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Al Shabaab applies its own ruthless brand of justice again.
Islamists in southern Somalia have stoned a man to death for adultery but spared his pregnant girlfriend until she gives birth.
Abas Hussein Abdirahman, 33, was killed in front of a crowd of some 300 people in the port town of Merka.
An official from the al-Shabab group said the woman would be killed after she has had her baby.
New York Times: ‘Extremism spreads across Indonesian penal code.’
Most of Indonesia still lives up to its reputation for a moderate, easygoing brand of Islam, and Islamist parties suffered heavy losses in this year’s national elections. But how Aceh went from basic Islamic law to endorsing stoning in a few short years shows how a small, radical minority has successfully pushed its agenda, locally and nationally, by cowing political and religious moderates.
Though extreme, Aceh [which recently passed the death penalty by stoning for adulterers] is not an isolated case. In recent years, as part of a decentralization of power away from the capital, Jakarta, at least 50 local governments have used their new authority to pass Shariah-based regulations regarding conduct and dress, though none have gone as far as Aceh to deal with criminal matters.
Rural Acehians support stoning:
People in Aceh’s rural areas were said to be Shariah’s staunchest supporters, though even most people interviewed here in the provincial capital said they backed the stoning of adulterers.
“If people are caught, they should be given a warning the first time,” said Fati Ibrahim, 43, a mother of four who was buying dustpans at a large store here. “But if they’re caught a second or third time, they should be stoned.
“Otherwise, they’ll give Aceh a bad image. They’ll embarrass us outside Aceh, that we’re not practicing Islam as it should be.”
What would the neighbors think?
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.
Indonesia’s Aceh to stone adulterers under Islamic law.
Indonesia’s staunchly Muslim Aceh province is set to enforce a strict form of Islamic criminal law, including stoning to death married adulterers, a lawmaker said on Wednesday.
“Unmarried people who commit adultery will be caned one hundred times and married persons will be stoned to death,” Raihan Iskandar, a provincial lawmaker from the Islamic-based Prosperous Justice Party, told AFP.
Aceh, where separatists had been fighting the Indonesian government since 1976 until a peace deal in 2005, has so far only partially adopted sharia law, which requires modest Muslim dress codes, mandatory prayers five times a day, fasting and the giving of alms to the poor.
Beware of stupid, gossipy neighbors, Acehians.
Iran parliament plans end to stoning, hand amputation.
Iran’s parliament plans to scrap stoning and amputation of a hand as punishments in a revised version of the Islamic penal code, the official IRNA news agency reported Monday.
“Parliaments judicial commission decided not to put some Islamic punishments including stoning in the (revised) law in line with the interests of the country,” commission head Ali Shahrokhi told the agency.
He said the commission is also proposing the abolition of amputation and has considered the idea of a “special court for minors under 18.”
According to ‘local reports’, Iran’s judiciary has suspended the punishment of death by stoning and has commuted the sentences of people scheduled to be executed.