From January 2010, if you are a Muslim woman and you wear trousers (pants), you may want to be extra careful if you happen to be in West Aceh, Indonesia. District head Ramli Mansur has signed a bylaw that prohibits Muslim women in West Aceh from wearing certain kind of trousers. He said recently: “We have issued the regulation to further enforce Islamic Sharia granted by the central government”. This new bylaw is in addition to those passed earlier which prescribed death by stoning on adultery and caning for premarital sex.
But exactly what kind of trousers are banned? Ramli Mansur said: “What’s prohibited is wearing tight-fitting pants or jeans.” So does it mean that if you do not wear tight, curve-revealing trousers you are fine? Ramli Mansur added this caveat: “If they have to wear pants, they have to cover their ankles and wear a loose skirt over it.”
What will happen if a Muslim woman is caught violating this law? Ramli Mansur explained: “Their pants will be cut up on the spot and replaced with a skirt provided free of charge by the government of West Aceh.” He added that the government of West Aceh has already ordered 7,000 skirts for this purpose.
But some have already decided to implement that law on their own. Ramli Mansur said: “There was once an incident in which a woman’s tight pants were cut into pieces in front of public onlookers”. Then referring to the need to wear the Muslim headscarf, he added: “We also had an incident where a woman’s head had to be completely shaved till she was bald because she was not wearing her jilbab.”
In the runup to the January 1, 2010 implementation date, Ramli Mansur has ordered civil servants to refuse to serve Muslims wearing what he called “un-Islamic” clothing. And he has this warning to civil servants to toe the line: “Government staff who disobey the regulations themselves will be dismissed from their posts.”
How did the people of Aceh react? Evi Zain, spokesman for a group of NGOs in Aceh said: “I believe it will serve as a hindrance for women wanting to participate in activities to develop Aceh. I strongly protest against this weird regulation.”
Said Aqil Siradj, leader of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the largest Islamic organization in Indonesia said: “Whether they choose to wear jeans or a traditional outfit, it is their personal right. The West Aceh regional government should not interfere in the choices of its people.”
Indraswari, Indonesian visiting senior lecturer for the gender studies program, School of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, voiced her opinion in the Jakarta Post: “Again and again women become the victims of gender-biased laws which treat women as no more than an object to be controlled at all times and in many aspects of their life. The pretext to justify such laws is always the same: to protect women’s safety and dignity. On the contrary, the laws deny women’s rights and have nothing to do with their safety and dignity. Choosing what to wear, a basic right which, for many of us, is taken for granted, is no longer the case for women in West Aceh. Today it is about trousers, tomorrow it could be about women’s shirts, the color of their clothes, their makeup, the way they walk, and the list may get longer”.
Ramli Mansur said: “If people disagree, don’t be mad at me — be angry at God, because what I impose is religious law.” To this Indraswari said: “I believe this is not about religion. This is about how a group of people in power interpret religion. These people have their own ‘religious’ interpretations on what is considered indecent and immoral, force others to follow their interpretations and close the door on different opinions”.
Syarifah Rahmatillah, executive director of the Women’s Partnership forum (MISPI) in Aceh, said: “In the qanun on Sharia, there is mention of Muslims having to dress according to Islamic law, but there is no detail as to what constitutes Islamic clothing — so we cannot just make up the rules.”
The Indonesia government itself is cautious. Home Affairs Minister Gamawan Fauzi called on other provinces not to imitate the regulation. He said that controversy caused as a result of the ban in West Aceh required further discussion at a regional level.
So is anybody actually supportive of this bylaw? Sinta Nelysa, chief of West Aceh’s branch of the Indonesian Muslim Students Action Association (KAMMI), said: “A leader means someone who represents God, to conduct all the rules and regulations of God. People, therefore, must follow and obey the leader.”
Think about it. Aceh’s new bylaw is similar to Article 152 of the Sudan Criminal Code, under which former UN journalist Lubna Hussein was charged with indecent dressing when she was arrested at a restuarant for wearing trousers. At the recent trial of 2 of her friends on similar charge, Lubna Hussein explained: “We were 13 women, arrested at the same place. Ten were sentenced at the police station and whipped on the spot. But I was sentenced by the north Khartoum court and I was not sentenced to lashings. Today the east Khartoum court condemned the two women to lashings. In my case, there were several diplomats at the hearing, but today there were none.” Will a similar case arise in Aceh? Will we one day see an Acehnese Lubna Hussein?
Earlier posts
Aceh – Revisiting Sharia Law On Stoning
Aceh & Sharia Law
Sharia Law In Aceh – Caning & Death
Sharia Law And Miss Indonesia 2009
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