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WSJ Editorial: Will Aceh Dominate Indonesia?
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Tapol
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Nov 03, 2009 09:10 PST
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From Joyo
The Wall Street Journal
November 3, 2009
Editorial
Will Aceh Dominate Indonesia?
A province's embrace of stricter Shariah law is part of a
worrying trend.
In September, the legislature of Indonesia's semi-autonomous
province of Aceh unanimously passed a law that would punish
adulterers by stoning them to death. Last week, the district
head of West Aceh announced a new ban on women wearing tight
trousers and men wearing shorts—under penalty of having the
offending garment cut up and replaced with government-issued
wear.
Now the question that confronts Indonesian President Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono is whether Aceh, which adopted Sharia law in
2001 as part of efforts to broker a peace agreement, will remain
a part of Indonesia. The alternative is for Indonesia to become,
in effect, an extension of Aceh.
The trends aren't encouraging. Despite its reputation as one of
the world's most inclusive Muslim-majority democracies,
Shariah-inspired bylaws have been multiplying across the country
in recent years. These laws do things like restrict women from
leaving the house at night or mandate that Muslims seeking
marriage be able to read the Koran in Arabic. They can be
unilaterally imposed by local politicians even if they don't
enjoy widespread popular support.
These edicts would appear to violate Indonesia's secular
constitution, which guarantees "all persons the right to worship
according to their own religion or belief." That makes it odd
that so far, President Yudhoyono seems to have turned a blind
eye. A U.S. government report noted last week that Jakarta did
not make any efforts to investigate the constitutionality of
these Shariah-inspired bylaws in the last year.
President Yudhoyono has bowed to Islamists in other areas, too.
He has banned the Ahmadiyya, a peaceful Muslim sect, from
proselytizing; signed into law a restrictive antipornography
bill that limits free speech; and awarded the minority, hardline
Islamic Prosperous Justice Party with four cabinet seats.
President Yudhoyono has been a fierce opponent of terrorism.
But allowing these local bylaws to proliferate chips away at the
country's secular foundation. As Indonesians look toward the
future, Aceh is probably not what most of them have in mind.
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