Letter: Sharia and modern laws
| Wed, 05/26/2010 9:32 AM
A nice piece of academic thinking (“A ‘difficult marriage’: Sharia and
civil law in Indonesia”, May 21), but it does not give any answers or
even has the intention to provide a solution to the problem.
The writer tends to forge a basic given fact: sharia law is a static,
dogmatic set of rules that has not been evolved during the changes in
time and social developments.
What was valid 2000 years ago is, from the viewpoint of sharia law, still valid today.
Modern laws in most countries are a dynamic set of rules that are
developing according to the changes in society and its requirements to
protect society as a whole.
An example is the Indonesian marriage law and the sharia law on marriages.
According to sharia law, a man is able to marry a 9-year-old girl,
while the state law has determined that the minimum age for a girl to
get married is 16.
For the sake of convenience, stoning to death as the penalty in sharia
law for adultery is not recognized in Indonesia (Aceh being the
exception); theft (corruption) is penalized in sharia law with the
cutting off of hands.
In that respect, I can imagine that this could never be implemented in
Indonesia, as if it was, we would see 40 percent of the civil servants
and politicians with no hands at all.
Jan R. Scheele
Bogor, West Java
