Abstract
Through divine revelations Lia unleashed criticism of Islam, a religion which caused only hatred among its believers towards unbelievers. Moreover, Lia’s attacks on the Indonesian government and the MUI led to her and Rachman’s arrest. Although the two were sent to trial, Lia’s spirit of evangelism increased. For instance, she related the natural disasters at the time in Indonesia, such as the tsunami in Aceh, the mudflow in East Java, and the earthquake in Papua, to God’s punishments on the sinful nation, particularly due to its corrupt politicians. Lia also warned of the imminent doomsday. During the court trials Lia also announced the abolishment of all religions, including Islam, for the sake of a more peaceful world.
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Notes
- 1.
Mahabarata is an ancient Indian epic originally written in Sanskrit, attributed to Vyasa around 400 BCE. The epic tells the war of Kurusetra between five Pandawa brothers against 100 Kurawa. This story has been rewritten in many works since the tenth century in Indonesia and remains popular nowadays. In Java, the story is re-enacted in a shadow puppet show called wayang.
- 2.
Nancy Lieder in 1995, via the website Zeta Talk , believed that a planet Nibiru would hit the earth on July 2012. Lieder and her followers predicted that the end of the world would come by 2003. In Japan, a group also believed in the case of the Nibiru planet and held a demonstration. The name “Nibiru” seems to derive from Zecharia Sitchin , a writer of astronomy, basing his interpretation on Babylonian and Sumerian mythology. Sitchin, however, denied any connection between his work and the doomsday prophecy. Many scientists, such as Carl Sagan and Michael E. Brown, plainly rejected the idea of Nibiru, which would cross the sun’s planetary system.
- 3.
In fact, number 9 is the highest number in calculation. Thus number 2000 sounds mysterious. When some mystical groups found September 9, 1999, they interpreted it as the end of the world. In pop culture in Indonesia the year 2000 was considered mysterious, as many songs warned of the danger of the year 2000. In the 1980s, Nasyida Ria , an Islamic music group from Semarang Central Java, released a special album called 2000, which warned the people about the danger of the year, as technology would develop to be more advanced and competition in the world would become harsh. Apparently, the popular understanding of the danger of the year 2000 and the economic crisis hitting the country after the fall of Soeharto became the impulse for many mystical groups in Indonesia to develop beliefs in the end of the world in 2000.
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Makin, A. (2016). Defending God’s Kingdom (2005–2007). In: Challenging Islamic Orthodoxy. Popular Culture, Religion and Society. A Social-Scientific Approach, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38978-3_5
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