"A 100-foot statue depicting a Chinese deity was covered with an enormous sheet this weekend in East Java Province, Indonesia..." - Hallo friendsINFO TODAY, In the article you read this time with the title "A 100-foot statue depicting a Chinese deity was covered with an enormous sheet this weekend in East Java Province, Indonesia...", We have prepared this article for you to read and retrieve information therein. Hopefully the contents of postings Article economy, Article health, Article hobby, Article News, Article politics, Article sports, We write this you can understand. Alright, good read.

Title : "A 100-foot statue depicting a Chinese deity was covered with an enormous sheet this weekend in East Java Province, Indonesia..."
link : "A 100-foot statue depicting a Chinese deity was covered with an enormous sheet this weekend in East Java Province, Indonesia..."

"A 100-foot statue depicting a Chinese deity was covered with an enormous sheet this weekend in East Java Province, Indonesia..."

"... after Muslims threatened to tear the colossus down amid mounting ethnic and religious tensions across the country," the NYT reports.

The Islamist campaign against the statue, a depiction of the third-century general Guan Yu, who is worshiped as a god in several Chinese religions, began online and soon spread to the gates of a Chinese Confucian temple in Tuban, near the Java Sea coast, where the figure was erected last month.

On social media, Muslims assailed the statue as an “uncivilized” affront to Islam and the island’s “home people,” and a mob gathered this week outside the East Java legislature in the city of Surabaya to demand its destruction.

How did such a statue get erected in the first place? Here are the demographics of the province of East Java. Ethnicity:

Javanese (80%), Madurese (18%), Indian (10%), Chinese (2%)

Religion:

Islam (96.36%), Christianity (2.4%), Buddhism (0.6%), Hinduism (0.5%), Confucianism (0.1%), Kejawen also practised

Is it about wealth and foreign influence? The NYT article says Muslim Indonesians are afraid "that as Beijing becomes more dominant in the region — exerting financial and military influence — ethnic Chinese will profit at the expense of Muslims."

Look at the photograph of Guan Yu. The military general as god is holding a sword so huge that it's sticking out from under the enormous sheet. The Times quotes the Indonesia director for Human Rights Watch, who criticizes the Muslims for using a "hostile interpretation" of the Quran to argue that the statue shows "that China is dominating Indonesia." But why put up a statue other than to say something?

One of the Muslims who's opposing the statue is quoted saying: "Actually we can allow them to build the statue, just not as high as it was and it should be in the temple, not outside... We are tolerant."

Why didn't that argument get made before the huge thing went up? Reading about the Guan Yu statue made me remember writing about colossal statues in the past. From a post I wrote in 2014:

Let's realize that throughout history statuary has been used to intimidate people. What's all that ancient Egyptian sculpture about if not to cow people into abject submission?



Think of all the Lenin and Stalin statues. And how about Saddam Hussein's despicable "Victory Arch"?

That post wasn't about a big intimidating god-warrior like Guan Yu, but about a life-size sculpture of a man stumbling forward in his underpants. That sculpture — "Sleepwalker," by Tony Matelli — upset some Americans at Wellesley College. They didn't throw a big sheet over "Sleepwalker," but they did put orange safety cones and yellow "caution" tape around him.

ADDED: Remember when the U.S. Department of Justice spent $8,000 on a big old drapery to cover the half-nude "Spirit of Justice" statue after photographers seemed too interested in framing Attorney General John Ashcroft with the looming breasts over his head?

Thus Article "A 100-foot statue depicting a Chinese deity was covered with an enormous sheet this weekend in East Java Province, Indonesia..."

That's an article "A 100-foot statue depicting a Chinese deity was covered with an enormous sheet this weekend in East Java Province, Indonesia..." This time, hopefully can give benefits to all of you. well, see you in posting other articles.

You are now reading the article "A 100-foot statue depicting a Chinese deity was covered with an enormous sheet this weekend in East Java Province, Indonesia..." with the link address https://infotodays1.blogspot.com/2017/08/a-100-foot-statue-depicting-chinese.html

Tweet

Subscribe to receive free email updates: