Tsunami was God's revenge for your wicked ways, women told

[Thom Little]

Marluddin Jalil, a Sharia judge who has ordered the punishment of women for not wearing headscarves, was uncompromising: “The tsunami was because of the sins of the people of Aceh.”

Thundering into a microphone at a gathering of wives, he made clear where he felt the fault lay: “The Holy Koran says that if women are good, then a country is good.”

A year after the disaster which many see as a divine punishment, emboldened Islamic hardliners are doing their best to eradicate sin — and women are their prime targets.

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The Islamic law introduced without popular enthusiasm in 2002 has been implemented rigorously since the tsunami, especially in towns such as Lhokseumawe, where Fatimah Syam, of Indonesian Women for Legal Justice, knows of 20 women who have fallen foul of it.

She said: “They seek out women without headscarves or unmarried girls meeting boys in private and parade them through the streets in an open car. I’ve seen the police laughing and boasting, and the girls in tears. The Sharia police say the tsunami happened because women ignored religion. We never heard of this parading before the tsunami.”


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25689-1952823,00.html