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View all search resultsSharia-certified: Tangerang hospital wages war against promiscuity in its wards
The hospital has taken down the “poorly worded” sign, but has confirmed that it was upholding sharia values to improve its services, saying that the policy was based on the city’s “vision and mission” to create a society with akhlaqul karimah (good morals)
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A Twitter user with the handle @AfifFuadS posted a picture of a sign in the hospital that read, “To prevent khalwath (affectionate contact by unmarried couples) and ikhitilath (intimacy or mixing), a person who attends to a female patient must be a woman, and a person who attends to a male patient must be a man.” (Twitter.com/AfifFuadS)
W
hen Tangerang resident Sambas, 38, took his mother, who has diabetes, to the city’s public hospital a week ago, he was told that his mother would be treated by female nurses only and that an adzan (call to prayer) would be broadcast in the patient room.
Sambas, a Muslim, did not find the policy troubling. “I don’t mind as long as my mother gets good care,” he told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
However, other visitors at RSUD Tangerang were apprehensive, not because they thought that patients receiving care from a nurse of the same gender was a bad idea, but because the policy was based on the idea that the hospital should conform to Islamic law or sharia.
A Twitter user with the handle @AfifFuadS posted a picture of a sign in the hospital that read, “To prevent khalwath (affectionate contact by unmarried couples) and ikhitilath (intimacy or mixing), a person who attends to a female patient must be a woman, and a person who attends to a male patient must be a man.”
Khalwath and ikhtilath are crimes in Aceh, the only province in the country to impose sharia.
The Twitter post immediately stirred controversy, with critics mostly pointing to the fact the hospital is publicly managed and not privately owned, which would allow the owner to incorporate sharia as a marketing gimmick.
Sharia-certified hospital
