 Marluddin Jalil, a Sharia judge who has ordered the punishment of women for not wearing headscarves, was uncompromising: âThe tsunami was because of the sins of the people of Aceh.â
| This is Muslim thought at its finest: sharp, incisive, hysterical... |
Thundering into a microphone at a gathering of wives, he made clear where he felt the fault lay: âThe Holy Koran says that if women are good, then a country is good.â
| Right. And if women are cute, then a country is cute. And if women are curvaceous, then a country is curvaceous. And if women are drunk, then a country is drunk. And if women are post-menopausal, then a country is post-meopausal. You just can't argue with logic like that. |
A year after the disaster which many see as a divine punishment, emboldened Islamic hardliners are doing their best to eradicate sin â and women are their prime targets.
| It hasn't occurred to them, of course, that they got hit with the tsunami because they're Muslims. If they'd been Unitarians or Lutherans they'd have been spared. |
With reconstruction slow, irrational fears of a second tsunami high, and nearly 500,000 still homeless along 500 miles of coastline, the stern message falls on fertile ground.
| "And if women are simpletons, then the nation is a simpleton!" |
A Sharia police force modelled on Saudi moral enforcers enthusiastically seeks out female wrong doers for public humiliation.
| "Oh, Rodney! Humiliate me!" |
The Wilayatul Hisbah, which loosely translates as âControl Teamâ, has arrested women, lopped off their hair, and paraded them in tears through the streets while broadcasting their sins over a megaphone. More than 100 gamblers and drinkers â men and women â have been caned in public and some clerics are calling for thievesâ hands to be amputated.
| Any women calling for clerics' lips to be amputated? It will come, someday. That'll be when we're sure we're winning the war. |
The Islamic law introduced without popular enthusiasm in 2002 has been implemented rigorously since the tsunami, especially in towns such as Lhokseumawe, where Fatimah Syam, of Indonesian Women for Legal Justice, knows of 20 women who have fallen foul of it. She said: âThey seek out women without headscarves or unmarried girls meeting boys in private and parade them through the streets in an open car. Iâve seen the police laughing and boasting, and the girls in tears. The Sharia police say the tsunami happened because women ignored religion. We never heard of this parading before the tsunami.â
I like to think — and I certainly hope I'm right — that throughout the Wonderful World of Islam there are millions of men and women, presently cowering in fear of the holy men, but also inwardly writhing with shame at having to be subjected to this sort of degradation. Intellectually, they're capable of understanding that the concepts of Honor and Dignity™ have been stood on their heads and turned inside out. They lack only the knowledge of their own numbers to give them the courage to act.
One day the Islamic bubble with burst. The Arab and Muslim world will resound to the sound of a massive collective forehead whack as all eyes turn from Mecca and millions of voices cry out in unison: "What were we thinking?" Hands will reach for torches, for pitchforks. Tar will bubble merrily and chickens and ducks will squawk as they give up their feathers for a higher purpose. The sun will set on Salafism, and it will rise to find the remaining trees in the Muslim world decorated by holy men, dangling by the neck from their own turbans. |
The poor, powerless and female have borne the brunt of the moral enforcersâ righteousness.
| As they always do. Bullies and tyrants prey on the weak, not on the strong... |
Mrs Syam claimed the wife of an official caught without a headscarf on a scooter was let off last month and a prostitute who was paraded through the town won the sympathy of passers-by because of the hypocrisy of her persecutors: the womanâs client was allowed quietly to disappear.
| ... to return to his mosque, perform his ablutions, and lead the Faithful™ in prayer, no doubt... |
The religious police have not always had it their own way. In one incident on the island of Sabang, attempts to humiliate a bareheaded girl backfired when angry villagers turned on them. By the time the civil police arrived to rescue the enforcers they were surrounded by an angry mob flicking lighted cigarettes at them.
| So, my vision isn't groundless. I like that... |
But such setbacks and public unease have not dampened the zeal of Dr Jalil, a small, neat man with a trimmed moustache whose particular concerns are headscarves, gambling, alcohol, and girls meeting boys. âSin starts small and gets bigger,â he said. His next target is a displaced personsâ camp outside Lhokseumawe where he has heard of young men and women freely mixing. âAnother tsunami is possible,â he said. âThe Holy Koran says that if humans donât listen to Allah they will be punished.â
| And Allen only speaks to humans through the voices of his holy men. Human can't think for themselves, can't control their own actions, must be regulated, watched and controlled at every turn. Otherwise the oceans will rise, the sun will cease to shine, crops will fail, and cattle will cease to give milk. The gods... errr... sorry: Allah must periodically be propitiated by human blood, but on day-to-day occasions he will settle for the sacrifice of dignity, a dish he finds tasty... |
He was not sure whether there was more or less sin since the disaster although he believes that the Acehnese are more God-fearing now. In the tent camps and temporary wooden barracks where desperate survivors endure grim conditions, Dr Jalilâs views are often well received. There are 67,000 survivors still living in tents and a further 75,000 are in the slum barracks, which are taking on a semipermanent air. Only half of those who lost their jobs in the disaster are back at work and drug abuse among the young is growing.
| As long as they're not meeting chicks while they're shooting up, that's okay... |
Although Aceh province is now a giant building site, the sheer scale of destruction has slowed work. A third of government servants died and 1,000 miles of roads were wiped out, making the logistics of recovery extremely difficult. The Government says it has built 12,000 of the 80,000 permanent homes it aims for and that housing will be its top priority next year. But some aid workers think there could still be families under canvas in three yearsâ time. |
