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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30730 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023

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With so many Muslims in India and the zeitgeist being against them - a block consisting of India and 90%+ majority Muslim countries is somewhat unstable.

It's my impression that even people who hate Muslims often tend to forget about or ignore Indonesians. I may be wrong, but Hindus and Muslims in South Asia just feel viscerally different to me in a way that Southeast Asians, whether they be Catholic Filipinos, Muslim Indonesians, Buddhist Cambodians, or Hindu Balinese, just don't. It seems like Islam is a less salient aspect of Indonesian political identity when compared to say Pakistan.

Certainly. Headscarf and shorts from which the ass will fall out is combo most often seen in Jakarta and KL.

But it looks to me that the country as a whole is moving to more radical version of islam in the last years - mostly due to gulf money and their influence. Not sure if they can nudge the foreign policy yet but it is not out of the question.

Only if you include Pakistan in there.

Relationships between India and Bangladesh have had their ups and downs, but overall they remain quite warm. And I'd hope so too, given that we bailed them out of being genocided and the people who we saved are of the age group currently running the country!

The only minor sticking point is Bangladesh occasionally cozying up to China, but even then nobody expected them to join a war against them, or join them in a war against India.

The percentage of Muslims in the ASEAN countries is about 40% not 90%+.

But they are not equally distributed. You have 90-ish percent in Indonesia and Bangladesh. And Malasia is a majority Muslim country. And Indonesia is a heavy hitter there.

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