Excellent Peter! I can see this blokes in black robes and turban trying to be invisible in gym while running their miles on the treadmill! Hahaha...and on the toilet!

Actually their attitude and "supervision" over Islamic matters (so to speak) is quite embarrassing, especially for a secular country trying to modernize itself within!

Yep! I can just hear the cries go out in every Mall.

"Ooooooo!.. I'm not going to send a Valentine card to my girlfriend cos the MUI has said it ain't right." Give me a break.

And I quote.."Muslim leaders in the Islamic stronghold of East Java have already called on their congregations not to celebrate the holiday, arguing that it was sinful and would promote casual sex."

I have never quite understood what casual sex is really. Any sex I have ever had has always been frantic. So is the promotion of frantic sex OK?

Where do they get their info? Does the MUI have sort of Mystery Shoppers, who join Gyms to look out for any 'overenthusiastic aerobic moves with sexy attire that might IGNITE sexual desire', I can just picture them incognito on the exercise bike, and Spotters who hang around in toilets listening out for Koranic ring-tones?

God save us all from these weirdos. Somebody give em a job or something.

Oooh Simon, don't get me started on Mother Theresa :D

I think that those ulemas who issued the fatwa are narrow-minded. Everybody need love & to be loved coz love given by God, that is the essential of valentine. Don't they need a love? I'm proud with Santo Valentino, he had spread the love to the world. No matter what the religion is, please think positively if it could make good effect, Indonesia is a Pancasila country.

"The Catholic Church is unpopular and misunderstood because it says unpopular things that need thinking about. That doesn't make the Catholic Church wrong. It just makes the Catholic ideal hard to live up to. And is there anything wrong with that?"

Child rape? Condemning AIDS sufferers to death? Murdering doctors? There's quite a lot wrong with that. Guilt is not an emotion that appeals to our better nature. Man is not genetically fully monogamous (or abstinent of course). We all have rein in the pleasure principle in order to socialize ourselves in the real world but sexual repression to such a degree is always harmful. Push sexual desires down via the prescriptions of religious dogma and a toll will be extracted in the unconscious mind, it is totally false to human nature. People force themselves to do it of course but at a cost to their own libido, which always ends up exacting its revenge (cruelty, malice, haughtier than though moral hectoring, attacks on the Other and, in extreme cases, raping kids in your charge). As with everything else, our knowledge of ourselves has way outstripped the 2000 year old model.

Heh, padt, when the whole religion's quite ludicrous founding myth is based on conception outside the normal biological requirement for sex or a surrogate process for sex having occurred, it's hard not see an unhealthy pre-occupation with sex as a cornerstone of Christian faith.

And perhaps they have begun to have got it right now if you will, but that doesn't allow the church the out of being able to walk away from centuries of quite vicious, unhealthy and hypocritical sexual repression, much of which opened the doors to the awful abuse done implicitly in the name of the church by it's officers and teachers.

Or has everything taught by the church to date simply been wrong?

How does the Church's quite evil position on AIDS and contraception become something that needs thinking about? Or the awful words of the now sainted Mother Teresa?

You really don't want to open this door.

should faith be measured by following some stupid rules defined by human? ~~~

padt, you sound exactly like MUI with your justifications.

well I didn't care what MUI said. I'll celebrate the valentine day anyway. it's just that whatever the rules MUI made always controvertial and tends to justify every rules thats it made.

From all the rules the good book has, they only focus on the sex part. Hmm...

Now is the best time to wear and promote batik sarongs for aerobics.

Simon P - with respect, the Catholic Church is not obsessed with sex in a negative way - the Catholic Church is concerned with getting sex right. Nor is the Catholic Church by any means fundamentalist. That's why, for instance, amongst other things recently, the Catholic Church has founded Institutes(Universities) for Ethics and The Family throughout the world. That is why the present Pope's first Encyclical (letter) to the world was on love, including erotic love.

I suggest to you that it is a world seriously lacking any understanding of intimacy and responsibility and frenetically chasing its tail that is preoccupied with sex. Including many modern Catholics. I ought to know. I taught in Catholic schools were 'liberated' modern up -to-date Catholic kids were just the same as their secular neighbours and saw each other as objects to masterbate into. Of course, they called it being sophisticated and free from guilt. (Guilt? The burden and pain of the self-centred. What happened to remorse? Sorrow for hurting another.)

The Catholic Church is unpopular and misunderstood because it says unpopular things that need thinking about. That doesn't make the Catholic Church wrong. It just makes the Catholic ideal hard to live up to. And is there anything wrong with that?

Noticed that most of the rules are all about women and sex. It is so obvious what actually dominates their minds.

The MUI is obsessed with sex, just as the Catholics are. Fundie religion is basically all about sex. Sex is a normal, healthy and necessary part of life, just as food is. The only people who are obsessed with food in this way are anorexics and the morbidly obese.

@padt: Agree !

They exploit this so called 'sin' way too much, making irrelevant rules and rubbish assumptions in the name of the religion.

Sex is not the only sin out there, it is not even the biggest one (logically speaking).

Even worse, the subject of these rules are always women.

I find it interesting the Islamic pre-occupation with sexual sins. Especially when I see so many young girls sporting the gilbub while wearing tight tops and jeans. Actually my favourite is the gilbub for little girls - the ones with the Minnie Mouse or bunny ears. Cute as.

I don't think this religion knows whether it is coming or going, especially when I never hear the MUI speak out against corruption. It just harps on about a cedtain form of morality as if the human body is a cess pool of wickedess and temptation, while neglecting the weightier matters of social justice and human rights. No wonder most people don't take any notice of it.