Banda Aceh, August 25: Islamic police in Indonesia’s Aceh province are stumped about how to handle a case of two women who married at the urging of neighbours concerned that one of the roomates was a man and therefore a couple living in sin.
Aceh is the only province in the country that applies sharia, Islamic laws.
The women, Nuraini and Rohani, came under pressure as neighbours assumed Rohani was a man because of her appearance and male nickname, Ranto. But after marriage, suspicions grew that Rohani was actually a woman and local residents turned them in to the police on Sunday. “In the Prophet’s book, people committing such a thing should be beheaded or thrown into the sea, but we don’t have that in our regulations,” Muddasir, head of Aceh’s religious police, said.
Muddasir said his office had failed to find any article regulating same-sex marriages. The couple have been detained, with police and religious figures considering ways to separate them forever. This mirrors a wider conflict between those pushing for an Islamic state and a moderate, youthful population.
-Agencies