Habib Rizieq

Should Jakarta voters trust a cleric who takes money from Playboy?

On Wednesday, we saw once again that Indonesian voters are more grown up than the people they are voting for. Though the Jakarta elections were repeatedly presented as a test of strength of political Islam, I’ve always thought the white-robed mobs were more a throw-back to the everyday tactics of the Old Guard, as I argue in this commentary in Nikkei Asian Review. But as the capital faces a second round of voting, we can certainly expect the FPI to…