A CONSERVATIVE Muslim government minister admits he shook hands yesterday with US first lady Michelle Obama in welcoming her to Indonesia – but says he really didn’t want to as it was against his religion.
Tifatul Sembiring played the victim card after he was filmed shaking hands enthusiastically with Michelle Obama
According to this report, which has a video of the “aggressive” Obama handshake, Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring told tens of thousands of followers on Twitter:
I tried to prevent (being touched) with my hands but Mrs Michelle held her hands too far toward me (so) we touched.
While Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world, the vast majority practice a moderate form of the faith. But Sembiring has flaunted his fundamentalism and says he avoids contact with women who are not related to him.
The minister was among the dignitaries in a receiving line that greeted President Barack Obama and his wife as they arrived in Jakarta on Tuesday – a homecoming of sorts for the President who spent part of his childhood here. Indonesians gathered around television sets across the country to watch the Obamas touch down. Children at the school he attended practiced a song dedicated to him just in case he visited.
In footage of the official welcome, Sembiring appeared to share his countrymen’s enthusiasm. He smiled broadly as he shook the President’s hand and then reached with both hands to grasp Michelle Obama’s. But later he claimed that she forced their contact.
His denial was in a response to tweets from Indonesians who noted the handshake and questioned his long-standing claims that, as a good Muslim, he restricts his contact with women.
Many posts had a “gotchya” quality to them.
One female journalist – who said the minister had refused to shake her hand – gleefully noted that now he would no longer be able to wriggle out of it.
Sembiring has often tweeted controversial comments, including blaming natural disasters on a lack of morality and joking about AIDS.
Hat tip: Jean-François Gauthier
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
November 10th, 2010 at 10:37 am
I hope he didn’t get pregnant .
November 10th, 2010 at 11:14 am
Oh great, so I guess this means we can be expecting earthquakes and hurricanes sometime soon. Thanks alot, Sembiring.
November 10th, 2010 at 12:26 pm
What a cowardly hypocrital git. In the picture he is smiling broadly, bowing respectfully and there is no hesitation in the handshake. Like so many others of his ilk he has made a career out of his fundamentalist views. When the fundie nutters get back to him he wants to back off. Or have his cake and eat it. These scumbags are just so typical. They infest every country and because even the greatest dumbfucks have a vote politics attracts them like flies to rotten meat.
November 10th, 2010 at 1:19 pm
Aaah, diddums. Poor little lamb.
November 10th, 2010 at 2:04 pm
Well said Broga.
Something I´ve always wondered about. According to Richard Dawkins when he and that gobshite Iqbal Sacranie were on a BBC programe together, Sacranie refused to shake hands with the women in the studio in case any of them were menstruating or otherwise “unclean”. When some government idiot dedcided that Sacranie should be awarded an OBE, did he have to shake hands with the Queen or was she conveniently otherwise engaged?
November 10th, 2010 at 2:23 pm
Pervert!
November 10th, 2010 at 2:31 pm
If he avoids contact with women who are not related to him then with whom does he have contact?……..hang on a minute!
November 10th, 2010 at 2:49 pm
@David Anderson
I would imagine that Her Maj stopped menstruating some time ago!
November 10th, 2010 at 2:54 pm
Bloody stone-age retard. Maybe he should be stoned to death for his ‘crime’.
November 10th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
I see that Obama is praising Indonesia to the rafters, and declaring that the country is an example to the Muslim world. An example of what, I wonder?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H....._Indonesia
(Go on – somebody tell me that in comparison to The USA it’s like a beacon of hope in the world!)
November 10th, 2010 at 3:38 pm
I hope nobody reminds him how he was conceived, how and where he spent the first nine months of his life, what happened when he was born, and how he first received sustenance. He’d probably be so disgusted he’d kill himself.
November 10th, 2010 at 4:50 pm
Doesn’t have the Quran something like the Bible’s Matthew 18:8: “Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.”? If it does, the guy doesn’t have to come up with lame apologies, it only takes an amputation, and he’ll be all right.
November 10th, 2010 at 7:09 pm
Bloody hell! Remigius, there’s a name I haven’t seen for a while. You out on parole?
Bang go my chances of winning any caption competitions for a while. Welcome back.
November 10th, 2010 at 7:28 pm
So how are Fox News going to spin this one? Is it Michelle Obama who is the aggressor, that horrible woman forcing herself on someone, completely ignoring their Deeply Held Beliefs ™? Or is it that blasted Muslim and his crazy, scary beliefs that they should be complaining about? It might make their heads explode deciding who to paint as the bad one here.
November 10th, 2010 at 8:34 pm
This kind of idiocy is where the religiot’s denial of normal human sexuality leads to. Being a happily married, monogamous, heterosexual male, I interact with women every day without the slightest fear that I might descend into a vortex of moral depravity. If only these people could be made aware of how ridiculous they look to the rest of us.
If you need to have a laugh at those who don’t know how ridiculous they look to the rest of us have a look at Gearge Reiker’s book over at Pharyngula.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/
November 10th, 2010 at 10:06 pm
@ remigius
Good point but you missed it completely (Something about being otherwise “unclean”, she is a woman and not being related).
May we have some evidence of when and if Mrs. Windsor stopped menstuating apart from your imagination.
November 10th, 2010 at 10:35 pm
He needn’t worry himself. We are all descendants of Adam and Eve, so we are all related.
PS I’m not a medical expert, but surely The Queen is past the menopause now?
(Hope I get the bloody CAPTCHA right this time!)
November 10th, 2010 at 10:49 pm
As if anyone here needed it, here’s that sentence corrected to show the true stupidity it implies.
His loss.
November 10th, 2010 at 11:29 pm
@ barriejohn
I´m sure she is but my question didn´t concern this. She is a woman and not related to Sacranie and thus otherwise “unclean”. Did he then shake her hand or did some other officiary bestow him OBE on him?
I asked this because I can see a similarity to the subject of this post.
November 11th, 2010 at 1:25 am
They don’t even try to hide the fact that they despise women, do they? And I’m not just talking about muslims. It’s at the root of so many religions.
Horrible, insecure, squirming, cowardly little men – they disgust me.
*loves women*
November 11th, 2010 at 2:35 am
Orthodox and ultra-orthodox Jews also refuse contact with women.
November 11th, 2010 at 4:41 am
Is that why they marry so many women, so they can have a clean one at their disposal at any given time, LMAO….what bs it is just gender superiority on their behalf or are they just so horny they can’t even touch a womans hand without going ballistic…Really, it is the same ole theme…using Religion or what ever means to keep them in their place. Ugh!!
November 11th, 2010 at 6:37 am
Misogyny is acceptable if your religion demands it. Apparently.
November 11th, 2010 at 8:37 am
4:34 of the Koran explains that men are in charge of women and that if a woman disobeys she may be admonished, then made to sleep alone, then she may be beaten/scourged (in that order).
This may be embarrassing for Muslims who live in the West (who typically insert words like ‘light beating’), but it’s hardly controversial for fundies like Sembiring.
It was this citation from the Koran, more than any other, that cut right through the perception my fiance previously held that Islam is a kindly religion simply corrupted by some people’s interpretation.
I fail to see why any decent person should have any truck with a god that prescribes such behaviour, never mind all the other violent and hateful verses contained within the Koran. I note, though, that the prescription for apostasy is execution.
For a full complement of rules regarding women and as a generally useful resource for all things Biblical/Koranic, I recommend the Skepticsannotatedbible/koran website.
November 11th, 2010 at 8:38 am
[by the way, CAPTCHA's gone a bit mental. Just now wouldn't work with the actual code provided, the audio was different to the print and so I had to try again!]
November 11th, 2010 at 8:54 am
Carasek, thus the United Arab Emirates’s Supreme Court decision
Removed for legal reasons: Wife-beating allowed under sharia law, UAE court rules
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl.....-law-court
Holy wow, article removed for legal reasons! WTF.
November 11th, 2010 at 9:35 am
The Guardian probably removed the article because they have such a love affair with islam. Lots about UAE decision on the net; sorry, this from the Daily Wail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....marks.html
November 11th, 2010 at 9:45 am
Think or GTFO
“Misogyny is acceptable if your religion demands it. Apparently.”
I suspect many men find their religion comforting because it demands misogyny.
November 11th, 2010 at 11:06 am
Thanks for the links, even the Grauniad one!
Reading comments posted on the DM about that case, it never ceases to amaze me how many people seek to water down the bits of the Koran (or any other religious text) to avoid uncomfortable truths about the teachings, incompatible as many now are with contemporary modern norms.
The UAE court ruling is one of many that can be found to confirm the considered academic view that beating women is acceptable in Islam: this is hardly controversial.
Even if (and I don’t accept this argument) the fundies are actually just interpreting the text poorly, this is evidence of their god’s poor phraseology. If the text is open to such varied interpretation, it has no worth at all as the basis for a prescriptive ideology.
November 11th, 2010 at 11:23 am
@barriejohn
I think you may safely assume that Mrs Windsor stopped menstruating a long time ago. These are not, however, issues on which the plebs are supposed to dwell. A general, and ignorant view which I speculate would be accepted by Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph mem sahibs, is that Mrs Windsor is a superior being of antiseptic cleanliness and detached from the usual bodily functions which fall to the rest of us. I suspect that she is so emotionally frozen that she gritted her death, thought of England and did her duty in producing children but has never been an enthusiast for the sex act. Indeed, even to speculate on this is an act of lese majesty in our fantasy fed culture of worshipping this family of Royal freeloaders.
November 11th, 2010 at 3:50 pm
Broga: I had always imagined, since they sleep in separate rooms and lead separate lives, that Prince Philip sent a flunkey in to the Queen from time to time, ceremoniously bearing a tray upon which he had placed a cup of ejaculate and a syringe, but I may be wrong of course!
November 11th, 2010 at 4:02 pm
@barriejohn
You could be right. Phil was a serial shagger when he was younger but that was only reported on the Continent. Too shocking for the sensitivities of the “subjects.”
Mrs Windsor has stated in one of her Christmas addresses to the nation that she thought that only religion could cure the ills of the world. They are mean. Pay low wages. Get staff to sign the Official Secrets Act in case they tell anything we ought not to hear. As, for example, that story of a footman or simlar giving a blow job to one of the royals.
November 11th, 2010 at 5:35 pm
Broga: They’re all thick too. What sort of jobs do you think they would have had if they hadn’t been born into that family?
November 11th, 2010 at 6:18 pm
barriejohn
I have always seen Phil as a cabbie (mini, not black) and Madge as working in the HR department of a medium sized company. Charles would be operating out of a room in a ‘Mind and Spirit’ centre as a homeopathist or similar woo-slinger and Andrew would be the bar manager at a suburban golf club.
Harry, despite the expensive education, only managed one mediocre and one poor ‘A’ level (and the B in Art was iffy) but to be fair seems to have been a competent subaltern. William at least got a masters in Geography and I don’t think the military allow actual thickos to fly helicopters.