Thaib was announcing his latest sharia policy on May 25 to ban women from dancing in public because of the view that the body movements of a dancing adult woman constituted eroticism, which was against Islamic values.
With the regent’s interpretation of female dance turning into policy, now only under-aged girls are legally allowed to dance in public when men are present. There are no restrictions on males to perform such art in the land of magnificent, internationally famed dances such as saman.
Lo and behold, the ban applies to any dance, be it indigenous or imported.
Is this bizarre? Not for advocates like Mustafa Ahmad, chairman of the North Aceh Ulama Consultative Assembly.
“The dances performed by adult women are haram. In Islam, women dancing in the presence of men is maksiat [sexually immoral].”
The ban is only the latest in a flurry of morality bylaws that keep coming, despite criticism that they violate human rights, are discriminatory against women, are incompatible with the Indonesian Constitution and are a threat to local culture.
In January, Lhokseumawe Mayor Suaidi Yahya set the world on fire when he banned the city’s women from straddling motorcycles on the pretext that women parting legs with their chests pressed onto the backs of male riders was haram.
Islamic law enforcement in Aceh, since it was endorsed by the central government in 2001, has been taking increasingly bizarre turns and raising eyebrows.
The first offender was publicly caned in 2005, two years after the sharia court had been established. It was a chilling reminder that the brutal form of public punishment as rigorously enforced in the Middle East was eventually at the doorstep.
People wondered if more primitive forms of punishment, such as public lashings, mutilation and stoning to death were on the way and if they would apply to corrupt politicians. As of today, we have yet to see on any officials or clerics suffer any such punishments in the town square for sharia offenses.
The moral police only aim their gun at common people — especially women — committing minor offenses.
The 7,000 strong moral police force has rounded up women who do not wear Islamic garb, women wearing tight pants or women found in the street alone at night, unmarried couples, or boys and girls found in quiet places — no matter what they are doing.
In January, a 16-year-old girl committed suicide out of shame after the moral police accused her of being a prostitute while she was hanging around with her friends in a park one night. The tragedy sparked an international outcry and put sharia enforcement under intense scrutiny.
Then there are reports of moral police officers raping women when they are rounded up and put in custody for moral “re-education”.
The ban on women dancing in public could be a death knell for local culture that fanatic leaders intend to replace with anything Arabic. For centuries, Aceh has been well-known as a cradle of civilization in western Indonesia where Islam was introduced by Indian and Arabic merchants.
Aceh boasts religious folk dances performed on international stages along with ones from other regions. The saman, seudati and ranub lampuan are probably the best-known Acehnese dances. Female dancers are all properly dressed. There is no gyrating and hip-grinding actions going on, as in some other, Javanese, genres.
History has it that the very folk dances that Lhokseumawe leaders mean to ban from being performed by women as part of the effort to purify Islam do in fact carry religious symbolism created and used by Islamic propagators to introduce the faith in Aceh, which is proud to call itself “the Veranda of Mecca” (instead of “the Veranda of Indonesia”).
Sharia was allowed in Aceh by the central government in Jakarta in 2001 as part of a special autonomy package, supposedly to win the hearts and minds of the people there, who were beset by a protracted secessionist rebellion.
The decision to allow Aceh sharia law was mind boggling, demanded neither by the rebels nor those loyal to Indonesia. Only some religious leaders aspired to make Aceh an independent Islamic state.
Apparently, not everybody is happy with the enforcement of sharia, which is widely seen as discriminatory to women and abusive to fundamental human rights. The Civil Network for Sharia has warned of a creeping “Talibanism”.
“The banning of women from straddling motorcycles smacks of Talibanism in Pakistan or the official policy of the Saudi Arabian government, which does not allow women to drive. None is compatible with the traditions of Aceh,” said network spokesman Affan Ramli in an interview with tempo.co.
Now that sharia is here to stay in Aceh, its complex ramifications are beginning to bite Indonesia in the form of two incompatible governance systems: Sharia for Aceh and secularism (the 1945 Constitution and Pancasila) for the rest of the country.
Other regions in West Java, where Islamic-based Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) politicians dominate the provincial administration, Banten, along with South Sulawesi and West Sumatra, want to copy Aceh.
Increasingly adopting a foreign culture, Aceh looks more and more “separated” culturally from the rest of Indonesia. And once an ideology takes hold, it is impossible to retract it. [THE JAKARTA POST]
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