Indonesia: Life In The Islands

From the Jakarta Post:

Unease in Aceh as Morality Police Crack Down

Teenager Purnama Sari shivers when she recalls how Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam’s religious police ejected her and her girlfriends from their tents in a predawn raid earlier this year.

The teenagers were on a weekend camping retreat in the rugged hills of the province at the northwestern tip of Sumatra—and boys of their age were also there, staying in separate sleeping quarters.

“They were hitting the tents and screaming, ‘Get out, get out!’” says the 18-year-old Islamic boarding school student, who wears a demure long skirt, long-sleeved blouse, and a pastel-colored headscarf, or jilbab.

The men lectured the dozen girls on the risk of committing the sin of khalwat—being illicitly close to a man—before lining them up for identification at the nearest village.

The boys were discreetly taken to a prayer hall, away from prying eyes.

“We felt like prostitutes,” Purnama says, “Villagers were watching us, laughing. All of us girls were crying.”

Purnama is a rare voice willing to criticize the implementation of sharia, or religious law, in Aceh, with few others complaining here for fear of being seen as bad Muslims.

The pace of acceptance of sharia has accelerated across Aceh while many Indonesians elsewhere, who largely practice a more moderate version of the faith, follow developments carefully, some with alarm.

Even the UN’s World Food Program (WFP) has been targeted. The religious police—known formally as Wilayatul Hisbah (WH), taking their name from Iran’s Vice and Virtue Patrol—snuck into their compound last month.

“There was nothing to find and they found nothing,” says WFP spokesperson Charlie Higgins of the incident, which highlighted the lack of clarity surrounding just how non-Muslims are affected by sharia.

Aceh has for centuries been a staunchly Muslim heartland, with separatist rebels fighting for independence from Jakarta for the three decades until last year. However it only began building a framework for sharia from 1999 and the sharia police were tasked with monitoring compliance and warning offenders in 2004.

Islamic courts were given approval to extend their reach to criminal justice in 2001, when a special autonomy law was passed by Jakarta as part of a bid to calm the restive province.

Today public caning and fines are used as punishment for the consumption and sale of alcohol, gambling, and khalwat.

Acehnese refuse to speak out about sharia, rights activist Aguswandi says, because they “are scared of being accused of being anti-Islam, of being targeted, and also because there is no support for a different voice in Aceh.”

For Acehnese women, wearing the veil has never been a tradition—but it may well soon be.

“Allah asked you to wear the jilbab, it’s a sin!” lectures a member of the mobile sharia police to a bare-headed woman sitting at Banda Aceh’s ferry terminal.

Raja Radan, the supervisor of Banda Aceh’s 45-man morality team, insists patrols are only aimed at protecting them from sin.

The head of the sharia department in Aceh, Al Yassa’abubakar, says that sharia “helps create a conducive atmosphere for the economy, prosperity, and justice in Aceh. People can work with peace of mind.”

posted by Caitlin @ 11:25 PM