Indonesia’s Ah Beng Chinese Moslem Preacher

July 22, 2010

Fascinating account of Koko Liem, Indonesia’s homegrown Islamic evangelist with a penchant for Ah Beng-esque costumes and promotion, and Anton Medan, a former thug turned Muslim convert.

Do Malaysians have such equivalents, Unspun wonders.

clipped from www.indonesiamatters.com

Koko Liem vs Anton Medan

Jul 18th, 2010, in News & Issues, by Patung

Chinese celebrity preacher Koko Liem hits the big time; brawler Anton Medan unhappy.

In “Chinese Preachers Bridge Indonesia’s Ethnic Gap” in the New York Times [1] Jakarta based Chinese Muslim tele-evangelist and Islamic themed text-messaging service entrepreneur “Koko Liem” is profiled and described as being a trailblazer in breaking down stereotypes that Islam and Chinese don’t go together.

Liem Hai Thai/Muhammad Utsman Anshori aka Koko Liem is said to have converted to Islam from Buddhism as a teenager in North Sumatra, and says his role now is to teach the universality of Islam:

If a Chinese person becomes a Muslim, and he understands the religion, even to the point of being a cleric like me people are more awed and moved:

He’s just a Chinese, who wasn’t a Muslim before. Now he is one, and his religion is greater than ours. He can lecture on religion, he can memorize the Koran, what can we do?

unspun

Indonesia

3 responses to “Indonesia’s Ah Beng Chinese Moslem Preacher”

wicak

July 23, 2010 at 9:07 am

some people forgot about the fact that the Wali Songo(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wali_Sanga) some of them were Chinese or had Chinese ancestry. I wouldnt be surprised at all if the early traders were the Chinese and they were the ones responsible for introducing Islam to SE Asia.

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erwin pramudya

July 24, 2010 at 10:06 am

pleace correct ”moslem” must be muslim
moslem that mean wine house

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Wade

July 25, 2010 at 4:48 pm

many Muslims in Thailand as well, some of them very colorful dressers. I like it, the diversity is what makes the world interesting.

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