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163 19 After theTsunami As mentioned, by the end of 2004, no criminal (jinaya) case had been brought to the shari‘a court (Mahkamah Syar‘iyyah). All related cases, gambling in particular, were dealt with in the state court. However, the tsunami severely damaged most coastal areas of Aceh on 26 December 2004 and unexpectedly created a momentum for further pushing the implementation of shari‘a in the region. In fact, in the post-tsunami period, the shari‘a court of the Bireuen District had sentenced more than twenty people for gambling offenses, and fifteen of them were publicly caned in the mosque yard in Bireuen on 24 June 2005.1 Whether or not the tsunami was the decisive factor in speeding up the application of shari‘a in Aceh depends much on the way the people conceived the catastrophe itself. Many Acehnese saw it as a spiritual test or even a punishment from God and saw it as creating an opportunity for accelerating the application of shari‘a in Aceh. For them, the tsunami was not merely a coincidence, but the will of God. There is a belief that through the tsunami, God told the Acehnese to stop committing sinful deeds, to reconcile with each other, and to return to religion as a way of salvation. In short, the tsunami brought a message that the Acehnese people should comply with shari‘a rules and the provincial governments should enforce them in earnest. Some other Acehnese, however, perceived the tsunami merely as a natural process (sunnatullah), a geological shift under the earth.2 For them, the tsunami has nothing to do with the implementation of shari‘a. They argued that even if shari‘a were fully implemented in Aceh, there is no guarantee that another tsunami would not hit Aceh in the future. Since Aceh unfortunately is located where earthquakes often occur, the tsunami is one occurrence and the application of shari‘a is another matter. This sort of argument was in line with the views of Al Yasa’ Abubakar , the head of the Office of Shari‘a in Aceh (DSI). He claims, in fact, that the tsunami was not an escalating factor for the implementation of shari‘a in Aceh. The caning punishment held in Bireuen District on 24 June 2005 was a result of the ongoing process of the implementation of special autonomy granted to Aceh. Al Yasa’ has described the process chronologically. 164 Chapter 19 The year 2001 watched the formal establishment of Mahkamah Syar‘iyyah (shari‘a court) through Law 18/2001 on the Special Autonomy for Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam ; the year 2002 witnessed the enactment of the Qanun of the Mahkamah Syar‘iyyah by the provincial parliament; the year 2003 saw the formal inauguration of the Mahkamah Syar‘iyyah, which was transformed from the existing religious court by the presidential decree; the year 2004 saw the formal transfer of some criminal jurisdiction (jinaya) from the state court to the Mahkamah Syar‘iyyah by the decree of chairman of the Supreme Court; and the year 2005 is seeing the operation of the Mahkamah Syar‘iyyah and the execution of its verdicts.3 This latter argument sounds much more logical than the interpretation that the tsunami was God’s will, as described above. However, in my view, to deny any significance to the tsunami would be too hasty. The post-tsunami situation had created a context for the proponents of shari‘a to emotionally pressure the provincial government and the central government to more earnestly apply shari‘a in Aceh. In fact, the caning in Bireuen could never have happened without support from the acting governor of Aceh, Azwar Abubakar,4 and the attorney general’s consent. The approval of the attorney general, Abdul Rahman Saleh, was needed since both the provincial and the district public prosecutor had doubts. For this reason, some proponents of the formal implementation of shari‘a sought to meet the attorney general in Jakarta to request his support for the caning punishment in Aceh. As described by Muslim Ibrahim, some leading provincial figures on their return trip to Aceh from Semarang, where a conference on the tsunami devastation was held, met the attorney general in an unscheduled meeting on 3 June 2005 at his office in Jakarta.5 Initially the attorney general had no time to meet, as he was very busy that week. It was only with the help of the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) officials...

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