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June 15, 2006
Indonesia: Government Obfuscates On Demands To Repeal Islamist Bylaws
The Jakarta Post, with the same article appearing in Asia News.net states that the Indonesian government is "waffling" in its responses to calls to scrap sharia bylaws.
We have reported on the recent developments which have seen at least 22 regencies and municipalities of Indonesia have enforced by-laws based upon Sharia law, despite Indonesia's constitution declaring the nation to be a pluralist state, purportedly encouraging the freedoms of non-Muslims to follow their own faiths. AT least four others are planning to introduce such laws.
Yesterday (June 14), the home minister, Muhammad Ma'ruf said that before any decision would be made by the government, he would allow the governors of Indonesia's 33 provinces to decide if the by-laws contravened the constitution.
Ma'ruf, a retired army lieutenant, said after a hearing in the House of Representatives Commission II: "We have decided governors should be given a greater role in identifying unwieldy bylaws and they should bring them to us for further discussion." He vowed that any bylaw which contravened the Pancasila ideology, upon which the constitution is based, would be revoked. The Pancasila is a traditional "consultation" process, used to settle differences.
Under a 2004 statute, the Regional Government Law, the Home Ministry is empowered to scrap local regulations which are deemed to violate provincial or state laws. It also gives the ministry powers to stop "problematic" laws being enacted locally.
On Tuesday (June 13) 56 House legislators had presented a petition to the President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, asking him to remove sharia-based legislation.
Muhammad Syafii Ma'arif, a Muslim scholar who was formerly the chairman of Muhammadiyah, the largest Muslim group in Indonesia (with 40 million members), said: "The implementation of such regulations will only create divisions in society. Local governments will have problems putting them into action. And past experiences have shown us that the bureaucracy has no discipline enforcing them."
Yesterday, Widodo Adisucipto, Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs, promised to review all of the problematic laws. He said: "Since the start of the reform era, the quality of most bylaws has got worse." He was speaking at a meeting of the Consultative Group on Indonesia. Widodo said that the sharia laws were preventing investment in the country.
The Islamist leader Abu Bakar Bashir, who was recently released from jail for conspiracy to authorise the bombings on Bali, which killed 202 people in 2002, has said that he is fully in favour of Islamist laws in Indonesia.
According to Antara News, he said upon his release from prison: "Let us strengthen Islamic brotherhood and strengthen our unity for one aim - that is Islamic sharia."
He said that Indonesia and other nations which have "been in darkness" could only be saved by Islamist precepts.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at June 15, 2006 11:18 PM
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