In Advance of Ramadan, Indonesian Gov't Starts Massive Censorship Push

An anonymous reader writes "The Indonesian government has blocked access to 1 million pornographic websites in advance of Ramadan, the country's holy month. Internet censorship is nothing new in Indonesia, but the scale of this particular restriction is unprecedented. Apparently this is only the beginning. Minister Tifatul Sembiring said Wednesday his office would target more sites through the country's holy month, and beyond."

Why bother?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Given the libido-suppressive effects of caloric restriction, wouldn't it make more sense to step up their precious little moral crusade(jihad?) during all non-ramadan periods and slack off during that month?

Re:I'm expecting another Arab Spring there real so

[Panoptes]

ThatsMyNick makes valid points; let me take them further. Here in Indonesia, come Ramadan there's always a mad rush for clerics and politicos to do an "I'm holier than thou" act. Draconian pledges and swingeing action plans that turn out to be mere wishful thinking thunder from the media and every soapbox in the country - but they're all chimeras, sops to the gangs of religious fanatics that plague Indonesia. In reality this is one of the most tolerant Muslim communities in the world, but the proverbial few bad apples spoil the barrel.

Indonesia is in the Internet stone age. The country is rated near the very bottom of Internet provision - way below many third-world and developing countries. Those of us who 'enjoy' broadband pay through the nose for a seriously flawed and inadequate service, and we're laughing out loud at the very notion that the muppets who run our IT services can filter anything other than their monthly pay cheques.

Re:I'm expecting another Arab Spring there real so

[TubeSteak]

I've actually had quite well educated and otherwise intelligent Muslims lay down the 'you cannot understand the Koran except in Arabic' line on me. Its a logical fallacy.

Have you ever put 5 or 6 different translations of the bible side by side and compared them?
http://www.biblestudytools.com/exodus/1-8-compare.html [biblestudytools.com]

It's really not that far fetched to claim a translation will not do justice to the original language.
I'd even argue that reading a really old book without annotations, even in the original language,
means you're going to miss out on important context that is assumed, suggested, or implied.

Just as an example: Jewish scholars spend decades studying the Talmud in its original Hebrew and Aramaic.
What makes you think a translation will allow for the same kind of understanding?