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Read other letters about this article
For TB:
Your isolating a trifling difference is usage in my Indonesian is telling. Assuming that your CV as posted on the University of Auckland website is correct, your research into Bahasa prokem and bahasa gaul (essentially "street" and "conversational" or "common" Indonesian) surely informs you that there are vastly different ways to speak a language that itself is largely cobbled together from Asian and European dialects over the centuries. With or without the emphatic "-pun," the sentence is clear.
What's more (and equally telling in your gloss), it's also clear I was speaking of fair-skinned foreigners in Indonesia, not the comparitively small fraction of "white" Muslims in the rest of the world. "Bule," as you know, Tim, commonly referring to foreigners, does not translate as "whitey," carrying not the racist tinge that you suggest. Shame on the way you're dealing your cards.
Given that you left Indonesia well before before the monetary crisis of 1997, it's understandable that from the comfortable remove of university tenure in one of the safest nations in the world, you may not be entirely aware of the vicious sectarian strife that has afflicted the country since. Parachuting in for the occasional lecture may not be providing you the most reliable perspective, particularly as that perspective is biased in favor of Islam.
As for sufism, we have some common acquaintances. They mention your Mormon roots, and that you eventually embraced sufism (an Islamic sect). Perhaps they are mistaken. Or perhaps you've left the embrace.
My goal in responding to your comments relating to Indonesia was to make the larger point that Islam apologists grasp at any straws they can in hopes of painting a gentler picture of a faith whose fundamentals, as it were, stand in direct opposition to modernity (political, sexual, economic, et al.). Using Indonesia as an example, where only a few bombs have gone off, and only a few nightclubs smashed to pieces, and only a few hundred people massacred in religion-inspired rioting, was a poor choice.
As a rule (as you'll see from my other posts on Salon), I don't respond to comments but to articles. So I'm pulling the plug here and have at it, if you wish.
As a reader of many of your other posts on various sites, I appreciate that we are generally fighting the same battles, though I regret not having a university salary paying in part for my shockingly non-standard use of Indonesian.
