More Floggings in Aceh

[Dan]

I have a brilliant new idea...we can build a wall and get the Acehnese to pay for it...

That's dumb, the Acehnese are renowned seafarers (well, mostly pirates...).

 

[fastpitch17]

That's dumb, the Acehnese are renowned seafarers (well, mostly pirates...).

Yeah and they would be up against the powerful Indonesian Navy that can't even seem to keep up with many fishing boats in their waters.

Again Dan, what constitutes the difference in flogging between teens and a mature man?

 

[sumyunggai]

Are you completely out of your mind? Where do I call for the forced removal by way of intimidation, physical violence or worse of people of a certain ethnicity/religion ?

Me, out of my mind? Let me think, who was the one suggesting sharia law wasn't so bad here? No, it wasn't me.

The issue is that you can in no way separate religion from ethnicity. Therefore any 'solution' whereby people leave Aceh implies the cleansing of the relevant ethnicities (Nias, Karo and Pakpak) from the area, and those ethnicities only. Thus 90%+ of Aceh's Pakpak would leave, for example, but less than 1% of suku Melayu.

Actually you could shift the borders a little and make a relatively religiously homogenous (except not really, because not all Aceh's ethnicities follow the same form of Islam, even) province with everywhere 98%+ Islamic, but that would make the religious fanatics crazy, because they believe that Aceh's arbitrary borders comprise a 'tanah suci' (I have not looked up the spurious justification for this belief) and could never be shrunk.

I think what you would have to do is regress to individual medieval-style sultanates, where people could also enjoy medieval shariah law. But not over an area so large as Aceh province.

 

[Dan]

Yeah and they would be up against the powerful Indonesian Navy that can't even seem to keep up with many fishing boats in their waters.

Again Dan, what constitutes the difference in flogging between teens and a mature man?

Why're you asking me and not the qadi?

If I had to guess, and this is probably a good guess, the man ended up marrying the now pregnant girlfriend whereas the families of the teenagers refused to have them wed. They will reduce or absolve the penalty if the guilty parties agree to marry, so an Acehnese shotgun wedding. From now on, it will be called a "cane wedding."

 

[Euc-]

Me, out of my mind? Let me think, who was the one suggesting sharia law wasn't so bad here? No, it wasn't me.

And where did I suggest that?

 

[jukung11]

Yes. Being an American, I hold a moral value of religious enforcement not being enforced on others and the respect of minority rights. I don't personally agree with how the Acehnese government has been implementing this, but Indonesia still has a freedom of movement.
If someone wants to have sex with her boyfriend, hop on a bus to another province. Even better, as an act of economic protest, move. If enough talent and capital leave the area, it sends a signal to people to change or suffer.

While I don't agree with it, the public caning does not seem to deter people. Singapore has public caning for even the most minor offenses too. People still flock to live there and it is one of the most prosperous countries in the region.

 

[jukung11]

The issue is that you can in no way separate religion from ethnicity.

I disagree with this premise. There are dozens of people from many different ethnicities that change religion and they are completely separate. Bule become Muslim, Cina become Kristen. I don't question their religious devotion or belief from their ethnicity.

 

[waarmstrong]

I was just looking for thread starters you had contributed, waarmstrong.

Bravo.

As a rule, I don't start many threads; I suppose that makes me kind of a reactionary.

 

[waarmstrong]

I like the title of this RT article more than the original AFP it parrots with the title of "Indonesian WOMAN Flogged for Close Proximity With a Man."

http://www.france24.com/en/20161128-indonesian-woman-flogged-close-proximity-with-man

Of course, the man was also flogged but the emphasis is on how women must be protected from their vile, patriarchal relatives even when the penalty was carried out equally for both sexes and the fact that more men than women were flogged this go 'round. The emphasis is taken away from the use of corporal punishment and made into sensationalist dreck about wife beating Muslims. The majority of articles on this issue have a similar slant, every time they're written with paranoia about women being beaten.

There are problems with the way Aceh approaches corporal punishment and policing morality. When it is reduced to white knighting that pisses me off.

Yes, your comment is more measured than my initial knee-jerk reaction to the headline. Seems Aceh's barbaric application of its ancient punishments is not so gender biased as I contemplated.

 

[john madden]

Dan - you've referred to "Qanun Aceh or any other kind of adat" and "adat" in posts above, apparently in relation to Qunan Jinayat (Aceh's definition of punishable behaviour). Are you making a distinction between Qunan Jinayat (as adat), and a more correct shari'a?

 

[sumyunggai]

I disagree with this premise. There are dozens of people from many different ethnicities that change religion and they are completely separate. Bule become Muslim, Cina become Kristen. I don't question their religious devotion or belief from their ethnicity.

I didn't say that they were exclusively linked, just that there is a very, very strong tie. If you tell the non-Christians to leave Aceh you will cause thousands of Batak to leave but just a handful of members of suku Aceh.

 

[Dan]

Dan - you've referred to "Qanun Aceh or any other kind of adat" and "adat" in posts above, apparently in relation to Qunan Jinayat (Aceh's definition of punishable behaviour). Are you making a distinction between Qunan Jinayat (as adat), and a more correct shari'a?

There's a distinction, I just mention their traditional law because that's what they actually enforce rather than a pure kind of shari'a. Some Acehnese customs contradict shari'a, especially traditions involving the rights of women and property rights. Like the nearby Minangkabau, they place significant emphasis on women and property is generally passed down to the daughters, not the sons. Acehnese custom dictates that my wife, not my brothers-in-law, will receive her parents home. They aren't matrilineal like the Minang, but they are matrilocal and that too defies shari'a.

This is also something that bothers me about the depiction of the Acehnese as misogynists. On the contrary, the Acehnese people celebrate powerful women and invest significant authority and wealth in the hands of women. They're certainly not chattel.

Local laws are problematic not so much because they reflect important decisions and arbitration for the locals, they're problematic because they also enforce taboos that don't necessarily fit with all the people. Shari'a penalties are an extreme manifestation of this.

The Law on Governing Aceh, however, specifies both shari'a and Qanun Aceh. There are numerous references to the enforcement of both.

http://www.ifrc.org/docs/idrl/968EN.pdf

 

[Dan]

I didn't say that they were exclusively linked, just that there is a very, very strong tie. If you tell the non-Christians to leave Aceh you will cause thousands of Batak to leave but just a handful of members of suku Aceh.

Yeah, it's true that most Christians in Aceh are Batak or Javanese transmigrants. In the case of Bataks, the Acehnese are usually fairly accepting of their practice as long as they don't try to spread Christianity. They expect that most, but not all, Bataks are Christian and they generally get along. Recent events in Aceh Singkil are the exception, not the norm. There are extreme tensions when there are Javanese, Christian or not, and I think that's actually the most pressing tension in the area.

Relief work brought Christian aid organizations, and in turn they have set their sights on converting the Acehnese. I have met some Acehnese crypto-Christians in my time and I was good friends curiously enough with a group of American missionaries working undercover as English teachers. They claim there are large numbers of such crypto-Christians in Aceh, though I haven't seen evidence of that.

I think the Acehnese people simply want the missionaries and transmigrants to leave. They have few problems with native Bataks.

 

[sumyunggai]

Yeah, it's true that most Christians in Aceh are Batak or Javanese transmigrants

I just looked up Kec. Gunung Meriah, Singkil. (Just because the data are fairly complete).

They classify ethnically as Dairi, Aceh, Minang, Jawa, and Lainnya.

It is not clear what they mean by 'Dairi', but it may mean both Pakpak (likely to be Christian) and Singkil (all Muslim), since they do not list a separate 'Singkil' ethnicity.

One major partly Christian desa area is Silulusan. This has 612 Protestants, 0 Catholics, 1847 Islam.

The ethnic statistics here are:
Dairi 612
Aceh 2
Jawa 1845

So it appears that the population is 1/4 Pakpak, of which 100% belong to the the Pakpak Protestant church, and 3/4 Javanese, of which 100% are Muslim.

However, in Blok 15, the stats go:

37 Catholic
270 Protestant
1243 Islam

But the population splits 233 Dairi to 1317 Java, so here the Javanese must be Christian in some number.

It doesn't appear to be entirely widespread however, Sidorejo has 3116 Javanese, 23 Minang/Aceh, 7 others, and exactly 7 Christians, quite probably the 'others', so 99.8% Islam.

I can't imagine Christian Javanese transmigrants would have much fun in existing areas without Christians, but perhaps they cluster (such as they are, and the numbers appear small) in the areas where they have some Christians.

Recent events in Aceh Singkil are the exception, not the norm.

The events in Aceh Singkil are the norm, since they have continued for more than 40 years. There have been church burnings since the 70s.

Relief work brought Christian aid organizations, and in turn they have set their sights on converting the Acehnese. I have met some Acehnese crypto-Christians in my time and I was good friends curiously enough with a group of American missionaries working undercover as English teachers. They claim there are large numbers of such crypto-Christians in Aceh, though I haven't seen evidence of that.

I think American missionaries like places with extreme Islam, it's more of a challenge. I met some in Terengganu, Malaysia. The Christians always come out with outlandish statistics on % of Christians in Indonesia.

I think the Acehnese people simply want the missionaries and transmigrants to leave. They have few problems with native Bataks.

Unfortunately I could not find statistics on % of Javanese in Aceh now compared with 1945. Often people like to say that Javanese are unwanted immigrants but they may have been there for generations.

 

[Dan]

That sounds about right. Keep in mind that I've been to Aceh Singkil like once, my impressions mostly come from places to its west.

I asked the istri about Dairi and she believes as you do that it is a combination of the two. She's not 100% certain either, but it's the answer that makes the most sense.

One thing I will pick with you about is the notion that Aceh is home to "extreme Islam." They are of the same madhab as the vast majority of Sunni Muslims in Indonesia, and just like their neighbors they engage in practices of sympathetic magic and pre-Islamic rituals. There is no question that the Acehnese are religiously conservative, that they spend a lot of time on religious education and enforcing religious norms (e.g. jilbab, circumcision). They aren't actually as fanatical (or at least not more so fanatical than their peers) as people claim, though.

The missionaries I met were all young people. Surprisingly, they were all Mennonites, all former Amish. From my conversations with them I think they felt some honest connection with the Acehnese on the basis of how undeveloped Aceh is and how religiously conservative the Acehnese are: they liked the simplicity of Acehnese life, they felt some comparisons with their own lives as Amish and they enjoyed how spiritual the Acehnese are.

 

[sumyunggai]

Aceh has extreme laws, the same as Terengganu. It's not so much that the religion is extreme, but that it's forbidden for Christians to proselytise.