Before former Indonesian president/dictator Suharto died today, I read an article yesterday about the pairing of Islamic mysticism and former rulers of Indonesia, or as Seth Mydans puts it, old Javanese kings.
Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country. One of the rules that I learned during my early and short years at Islamic school was that idolatry was harem, forbidden. I remember one story where someone, might've been Allah, destroyed an entire room full of statues for worship.
But this idea of mixing Islam with the "spiritual world" as the article says doesn't coincide with the Islam that Indonesian terrorists seem to push for, no?
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There's a great documentary about Islam in Indonesia...kinda focuses on the terrorist movement but it touches on all of the different, folksy kind of interpretations of Islam there. Very fascinating.
Apropos to destroying idols, Steve Coll writes in "Ghost Wars" that Afghans hated many of the Islamic mujihadeen that fought the Russians, because they would destroy the decorations and shrines on peoples' graves.
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