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Great post!

3.5% of the world's population but very little is written in the West about Indonesia.

I have a couple of questions:

- How effective do you think is religious education in Indonesia? Judging by the Spanish experience (*) I'm a bit skeptical of the effect that madrasahs have on piousness and religiosity.

- Do you have any ideas on why Aceh is more religious than the rest of Indonesia? It would seem the rest of Indonesia is actually catching up with Aceh, but I don't know of any good explanation for why islamisation would have happened earlier in Aceh.

My naive explanation would be that historically Aceh had more contact with the big Islamic centers in Arabia and Muslim India, being close to the route that Muslim traders traveled on their way to Eastern Asia. But I don't find it very convincing.

(*) More than 30% of education in Spain is private, and most private schools are religious.

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