[Kabar-indonesia] 1 of 3: Text of ICG Report: Islamic Law And Criminal Justice In Aceh

[Joyo at aol.com]

International Crisis Group
Jakarta/Brussels, 31 July 2006

Asia Report N°117 

ISLAMIC LAW AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE IN ACEH

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY   i

I.  INTRODUCTION     1

II. THE SHARI'A DEBATE  2

A.  THE HISTORICAL PRECEDENT    2

B.  THE DARUL ISLAM REBELLION   3

C.  THE NEW ORDER   3

D.  SHARI'A AS THE SOLUTION 4

E.  SHARI'A AND THE CONFLICT    5

III.    THE NEW REGULATORY FRAMEWORK    6

IV. IMPLEMENTATION  7
A.  THE WILAYATUL HISBAH    7
1.  Background  7
2.  The WH in Practice  8
B.  PUNISHMENTS 10

V.  SHARI'A EXPANSION   11
A.  UNDERSTANDING THE DYNAMICS OF EXPANSION 11
1.  More caning 11
2.  Greater powers for the WH   12
3.  Revisions to the Khalwat regulation 12
B.  PROPOSALS FOR NEW QANUN 13

VI. CONCLUSION  14

APPENDICES

A.  MAP OF INDONESIA    15
B.  GLOSSARY OF TERMS   16
C.  ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP    18
D.  CRISIS GROUP REPORTS AND BRIEFINGS ON ASIA  19
E.  CRISIS GROUP BOARD OF TRUSTEES   21

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
 
Aceh is the only part of Indonesia that has the legal
right to apply Islamic law (Shari'a) in full. Since
1999, it has begun slowly to put in place an
institutional framework for Shari'a enforcement. In
the process, it is addressing hard questions: What
aspects should be enforced first? Should existing
police, prosecutors and courts be used or new entities
created? How should violations be punished? Its
efforts to find the answers are being watched closely
by other local governments, some of which have enacted
regulations inspired by or derived from Shari'a. These
moves in turn are sparking a raging debate in
Indonesia about what role government at any level
should play in encouraging adherence to Islamic law
and how far the Islamisation drive will or should be
allowed to spread.

This report analyses the reasons usually put forward
for why Aceh has been granted the right to apply
Shari'a when many other regions have not: that Islam
is central to Acehnese identity; that there is a
historical precedent there; and that granting Shari'a
would help woo an area wracked by insurgency away from
separatism and restore trust in the central
government. All three assumptions, but particularly
the last, came into play when the first post-Soeharto
government in 1998 began thinking about a political
solution to the Aceh conflict.

Islamic courts in Aceh had long handled cases of
marriage, divorce and inheritance. The breakthrough in
terms of greater application came after special
autonomy legislation was passed in 2001, which gave
the courts a green light to extend their reach into
criminal justice. It was at this point that serious
issues of legal dualism emerged, with no clear line
between what the division of labour would be between
the regular state courts and Shari'a courts. The
question of law enforcement was even murkier: this
report looks at the role of the wilayatul hisbah, the
"vice and virtue patrol" that Aceh has set up and how
its role is gradually expanding much to the
unhappiness of the police.

Crisis Group examines the practical problems that have
emerged as Aceh tries to enforce the first three
Shari'a regulations passed by the district government:
criminalising consumption and sale of alcoholic
beverages; gambling; and illicit relations between men
and women. It looks at how and why the government
instituted caning as a punishment for all three, even
though there was no precedent for it in Aceh, and the
plans for expanding the application of Islamic law.

The report concludes that while the Shari'a officials
in Aceh deeply believe that strict enforcement will
facilitate broader goals like peace, reconstruction
and reconciliation, there are other dynamics at work.
The focus on morality seems to have become an end in
itself. The religious bureaucracy has a vested
interest in its own expansion. The zeal shown by the
vice and virtue patrol in enforcing the regulations
has encouraged a report-on-your-neighbour process and
a kind of moral vigilantism. Women and the poor have
become the primary targets of enforcement. There is no
indication that implementation of Shari'a is advancing
justice for most Acehnese. But for many of its
advocates, that may be beside the point. The real
issue is whether man's law or God's will prevails.

Jakarta/Brussels, 31 July 2006

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[Joyo note: for some unknown reason, the numbers of the 
footnotes do not appear in the text that can be copied from 
the ICG website. The footnotes themselves are in 3 of 3.]

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I.  INTRODUCTION

Since the beginning of 2006, debate has raged in
Indonesia about the role of the government in
upholding Islamic law (Shari'a). In May, two major
news magazines carried articles on the number of
districts - some 22 of 450 and growing - that have
enacted regulations inspired by or derived from
Islamic law. Most have to do with Muslim dress and
Koranic literacy; a few go further. In June, 56
members of parliament signed a petition urging that
these regulations be overturned as unconstitutional;
shortly afterwards, 134 others came out with a
counter-petition. A bill criminalising pornography and
"porno-actions" (provocative, erotic or immoral
behaviour, very broadly defined) has attracted strong
support from religious organisations concerned about
the nation's morals and fierce criticism from those
who see it as discriminatory toward non-Muslims,
indigenous cultures, and women, potentially disastrous
for writers and artists and generally too intrusive. 

The questions that underlie this debate are as
critical as they are unanswerable: how far will this
drive for grassroots Islamisation spread? What factors
are driving it or hindering it? What kind of society
does it produce? How does it affect development
priorities? And what influence, if any, will it have
on the rest of Indonesia? 

The autonomous region of Aceh, formally Nanggroe Aceh
Darussalam (NAD), is a fascinating laboratory in this
respect.  It is the only place in Indonesia that since
1999 has had the legal right to apply Islamic law in
full. Known as the "veranda of Mecca", it has a
reputation for being one of the country's most
devoutly Islamic areas but also one of its most
ethnocentric. In one sense, to be Acehnese is to be
from the ethnic group that speaks Acehnese. In
another, it is to live anywhere within the boundaries
of the old sultanate of Aceh and identify with its
history. But Acehnese have never claimed an identity
based on Islam alone, and piety has never entailed the
kind of rigid puritanism associated with Saudi Arabia
or the approach to Islam called salafism.

Through the centuries Aceh has been known as much for
rebellion as for religiosity. It resisted Dutch
colonial forces, and in the early years of an
independent Indonesia rebelled against Jakarta for
breaking its promises to grant special status. An
insurgency, the Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh
Merdeka, GAM) fighting for independence broke out in
1976 and continued in fits and starts through the
signing of a peace agreement in Helsinki on 15 August
2005. That rebellion was always nationalist in
essence, and GAM leaders never showed any serious
interest in making common cause with fellow Muslims
elsewhere.
 
The green light to apply Islamic law in 1999 was part
of an effort in the immediate aftermath of President
Soeharto's downfall to find a political solution to
the conflict. It was less based on popular demand than
on an assessment by the Jakarta and Aceh political
elite of what would mollify a population embittered by
years of conflict, human rights violations and
economic exploitation. But it did have support,
particularly as the national legal system, which
rarely delivered justice for the Acehnese anyway, had
broken down completely in much of Aceh as a result of
the war. Shari'a (syariah in Indonesian
transliteration) was promoted as a panacea: many hoped
it would eliminate social ills, produce an egalitarian
society and, in the words of one scholar, make
Acehnese "honest, thrifty, industrious, loyal, and
smart". 
 
But with the best intentions, the officials tasked
with codifying and extending Shari'a are inadvertently
producing something different: a religious bureaucracy
committed to its own expansion; a focus on legislating
and enforcing morality; and a quiet power struggle
with secular law enforcement that may have long-term
implications for both security sector and legal reform
in Aceh. 

II. THE SHARI'A DEBATE

Three main arguments have been used by Acehnese and
non-Acehnese alike to justify granting Aceh, as
opposed to other strongly Muslim parts of Indonesia,
the right to apply Islamic law in full:

-   Islam is central to Acehnese identity and culture;

-   there is a historical precedent for Shari'a in Aceh;
and

-   application of Shari'a has been a political demand
of Acehnese since colonial times, and refusal to grant
it would guarantee continued rebellion.

A.  THE HISTORICAL PRECEDENT

There is vast scholarship on the extremely complicated
history of Islamic law in Aceh but the simplified
version is as follows. From the seventeenth century to
the establishment of administrative control by Dutch
colonial authorities in the late nineteenth century,
formal justice was meted out by Islamic judges (qadi)
appointed by the sultan and other local officials.  As
in most places in the Muslim world, the law was a
mixture of Shari'a and traditional customary practices
(adat) that varied from one locality to another. With
the arrival of the Dutch, the system of
locally-appointed qadis continued, but their authority
was gradually reduced, and there were no religious
courts as such - or at least none recognised by the
colonial state. Criminal justice fell within the
jurisdiction of colonial courts, and the Dutch tried
to shift other matters, such as land and inheritance
issues, to customary councils.  

Acehnese scholars and religious authorities (ulama)
portray the struggle for restoration of Islamic law to
its rightful place as a key element of Acehnese
resistance to the Dutch, and later to the republican
government under President Sukarno. That portrayal
suggests Aceh was united on this point and belies the
deep cleavages that began to emerge in the 1940s and
1950s between local aristocrats (uleebelang), who
mostly threw their lot in with the Dutch and favoured
a more secular administration, and the religious
scholars who occupied a prominent place in society.
The ulama themselves were divided between the
modernisers, who favoured a separate, or at least
autonomous state based on Islamic law, and the more
orthodox, who tended to side with the aristocrats.
Islam was important to all but not in the same way:
like the Dutch (and like Soeharto but not his
successors), the aristocrats understood that a formal
religious bureaucracy would undercut their own power.
It was the modernising ulama, led by Daud Beureueh,
who were determined to re-establish Islamic courts, in
part as a way to expand their influence.

On their own initiative at the end of 1945,
immediately after Sukarno's declaration of Indonesia's
independence, provincial authorities in Aceh sent a
directive to each district to set up a Shari'a court
(mahkamah syariah).  Under Beureueh's supervision,
these gradually assumed jurisdiction over inheritance
and some land-related issues, in addition to the
marriage and divorce cases that were the
bread-and-butter of religious courts elsewhere. 
Giving property issues back to the Islamic courts was
opposed by some Acehnese jurists in the state system
but they conceded the point, in the hope this would
stop Beureueh and others from trying to secure more
comprehensive application of Islamic law.  

Beureueh did indeed want Islamic law but he and other
influential ulama wanted autonomy and recognition of
Aceh's special status just as much. They supported the
war against the Dutch as an obligatory jihad against a
kafir occupier but that argument only made sense if
the end result was an Islamic state, or at least a
separate Islamic region. Their support was based on
the assumption of a political bargain. In early 1948,
in a meeting in Aceh, Beureueh and other ulama pressed
Sukarno for assurance that an independent Indonesia
would be an Islamic state. After a few non-committal
comments, Sukarno, according to interviews Beureueh
gave much later, promised that the state would be
based on Islamic principles, and Acehnese would have
the right to implement Islamic law.  

B.  THE DARUL ISLAM REBELLION

As it turned out, Jakarta's failure to fulfil its
promises went far beyond the issue of Shari'a. In
1951, in the new government's effort to streamline
administration and save costs, Aceh lost its status as
a separate province and was merged with North Sumatra.
Outrage in Aceh was compounded by the neglect it
suffered in comparison to the non-Acehnese parts of
the new province. Education and health services all
but collapsed, and government teachers were withdrawn
to other parts of Sumatra. The one state high school
in Banda Aceh was shut down, to angry protests from
the ulama as well as other political leaders. Exports
stagnated, and Aceh's agricultural needs were ignored.
The Acehnese unit of the Indonesian military that
Beureueh had helped set up was demobilised, and
non-Acehnese officials flooded the province, bringing
with them liquor, gambling and prostitution.  

Thus, when Beureueh initiated the Darul Islam (DI)
rebellion in 1953, it could hardly be said that he did
so simply to fight for Shari'a. Application of Islamic
law, however, was one element of the entity he
intended to establish, an Acehnese state in a larger
Indonesian Islamic federation. He also ensured that
his Darul Islam commanders set up Islamic courts in
areas they controlled and appointed qadis to head them
- just as GAM did decades later. 

In 1956, Jakarta, beset by rebellions elsewhere,
finally agreed to reconstitute the separate province
of Aceh, eliminating one of the original causes of the
insurgency. DI rebel leaders split along
ulama/non-ulama lines about whether the offer was
sufficient; again it was clear that not all Acehnese,
not even all Acehnese rebels, saw the full application
of Islamic law as a non-negotiable demand. The ulama,
led by Beureueh, demanded extensive autonomy,
particularly in religion; the others seemed inclined
to take the restored province and work from there,
although they supported the eventual application of
Shari'a. 

The province of Aceh came into being (again) in 1957,
and with it the official re-emergence of Shari'a
courts.  These developments were accompanied by a
ceasefire and, eventually, a formal split within DI.
The central government in Jakarta persuaded the
non-ulama to leave the insurgency altogether in
exchange for special status, beyond that of a normal
province. In 1959, a ministerial decree designated
Aceh as a "special area" (daerah istimewa), with
autonomy in religion, customary practices and
education.  

By this time, Beureueh had joined with another
rebellion in Sumatra that in 1960 proclaimed the
United Republic of Indonesia (Republik Persatuan
Indonesia, RPI), a federation in which one state was
to be the Islamic Republic of Aceh (Republik Islam
Aceh, RIA). It was a last gasp, as more and more of
Beureueh's men defected. In 1961, he reportedly wrote
to Col. Muhammad Yasin, the regional military
commander, attaching a "concept" for a presidential
decree on a basic law for government of the special
area that included full implementation of Islamic law.
 The commander replied that Beureueh should not submit
anything to the central government until security in
Aceh was fully restored but in the meantime, the local
government could implement Shari'a "in accordance with
the authority that the Aceh government already had" -
which was not much.  In 1961, for example, the
provincial legislature passed Regulation No. 30 on
"Limiting Sales of Food and Drink during Ramadan",
which was about as far as its authority stretched. 

A 1962 decision from Yasin declared that the
provincial government could implement "elements" of
Shari'a "in an orderly fashion" as long as there was
no conflict with national laws.  Criminal justice
remained the exclusive preserve of the secular legal
system, and there appeared to be little readiness to
allow any significant moves beyond the traditional
fields of family matters and inheritance. 

C.  THE NEW ORDER

The New Order government of President Soeharto
deadened any efforts at legal creativity. In 1966,
Aceh's parliament created the Majelis Permusyarawatan
Ulama (MPU), a council of religious scholars to advise
the local government on religious matters and guide
the faithful in their daily lives. But New Order
uniformity had begun to make itself felt, and the MPU
had no official status, because only the central
government could set up new government agencies. It
had no budget and was eventually turned into the Aceh
branch of a Soeharto creation, the Indonesian Ulama
Council (Majelis Ulama Indonesia, MUI), a move that
sapped it of all legitimacy.

Likewise, in 1968, the provincial parliament adopted
Regulation No. 6 on implementation of elements of
Shari'a. Largely about facilitating worship, it
involved no major changes in existing practice and did
not venture into criminal justice. Even so the
Ministry of Home Affairs rejected it, and the local
parliament made no more attempts to test the system. 

After the Soeharto government passed a 1974 law on
local government, there was no point anyway. Not only
was any semblance of "specialness" of the Special
Region of Aceh obliterated by imposition of a single,
mandatory structure for all levels of local
government, but traditional sources of authority were
undermined as their structures were forced to give way
to a giant bureaucracy run by the ruling Golkar party.
This move toward a crushing uniformity was further
strengthened by a 1979 law on village government that
took away the last vestiges of power that customary
leaders retained. Nothing more happened on Islamic law
until regional autonomy laws were passed in 1999.

Throughout the 1980s, Aceh became defined less by its
efforts to establish Islamic law than by the conflict
between GAM and the Indonesian military. Many of the
ulama were discredited because they were coopted by
the government in the interests of both securing votes
for Golkar and building defences against separatism.
To press for Shari'a was to be against Pancasila,
Soeharto's state ideology, even more so since GAM had
declared its intention of establishing Islamic law
when Aceh became independent. 

The one important institutional development in this
period was the establishment of religious courts
(pengadilan agama, not mahkamah syariah) across
Indonesia in 1989. No Shari'a courts other than these
officially-constituted bodies were recognised, but in
Aceh they handled the same kinds of issues that Daud
Beureueh's courts had previously: marriage and
divorce, property and inheritance issues. For most of
its 32 years, the New Order was not the time to press
an Islamic agenda.

Soeharto's downfall in 1998 caused a dramatic shift.
As if a curtain had suddenly been lifted, revelations
about atrocities committed on his watch poured out of
Aceh. Day after day, particularly between June and
August 1998, news broadcasts and articles were filled
with eyewitness accounts of murders and rapes, and
many mass grave sites were opened. In August 1998,
General Wiranto, then commander of the Indonesian
military, announced the end of Aceh's status as a
military operations area (daerah operasi militer,
DOM), and in early 1999, President Habibie formally
apologised to the Acehnese for the treatment they had
endured.  There was a palpable sense in Jakarta that
Aceh deserved some compensation. 

At the same time, Habibie offered East Timor a
referendum, and demands for equal treatment instantly
arose from across the political spectrum in Aceh. GAM,
buoyed by the new political openness, returned by the
hundreds from Malaysia and began actively recruiting
in mosques and prayerhouses across the province. 

D.  SHARI'A AS THE SOLUTION

All this made both Jakarta and many in Aceh more
receptive to the idea that Islamic law offered a
political solution. It was something the Acehnese
wanted (although how much was debatable - after the
Indonesian parliament granted it, one Acehnese called
it an "unwanted gift", and he was not alone).  A woman
from the Lhoksemawe area, for example, said the people
she worked with believed that if Shari'a were adopted,
the military would have to end its liaisons with local
women, and the police would have to stop running
gambling dens.  Some officials believed that Shari'a
could block a major selling point of GAM, and
"successful implementation of Islamic law would be one
way of restoring public trust in the central
government". 

The result was the adoption in 1999 of Law No. 44
implementing the special status of Aceh - for the
first time since that status had been granted in 1959.
 It called for implementation of Shari'a for Muslims
but also protection of inter-religious relations. It
defined Shari'a as "guidance on Islamic teachings in
all aspects of life" (tuntunan ajaran Islam dalam
semua aspek kehidupan) and gave the local government
authority to set policies on religious life, custom,
education and the ulama's role, either through
provincial regulations or decisions of the governor. 

To oversee these policies, the provincial government
in 2001 created the Office for Syariat Islam (Dinas
Syariat Islam, the Shari'a office). Its functions were
to draft new regulations, later called qanuns, for
implementation of Islamic law; oversee the training of
personnel; ensure the orderly functioning of places of
worship and other Islamic facilities; provide guidance
and outreach on matters pertaining to Islamic law and
supervise adherence to it.  It was an entirely new
religious bureaucracy, providing employment for
hundreds of people and with it, vested interest in
expanding Shari'a application. 

That same year, a special Aceh autonomy law (Law No.
18/2001) allowed for the creation of Shari'a courts
(again called mahkamah syariah as in the 1940s), with
jurisdiction over not just the usual areas of family
and property issues but also criminal cases. Under the
terms of the 1999 law, all violations of local
government laws, including any related to Shari'a,
were to be tried in the regular district courts. Local
ulama were worried that judges on those courts, which
were in a state of disarray, would have neither the
knowledge nor inclination to rule on Shari'a-related
cases. The new courts could change this: it was now up
to the provincial parliament to adopt regulations
setting out the offences the courts could try.

E.  SHARI'A AND THE CONFLICT

Between 2000 and the December 2004 tsunami, the
conflict in Aceh grew worse, despite periodic efforts
at a negotiated peace. As it continued, the Indonesian
armed forces became one of the champions of Islamic
law, because as noted, they saw it as a bulwark
against GAM: the Acehnese had rebelled in the 1950s
because they did not get Shari'a, the argument went,
and one of GAM's promises to the people was
enforcement of Shari'a - even though it was a secular
movement that had tried to substitute Acehnese
nationalism for Islam as its ideological foundation;
therefore, to mobilise popular support against GAM,
use Shari'a.

The military, according to an Acehnese Shari'a
official, gave a boost to the growth of the religious
bureaucracy. District-level Shari'a offices began to
be established in 2002 through separate district
council regulations. The military may not have been
involved in setting up the first few, though the
latter were all in areas of intense conflict.  Aceh
Tengah was the first to open such an office in
November 2002. It had been the site of a dramatic
escalation in violence in June-July 2001, when a GAM
attack on a Javanese migrant settlement led to a
combined military/ militia counterattack. The next
Shari'a offices to open were all in districts where
violence was endemic: Aceh Besar, Pidie, Aceh Utara,
and Aceh Timur. But after the Indonesian government
declared a military emergency in Aceh in May 2003,
most district offices were set up at the urging of the
martial law administrator.  

The Indonesian government used coopted Acehnese
organisations to try to discredit GAM's Islamic
credentials. But GAM's stance on shari'a was more
complicated than its opponents suggested. It was
certainly a nationalist movement more than an Islamic
one, and its top leaders were ambivalent about Islamic
law. But as noted, one of its promises to its
grassroots base was that it would reinstate shari'a
after independence, and there were periodic incidents,
especially between 1999 and 2001, of local GAM
commanders enforcing Islamic law. In one proclamation
in 1999, a local GAM leader issued an edict that all
women would have to wear the headscarf if they left
their houses; in one town in the Gayo area of Central
Aceh, GAM members cut the hair of women who disobeyed.
 And in areas where it controlled village
administration, GAM based its rudimentary justice
system on Shari'a.  

III.    THE NEW REGULATORY FRAMEWORK

Armed with the new authority under the 1999 law and
later the 2001 special autonomy law to apply Shari'a,
the government moved slowly to extend it to areas
beyond those covered by existing religious courts. No
one had ever had to give much thought to the
infrastructure or personnel required for moving into
the criminal justice sphere, because it had never been
politically possible before. No one had had to think
through penalties, criminal procedure, or enforcement
institutions or how Islamic courts would be different
from ordinary courts in these respects. The precedents
were not in Aceh but in Muslim countries where Islamic
law had been applied, including Malaysia, Pakistan,
Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The first regulations - called perda before the 2001
special autonomy law and qanun afterwards - were
focused more on these broader questions, rather than
specific offences. 

Perda No. 5/2000 on the implementation of Islamic Law
states that all aspects of Shari'a will be applied,
including those related to faith, worship, economic
transactions, moral character, education and religious
outreach; a treasury for zakat (alms) and other
Islamic donations; social aspects, including Muslim
dress; celebration of Muslim holidays; defence of
Islam; judicial structures, criminal justice and
inheritance. It sets up the waliyatul hisbah (WH) as
the monitoring and enforcement body for Shari'a, but
with no details about how it is to function.  
Qanun No. 10/2002 on Shari'a courts for the first time
extended the jurisdiction of religious courts beyond
family and inheritance law to include economic
transactions (mualamat) not previously covered as well
as criminal cases (jinayat). The former includes
buying and selling; use of capital; division of
agricultural produce; establishment of companies;
borrowing; foreclosing on property; mortgages;
clearing land; mining; discoveries; banking; labour;
and various forms of religious donations. 

Criminal offences are divided into three categories.
Hudud offences, including adultery, false accusations
of adultery; theft, robbery, alcohol consumption,
apostasy and rebellion, are those for which penalties
are specified in the Koran. 

Qishash-diyat relates to murder and assault and either
retaliation or recompense for them. Ta'zir offences
are everything else, crimes for which no specific
penalties are mentioned and so left to the discretion
of judges. These include gambling, cheating,
falsification of documents, illicit relations, failing
to fast during Ramadan and failing to observe daily
prayers. Ta'zir also can incorporate offences which
disrupt public order or undermine the public interest,
such as traffic violations. 

Any offences to be covered by the court must first
have be codified in regulations (qanun) adopted by the
provincial parliament. 

Qanun No. 11/2002 on the implementation of Islamic law
in the areas of faith, worship, and dissemination of
Islamic teachings is the first regulation to
criminalise certain kinds of behaviour under Islamic
law. Among other things, it bans the dissemination of
deviant teachings. It requires all Muslims to wear
Muslim dress, defined as clothing which covers the
aurat (for men this is knee to navel; for women it is
the entire body save for the hands, feet, and face);
that is not see-through; and does not show the shape
of the body. It obliges all government offices and
educational institutions to require Muslim dress on
their premises. Finally, it tasks the WH with giving
warnings to violators and imposing ta'zir punishments
on repeat offenders. It is this qanun that is used to
punish women who do not wear the headscarf. 

Qanuns No. 12, 13 and 14/2003 on Khamar (sale and
consumption of liquor), Maisir (Gambling) and Khalwat
(illicit relations between men and women) criminalised
these three vices because, according to the head of
the Shari'a office in Banda Aceh, they were seen as
particular problems by the Acehnese public.  For the
first time, Islamic punishments were prescribed in
law, specifically caning.

Qanun No. 7/2004 on the management of zakat (alms) set
up the treasury (baitul mal), which among other things
receives fines for all Shari'a offences.
As noted above, before the courts can enforce Islamic
law, it must be on the books, and it is the provincial
parliament, composed overwhelmingly of people without
expertise in this area, who have to draft it. The
roles of the Shari'a office, the Ulama Consultative
Council (MPU), and the law faculty at the State
Islamic Institute in Banda Aceh thus become critical.

-end/1 of 3... continues...

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