Shariah police arrested for gang rape in Aceh

The Shariah police in Aceh who enforce Islamic law in Aceh gang-raped a 20 year-old undergraduate but are exempted from Islamic law because the sentence is deemed too “harsh.” It took this incident for authorities to question the legitimacy of the Shariah police. The travesty revealed the hypocrisy of the system.

In September, Aceh’s provincial parliament passed a law saying adulterers can be sentenced to death by stoning. The measure, which still must be approved by the governor, has outraged human rights groups here who say it will unfairly target women.

The suspects allegedly stopped a couple by the road near a plantation. In an interview, the victim’s father said his daughter’s friend was beaten and the two were taken to a Sharia police station.

The men later returned while off-duty and raped the woman, investigators say.

“She was treated like an animal, they suffocated and raped her,” said the victim’s father. “She’s in deep trauma.”

Marzuki Abdullah, head of the 1,500-member Shariah police force, said the case was not linked to the patrols because the officers were off-duty at the time of the alleged crimes.

Article by M’sian lawyer probes status of transsexual

A Malaysian lawyer weighs in on the issue of transsexuals which has been a topic of discussion in Malaysia lately revolving around the status of Fatine Min Bahari. The writer usefully points out the difference between laws affecting a hermaphrodite and a transsexual:

If he is a hermaphrodite, no issue arises as Syariah laws recognise hermaphrodites as a natural phenomenon and even enable them to opt for sexual reassignment surgery (“SRS”) – if they elect to do so.

The reverse, however, is true if Fatine is a transsexual – that is to say someone who identifies with a physical sex different from his biological one. He would not be entitled to SRS and may even be subject to prosecution for “cross-dressing” especially when “cross dressing” is coupled with “immoral purposes”. That is how the law stands for Muslim transsexuals in Malaysia.

He points out that in Iran, transsexuals are allowed to go to SRS and are saved from persecution, though this does not mean that he is urging Malaysia to follow Iran’s example.

He ends by asking some important practical questions on how life would be for the pre-op and post-op transsexual such whether he or she could adopt a child, which restroom the transsexual should go to and what religious rites apply to him or her.

Child marriage

This article on underage marriage points out that changes to the implementation of Islamic law in Indonesia are generally regarded as controversial, which unfortunately means that child welfare and legal rights are not likely to be altered to reflect changing times. I wonder how international human rights could affect Islamic law in particular countries directly. Clearly, education is not sufficient to stem off underage marriage in many countries. Age is a convenient marker for “puberty”, but in reality it involves more than that. More in the article, but I just have to quote this here.

Islamic legal traditions determine children’s rights based on such concepts as baligh and mumayiz, age of consent, religious criteria for determining children’s competency, which is not solely determined on the basis of age. A child may be able to be categorized as a mature and capable individual earlier or later than others in the same age group.