Islamic Law and Criminal Justice in Aceh
Jakarta/Brussels |
31 Jul 2006
As a debate rages in Indonesia about the role of the state in enforcing Islamic law, all eyes are on Aceh, the only part of the country allowed to apply Shari’a in full.
Islamic Law and Criminal Justice in Aceh,* the latest report from the International Crisis Group, examines the practical problems that have developed as the Indonesian province that is emerging from a long civil conflict tries to enforce the first three Shari’a regulations passed by the district government. While Shari’a officials there deeply believe that strict enforcement will facilitate broader goals like peace, reconstruction and reconciliation, the religious bureaucracy also has a vested interest in its own expansion, and women and the poor have become the primary targets of enforcement.
“There’s a wide gulf between the popularity of Islamic law in principle and the unpopularity of how it’s being enforced”, says Sidney Jones, Crisis Group South East Asia Project Director. “But for many, that may be beside the point: the real issue is whether man’s law or God’s will prevail”.
When the first post-Soeharto government in 1998 began thinking about a political solution to the Aceh conflict, the political elite in Jakarta and Aceh saw Shari’a as a way to woo an area wracked by insurgency away from separatism. Special autonomy legislation in 2001 gave Islamic courts – previously restricted to marriage, divorce and inheritance matters – a green light to extend into criminal justice. The first three offences to be criminalised were gambling, alcohol consumption and illicit relations between men and women.
Setting up the necessary infrastructure has not been simple, and serious issues of legal dualism have arisen. The division of labour between the police and the wilayatul hisbah (WH), the “vice and virtue” patrol tasked to enforce Shari’a, remains particularly murky.
Aceh’s police are unhappy both at being required to enforce Shari’a on top of their other duties and at the erosion of their authority by the WH. Donors may be unwilling to continue funding police reform in Aceh if the WH takes on a wider role.
“Even with the best intentions, the officials tasked with extending Shari’a are inadvertently producing something different”, says Robert Templer, Crisis Group’s Asia Program Director. “What’s emerging is a quiet power struggle with secular law enforcement that may have long-term implications for both security sector and legal reform in Aceh”.