Clerics want Criminal Code to incorporate Sharia

Yuli Tri Suwarni and Blontank Poer, The Jakarta Post, Bandung

Around 200 hard-line clerics urged the government to include Islamic sharia law in the revised Criminal Code (KUHP) as they cut short their two-day meeting here, which was originally scheduled to have ended on Wednesday.

They specifically asked Minister of Justice and Human Rights Yusril Ihza Mahendra to heed their demand as part of the effort to gradually introduce sharia in the predominantly Muslim country.

"We hope Minister Yusril will be ready to struggle for the inclusion of Islamic sharia in the draft revision of the Criminal Code. We know Pak Yusril is an Islamic party leader," Ustadz (teacher) Mudzakir, who presided over the dialog, said in the West Java capital of Bandung on Wednesday.

He was speaking at a news conference accompanied by a team of 14 clerics, including director of the Al-Mukmin Islamic boarding school in Ngruki, Ustadz Wahyuddin, Habib Abdurrahman from East Java and Sanusi Uwes from Bandung.

After the media conference, they directly left for Jakarta to meet with Yusril to convey the demands that had been agreed upon by the National Dialog Meeting.

The Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, headed by Yusril, the chairman of the Islamic-oriented Crescent Star Party (PBB), which staunchly supports the introduction of sharia law in Indonesia, has just completed drafting a revised version of the Criminal Code.

The criminal code amendment bill produced by his office has drawn fire from legal experts and human rights activists as it outlaws casual sex, oral sex, cohabitation, homosexual sex and witchcraft.

The critics say the state should not intervene excessively in the private affairs of its citizens.

Abdul Gani Abdullah, the director general of legislation and regulation at Yusril's ministry, has said the inclusion of the new articles in the Code was to cope with the complexity of Indonesian society.

However, the clerics who attended the Bandung meeting did not specify what elements of Islamic law should be included in the revised Code.

The participants, including habaib (ethnic Arabs who claim to be able to trace their ancestry back to the Prophet Muhammad), suddenly cut short the meeting on Tuesday evening.

Earlier on Tuesday morning, the committee met the Siliwangi military commander, who oversees the military in West Java, before the clerics began their dialog.

"There was no intervention (by the military) in the meeting of a kind that would prompt them (the clerics) to cut it short," spokesman for the Siliwangi military command, Lt. Col. Bambang Siswoyo, told The Jakarta Post last night.

Organizing committee secretary Zakky Robby Cahyadi denied the meeting was cut short because of pressure from the military or police.

"It's just a technical problem. The committee is unable to provide facilities for the participants to stay overnight. We did meet with Siliwangi Military Commander Maj. Gen Iwan R. Sulandjana to ask him to maintain security in West Java."

During the national dialog, the Muslim hard-liners vowed to press ahead with their struggle for the implementation of sharia in order to resolve the country's complicated problems.

They also agreed to urge the National Police to stop arresting "Muslim activists" in the fight against terrorism.

Mudzakir claimed that the arrests of the terror suspects had deeply hurt Muslims at large.

Police say the arrests were not intended to target Muslims, but rather suspected members of terror groups, including Jamaah Islamiyah.

The clerics also expressed their opposition to Antiterrorism Law No. 15/2003 and the bill on the National Intelligence Agency (BIN).

They also delivered these latter two demands to Yusril, one of the presidential hopefuls in the 2004 elections.

Zakky said that BIN should not only be accountable to the President as the supreme commander of the National Military (TNI), but also the people who have the right to know the security condition in their country.

The clerics suggested that the BIN open up its secret archives to the public every 10 years so that the people would know what the organization had been doing.

With regard to the antiterrorism law, Zakky said it was enacted in order to satisfy the interests of Western countries rather than Muslim nations.