Indeed, a Web site with explicit sexual content that claims to have received more than 46 million hits last month lists Indonesia as its No. "If I want to see naked pictures," he said, "I go to the Internet.
Carolus, however, takes the position that it is other media, not his magazine, that offer the moral danger. To him, Playboy is "very dangerous" because it risks spoiling "the morality of Indonesian society as a whole, especially the young generation." "We don't want to make Indonesia an Islamic country, but what we demand is that Muslims must apply Islamic teaching and Islamic principles to their lives," Mr. Muhyiddin Junadi, a scholar from the Indonesian Ulama Council and Muhammadiyah, the second-largest Muslim organization in Indonesia, acknowledged an agenda to sharply alter the moral character of Indonesia, where it is still possible to buy alcohol, even in the middle of Ramadan. Budiman, "I won't sell it if the pictures are too open or revealing." Distribution resumed, but after the crackdown, street vendors told Ms. In the glossy 145-page February issue, there is an ad inviting phone calls to a girl who looks as if she is in a school uniform for "hot" conversation, as well as a review of the latest film work of a porn queen.Ĭopies of Male Emporium were seized by the police recently in a general crackdown on the men's magazine market, although it is not clear what law the police were acting on. Wies Budiman is a grandmother in her 50's who owns and edits Male Emporium, in which the photo spreads limit the exposure of flesh to a woman in a bra, baring her midriff. They often get what they want through social pressure alone. Opponents of the law argue that trying to legislate morality is like trying to protect matrimony by abolishing divorce.īut in the years since the fall of President Suharto, hard-line Islamic groups have grown in strength and organizational ability and are now a formidable social force. They give little chance of Parliament passing such an extreme law. In a country that boasts of its embrace of moderate Islam and cultural diversity, many analysts and politicians say the attempt to establish a strict Islamic standard of behavior is at odds with the thinking of a vast majority of the people.
It also prohibits provocative dancing and requires women to cover pretty much every part of their bodies below the neck. It mandates large fines and jail terms for buying and distributing pornography, and makes homosexuality an offense. Conflicts focus on what the public should be exposed to in the media, what kind of clothing women should wear and how much affection couples should display in public.Ī draft law before the Indonesian Parliament would impose Islamic strictures. In truth, the uproar seemed to be a minor, confused skirmish in a new, broad battle over moral standards in Indonesia, an enormous, mostly Muslim, ethnically mixed nation made up of more than 18,000 islands. His publication would feature only fully clothed women, he said. He insists that he opposes pornography and that he agrees with the militant Muslims who attacked his office that it should be banned. "It's not about freedom of the press," he said. Carolus saw the attackers' target that way. The dispute could be cast as a classic battle over freedom of the press, in a country where the number of publications has exploded since the end of the 32-year reign of Suharto in 1998. But the Jakarta police chief said the only course was for the offending magazine to suspend publication of a second issue to avoid further public disturbance. Two police officers received minor injuries. Then, on Wednesday, about 300 men from the Islamic Defenders Front - a self-appointed moral police force known for violent attacks on bars - turned up at the magazine's offices, in a neighborhood where many foreign companies have local headquarters. He began publishing in Jakarta a week ago, absent Playboy's iconic nude centerfold or anything else remotely provocative except its famous name. "I remember I bought it because it had a nice interview with a Nobel Prize winner." Carolus, a clean-cut, 34-year-old Muslim and a graduate of the Columbia University School of Journalism, in a recent interview in Jakarta. "The first time I read Playboy was when I was in the U.S.," said Mr. HONG KONG, April 16 - Ponti Carolus, the publisher of the Indonesian edition of Playboy magazine that stirred Islamic militants into a rock-throwing protest during the past week, has one thing in common with many Western men: he says he reads Playboy for the articles.