More on the Aceh ’stoning law.’
There is a sense, in fact, among some Acehnese analysts, that the passing of the law was not meant to enforce Islamic morals at all, but instead was meant as a political move to destabilize the incoming parliament.
“There is a sense that the outgoing parliament deliberately left a ‘time-bomb’ for their successors,” Jones said. “The next parliament will be open to criticism either way, damned for being insufficiently supportive of Sharia if they try and roll it back, damned for intolerance and cowardliness if they let it go ahead, even in a modified form.”
If the new parliament doesn’t rescind the law, however, Jakarta will. Andi Mallarangeng, an adviser to the president, said the central government would likely review the law’s legality. Such an action could have interesting repercussions for the country as a whole.
Numerous Sharia-based regulations have been passed by local governments throughout Indonesia and so far, the Home Affairs ministry has not acted, even though the regulations are in clear violation of Indonesian law, which forbids local governments from enacting religious-based legislation.
“In the case of Aceh, the Ministry will almost certainly act — which may bring some of the other regulations around the country into question,” Jones said.
Aceh’s new law isn’t the first time Sharia-based regulations have been passed there. Laws have existed for years requiring women to wear headscarves in public, for instance, and there was a time when women were occasionally, sometimes brutally, punished. But when you walk the streets of its capital these days, numerous women forgo the headscarf, openly flouting the law with little to no consequence.
