lack of education and critical thinking and the shrill anti-Western ideology their version of Islam preaches.  Everything is a CIA plot, or a Jewish plot, and/or a combination of both.

This is not an easy question to answer, which is the right way?  Each faction believes they know and try to force that on others.  The rich get richer and are lax in morals.  The poor turn to those who will help, regardless of ideology.  The price of that help is learning, accepting, and spreading those ideas.

In his prologue, Dhume returns to Jakarta two years later.  He catches up with many of the people from earlier in the book.  Then he brings up an important point for discussion: what does moderation look like?  Is a moderate Muslim one who accepted the same ideas about human rights as the Korean Christian or a Buddhist from Singapore?  Or was a Muslim moderate who was “simply” against flying airplanes into buildings?  (p 267)

My Friend the Fanatic cannot answer the question of how Indonesia has become the biggest Muslim country in the world in just one generation.  At best it shows us that the issue is complex, as in many other countries.  Indonesia’s unique history plays an integral part in trying to find answers.  Westerners with centuries of independence and invading colonialist histories may just now beginning to understand what the consequences are for countries whose independence can be counted in decades, not centuries.

It’s too easy to spout something about political “growing pains,” which is true to some extent.  But it’s also naive to overlook that as one of the factors which has made Indonesia such a violent incubator for Muslim extremists.

Dhume asks the same questions experts are asking?  How did this come about and how do we stop the intolerance?

Full disclosure: This was an ARC (Advanced Readers’ Copy) given to me through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers’ program. In exchange, I agreed to give an honest review.

Part One – Part Three
Pages 107 – 196

“Mosque is not a good word.  It is like mosquito.  It is taken from the Mexican language.  You know we do not like mosquito.  This is deeply propaganda …”
Herry Nurdi to Sadanand Dhume (p. 136)

Herry Nurdi has a lot of “secret information,” he uses to bolster his claims; political, economic and ideological.

Things are starting to feel more coherent to me now.  As I read, the struggles of Indonesia becomes eerily familiar.  Indonesia’s story could be any non-Western country’s story.  The search for identity as demonstrated by the many competing influences of historical tradition, politics, religion, etc.

In this story, as in so many others, the lack of educations and knowledge really is the heart of the problem.  At least to me.  Poverty, abject poverty, and the need to belong to some group which can offer comfort in any small way, even if that way is a better life in the next, keeps people going.

If the group offering you comfort derides Western values and education, you will accept that as reality.  It’s a skewed reality to outsiders, maybe even other Indonesians, but it’s the one which gives you comfort and helps you survive another day.

My Friend the Fanatic is filled with ridiculous quotes like the one above.  In the second hundred pages, Dhume and Nurdi have left Java and are traveling through Sulawesi, Borneo, Riau, and The Moluccas.  I’m reading about a country still trying to throw off the influence of Dutch imperialism and find a way to truly develop an independent style of politics and culture which can encompass everyone.

The dictatorship of Suharto and Sukharno have also left their marks.  Into this vacuum, militant groups have stepped in.  The Muslim extremists are just one set of groups.

Full disclosure:  This was an ARC (Advanced Readers’ Copy) given to me through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers’ program.  In exchange, I agreed to give an honest review.

Part Two – Part Three

Pages 1 – 106

In asking for this book, my hope was that I would gain more insight into Islamic extremism.  I don’t know much about Indonesia, so thought this would be one way to learn more about both.

Let me just say that while I plan on finishing the book, it is difficult to connect to.  Each chapter reads like a vignette about the people the author meets in the places he goes.  The one thread through these vignettes is Herry Nurdi, managing editor of the Islamist publication Sabili, who makes many of the introductions for Sadanand Dhume.

These 100 pages contain a prologue about Dhume’s experience in Bali when the bombings of 2002 occurred.  An Indonesian Islamic extremist group was held responsible.

Chapter One is about the travels around Java meeting and talking with people about Islam, nationalism, Suharto, Sukarno, and culture.  It is a whirlwind tour of VIP clubs featuring pop stars who write graphic poems about sex, drag performers, an Islamic televangelist, and Herry Nurdi.  Just to name a few.

There’s so little context going from one part to the next that I feel lost a lot, and find myself asking “Now who is this guy?”  It’s my hope that some of this will start to come together later in the book.  There’s a lot of information to sift through.