N.U & Infotainment

I always believed that Nadhatul Ulama, the largest Islamic organization in Indonesia with 35 million members, is a moderate Islamic organization.

There are several reasons for this belief. First, N.U's former Chairman, former President Abdurrachman Wahid (Gus Dur), is a liberal person. Second, the political party that it established i.e Nation's Awakening Party (PKB) is a non exclusive party. Thirdly, its Chairman, Hasyim Muzadi, was former President Megawati's running mate in the 2004 presidential election.

Due to the above facts, I was very surprised when the media reported that N.U has considered TV celebrity shows known as Infotainment as Haram (Forbidden for Muslim). Hasyim Muzadi has even requested the government to ban such shows.

For details, please click here, here and here.

Considering the era of transparency that we are having nowadays, I believe that said N.U's decision would not have a positive response because most TV viewers are now quite wise and smart to choose what kind of shows would be best for them to watch.
Even if the Infotainments are banned, people can easily & cheaply get copies of their VCD/DVDs on the markets.
Further, by declaring Infotainment as Haram, N.U will lose the supports of many moderate Muslims , including mine.

Logo: Courtesy of N.U

Abandonment of Babies

Yesterday morning, I saw two TV channels reporting young girls committing illegal abortions at two medical clinics, one in Tanjung Priok, North Jakarta, and another one in Paseban, Central Jakarta.

In the evening, I saw TransTV’s Termehek-Mehek reality show that has helped people locate someone they have not seen/heard for a long time. This time, the story was about Nana (30) who abandoned her baby girl 13 years ago in an Orphan Home in Tangerang, Banten, because her parents forbid her to marry her boy friend, i.e. Angga whose age is the same as hers but belong to a different social class.
Now, Nana (30) lived in Surabaya, East Java, has married twice, has no child and has been suffering from Womb Cancer.
As any normal woman, she feels a growing need to see her long lost baby, for which purpose few weeks ago she contacted TransTV. Not long after, she and several crews of TransTV visited the Orphan Home in Tangerang. Their persistence enabled them to locate the child, whose name is Rizkia and now living with her father, Angga in Jakarta.
Angga was furious when they came to meet him, and did not allow Nana to meet Rizkia. So, few days later Nana picked Rizkia at school and kept her at a friend’s house.
Angga helped by the TransTV crews later found Rizkia and take her back to his home.

The above two paragraphs show the tragic results of human behaviors i.e. pre-marital sex, unwanted babies and abandonment of babies. In the first paragraph the young girls abandoned their babies by ‘killing’ them before they were born, while in the second paragraph a young girl abandoned her baby after it was born, by leaving it at an orphanage, which she regretted 13 years later. The baby can be considered lucky because her father took her out of the orphanage and raised her by himself.