Talking to God

I got a kick out of this column by a T. Sima Gunawan in The Jakarta Post titled "By The Way: FPI too busy talking to God".

Here are some excerpts from the column, though I recommend you read the whole thing:

"Christians are so close to God that they call Him "father" in prayer, while Muslims are so far away from Allah that they need loudspeakers to talk to Him."

"The Muslim call to prayer, and prayer itself, can be heard in every corner of the city. It would seem it is a case of the louder, the better, so that everyone in the neighborhood can hear it. It doesn't matter if it is still dawn or if it's during school hours and the mosque is right next to a school. If one mosque is next to another, they may even compete to be loudest."

"Indonesia is indeed one of the most religious nations in the world, a fact confirmed by last year's religion monitoring study conducted in 21 countries by the German-based Bertelsmann Foundation.

Ironically, Indonesia is also notorious for being among the world's most corrupt countries.

Being religious, corruptors must pray first before stealing state money, or perhaps they set aside a little of the corrupted money to build mosques or churches."

"Not only FPI members, but it seems many other Muslims, Christians and other deeply religious people are often too busy talking to God in one-way conversations, praising and worshiping God, reading the Koran, the Bible and other holy books, while turning their backs on fellow human beings.

Of course, talking to God is important, but if they think praying five times a day or going to Church every Sunday, or even everyday, is enough to allow them climb the stairway to heaven, maybe they should think again.

By the way, if you find the opening of this piece offensive, please accept my apology. I don't mean to upset anyone, let alone God, who must be sad enough seeing the violence and frequent religious conflicts within this so-called religious nation."