Indonesia

Javanese royal couple’s fairy tail wedding

Fairy tale wedding: Gusti Kanjeng Ratu Bendara (center) is held aloft by her new husband, Kanjeng Pangeran Haryo Yudanegara (right), and his uncle, Gusti Bendoro Pangeran Haryo Suryodiningrat (left) at Yogyakarta Palace on Tuesday. Reuters/Beawiharta Yogyakarta’s iconic street, Jl. Malioboro, was flooded by some 40,000 onlookers hoping to catch a […]

Indonesia plans to sell $500 mln global sukuk this year

KUALA LUMPUR: The Indonesian Finance Ministry is targetting a $500 million 5-year global sukuk issuance this year, an official told reporters at an Islamic finance forum here on Monday. “We are looking for the benchmark tenor, but we hope to have longer (tenures),” Dwi Irianti Hadiningdyah, deputy director of Islamic Financing for the ministry’s debt […]

Indonesia’s Growing Confidence

Although there are some uncertainties, the Indonesian economy is well placed for what will now almost certainly be a sharp downturn in the world economy. Foreign reserves were at a record high at just under US$120 billion at the end of the second quarter, inflation was down to below 5 […]

Bekasi municipality officially bans Ahmadiyyah

Hans David Tampubolon, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta The Bekasi municipality has officially banned the religious practice of the Ahmadiyah sect on Thursday, a move pluralists deemed as the legitimation of a violation of the spirit of the Constitution. The head of the Bekasi Agency for State Unity, Politics and Community […]

Free at last

The Jakarta Post Myanmar women prisoners walk outside Insein Prison in Yangon, Myanmar Wednesday after they were released. Myanmar has begun releasing more then 6,300 prisoners but has held back on freeing some prominent political prisoners. The releases began around the country Wednesday morning after President Thein Sein issued an […]

The threat to moderate Indonesia

WHAT is the single greatest failing of Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono? Ismail Yusanto, the public face of Islamist organisation Hizb-ut-Tahrir in Jakarta, tells me: “The government of Indonesia works on a secular system. In terms of politics, economics and society, a secular system will always produce many, many problems. […]

Pope Urges Catholics to Promote Peace in Indonesia

Vatican City. Pope Benedict XVI urged Catholics in Indonesia on Friday to defend tolerance, peace and the rights of minorities, saying that the country’s constitution “guarantees” freedom of worship. Meeting with Indonesian Catholic bishops in Rome, Benedict encouraged them to “strengthen Indonesian society by promoting those values that your fellow […]

Is Indonesia in danger of becoming another Pakistan?

Rob Kerby, Senior Editor | 1:56pm Wednesday October 5, 2011 Islam’s most populous nation, Indonesia, is the most diverse nation imaginable — a far-flung archipelego of 13,466 islands where 238 million people speaking 742 languages live in everything from luxurious skyscraper penthouses to squalid cardboard slums, mountainside-hugging bamboo huts and […]