M. Rizal Maslan, Jakarta – Although Aceh has only just begun to implement public floggings the chairperson of the Nahdhatul Ulama’s (NU) Executive Board (PBNU), Hasyim Muzadi, believes that the punishment will actually strengthen the Free Aceh Movement’s (GAM) position. He believes that the GAM leadership will use the implementation of the law as a new weapon in their overseas campaign.

“That it has happened like this in Aceh, it certainly a result of a decision by the government itself. But there’s something that is interesting, GAM members overseas will certainly use it as the maneuver [to gain international support]”, said Muzadi in at the PBNU’s offices in Jakarta on Jalan Kramat Raya on Saturday June 25.

Muzadi said GAM’s leadership will promote a secular view that what is happening in Aceh is not what the people want but the wishes of the Indonesian government. The effect within the international community will to view Indonesia as an exclusive country. “So there will be a reversal of terminology about what is happening in Aceh in the campaign by GAM members in Helsinki”, said Muzadi.

Muzadi admitted the question of public floggings is a complicated one. According to Muzadi people committing sexual acts outside marriage, drinking alcohol or even gambling must be punished. But the punishment should not be in the form of public floggings.

From view point of Syaria law (Islamic law) he continued, actually it is more about how the government applies the two different laws in one unitary state.

“According NU, since the start of the application of Syaria law it has been inclusive not exclusive in nature, so the package of religious values is a national one”, said Muzadi.

So within the legal system, NU follows the national consensus while on the Islamic question, NU executes it within ‘civil society’, not in the ‘nation state’.

Guidance

NU will not be asking the government to review the implementation of public floggings but will only ask the government to provide guidance on how the law will be applied.

“But I say, law within Islam has substance and form. The form is more of an alternative. If [we are talking] about the substance it is indeed absolute that people who grumble must be punish, but what will the model or form of the punishment be, that is an alternative”, said Muzadi.

Muzadi also confessed that in the ritual obligations of law and Islamic history, there were indeed public floggings, but it forms is not absolute. “Do public flogging use the rattan or something else, because a question is one of format,” he said. (umi)

[Translated by Risna]