"Mark & Juanita" wrote in message
...
diggerop wrote:


Indonesia - the worlds largest muslim population (88% of 245 million) -
democracy


Marginally so. The Suartos were hardly champions of free and open
democracy. Even today, Indonesia is definitely neither tolerant nor
inclusive. Our church has a mission there. When living in Texas, we
called one of the Missionaries to be our pastor. After having one of our
board meetings with him one evening, he leaned back in his chair, smiled
and said, "you know, this is nice -- we just had a meeting here and
finished it and no one threw any bricks through the windows." Let me add
that our church body does not practice in-your-face evangelism. In
Indonesia, the default religion is the religion of peace and no open
evangelism is allowed. People who have been in car accidents there have
been declared guilty even when not really at fault because the judge has
determined, "if you weren't in our country, this accident wouldn't have
occurred".



Interesting. I lived and worked in Indonesia for a time in the post Suharto
era.
I found the Indonesian people where I was in East Kalimantan, to be
friendly,
open and extremely tolerant. Likewise in Bali, (which is predominantly
Hindu.)
It's worth noting that Indonesia is made up of an agglomeration of very
different
cultures, brought together under one political banner, so that which applies
in one part of Indonesia cannot necessarily be applied to the nation as a
whole.
No-one cared about my religious beliefs, except to say that it was important
to have some religious belief. Atheism was viewed with suspicion.
Trying to convert someone's religious beliefs was viewed as highly
offensive, but then,
the same applies in my country today. : )

The accident scenario has more to do with their pragmatic view of justice
than
anything else. It's based on the social responsibility of a person's
capacity to pay,
not fault as we are accustomed to. Based on negotiation and it works, in a
quirky way.
In the eyes of the average Indonesian citizen, Westerners are viewed as
being wealthy
beyond belief, a proposition that had much justification.
In 1996, when I was there, I earned as much per day as the average
Indonesian earned
in a year! Per capita incomes have increased by 700% since then, yet today
is still only around A$4000 p.a. With the unequal distribution of wealth,
the average man in the
street probably has less than half of that figure in reality
So it was regarded as just, that in the event of an accident, I could easily
afford to
pay, - therefore I should. Not to do so would have been regarded as mean and
churlish.
Accepting that responsibility gained enormous respect. Doors were opened,
the path was
smoothed. Everyone was happy.

As an aside, the principle of "if you weren't there the accident wouldn't
have happened," is not
unique to Indonesia. I have personal experience of it being applied in civil
litigation over an accident
here in Australia. The starting point was that the complainant (Me) was
deemed to have 30% responsibility simply by virtue of being there. Legal
argument was then undertaken as to fault and the result was that the other
party was deemed to be completely at fault. In spite of that, I still bore
10% of the responsibility and the damages were reduced by that amount. Fair?
I didn't think so. : )

Diggerop