Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site utah-gr.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!ihnp4!zehntel!tektronix!hplabs!hao!seismo!cmcl2!philabs!pwa-b!utah-gr!donn From: donn@utah-gr.UUCP (Donn Seeley) Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish,net.politics Subject: Re: Re: Tutu Makes a DooDoo Message-ID: <1293@utah-gr.UUCP> Date: Mon, 14-Jan-85 00:32:57 EST Article-I.D.: utah-gr.1293 Posted: Mon Jan 14 00:32:57 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 12-Jan-85 01:47:12 EST References: <18994@lanl.ARPA> <95@mit-athena.ARPA> <466@fisher.UUCP> Organization: University of Utah CS Dept Lines: 57 Xref: watmath net.religion.jewish:1239 net.politics:6747 [What is this discussion doing in net.religion.jewish???] From bill peter (wkp@lanl.ARPA): Martillo is definitely not singling out Arabs; Muslims in Indonesia and Malaysia are especially well-known for their brutality and inhumanity. If you can find any ethnic Chinese left in these countries, just ask any one of them. I seem to recall that there are more ethnic Chinese in Malaysia than ethnic Malays... (In fact the Malaysian Communist Party, a brutal group of thugs if there ever was one, is almost exclusively a Chinese movement.) The British encouraged the immigration of Chinese to Malaysia to work in the tin mines and rubber plantations, and so many came that they now form close to a majority of the population. The proportion of Chinese in the population of Indonesia is much smaller but there are still millions of them. The presupposition in Bill Peter's paragraph is that these Chinese communities are somehow dying out, which is simply not true. The friction that does occur between 'bumiputras' (natives) and Chinese is primarily political. The economies of the two countries are controlled by rich Chinese in collaboration with members of politically important native families. Local demagogues sometimes encourage jobless natives to take their frustrations out on the poorer Chinese, the ones who can't retaliate; the usual form which this takes is a series of riots in which small Chinese-owned shops are looted or burned. This does not seem to have upset the dominant position of the Chinese in the marketplace, needless to say. Religion is not usually an issue: power is. When political tensions relax, the two groups get along reasonably well. There are communities in Indonesia which are called 'peranakan' Chinese (from the Malay word for 'child') whose members have assimilated so thoroughly that their language and culture are more native than they are Chinese. Other, more recent immigration has produced communities of 'totok' Chinese who are culturally (and politically) tied to China, and there has been some friction between the two groups similar to the friction between radically Orthodox and assimilated Jews. I suppose Martillo would denigrate the unique culture of the 'peranakans' because it is a distortion of a (somehow better) 'pure' Chinese culture... It's true that there are radical Muslim fundamentalists in both countries but they are definitely in the minority. They spend much more time bickering with each other than oppressing Chinese or Jews (if there are any of the latter). The 'Islam' practiced by the bulk of the population bears about as much resemblance to the real thing as modern Christianity does to BenDavid's N'tzarim. Read V S Naipaul's book AMONG THE BELIEVERS if you want to get a feel for what the situation is really like. (In my opinion, the religious climate in Iran and Pakistan is much scarier than it is elsewhere in the Muslim world. Radical religious fundamentalism is most dangerous when practiced by converts...) Donn Seeley University of Utah CS Dept donn@utah-cs.arpa 40 46' 6"N 111 50' 34"W (801) 581-5668 decvax!utah-cs!donn