Free Republic

The pandemic happened. It was real. But the real destructive force was not the Coronavirus. The evil was the insanity of lockdowns, mandates and burdening future generations with massive government debts. Compare this modern madness with the compassion and sense of fiscal restraint implicit in the attitudes of Javanese noblewoman, R A Kartini, when talking about what her father, a Regent, could do for the victims of floods in her era, the early 1900's: "....... the rulers do all that is possible to mitigate the distress. Last year a fishing village lay for a whole week under water; day and...

A young couple in Indonesia’s Aceh province were whipped on Thursday after they were caught cuddling in public – a crime under the conservative region’s Islamic law. Hundreds of spectators watched as an 18-year-old university student and her boyfriend, also 18, were whipped 17 times each outside a mosque in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital. Flogging is used as punishment for a range of offences in the region at the tip of Sumatra island, including gambling, drinking alcohol, and having gay sex or relations outside of marriage. A 35-year-old man was also flogged with a rattan cane for being intimate...

A strict Islamic district in Indonesia has banned men and women from having dinner together unless they are married or related to make women be 'more obedient' and 'well behaved'. The deeply Islamic Aceh province, which operates under Sharia Law, announced today it would stop unmarried couples eating together in public, an official said. Aceh is the only region in the world's most heavily populated Muslim majority country that imposes Islamic law and has come under fire in the past for putting moral restrictions on women. It also attracted global condemnation for publicly whipping people found guilty of a range...

Lawmakers in Indonesia's conservative Aceh province have passed a law that makes gay sex punishable by caning and subjects non-Muslims to it too. The law passed Saturday says anal sex between men is punishable by up to 100 lashes. Women found guilty of "rubbing" their body parts against each other for sexual pleasure are also liable for caning.

We are constantly told my Sharia advocates in the U.S. — those who fight to kill anti-Sharia laws in various states — that Sharia applies only to Muslims, and only to their personal religious observance, such that restricting it would be to interfere with their First Amendment rights.

Fringes of the jihadist movement already active in 16 provinces in the Indonesian archipelago. Thousands of people have sworn allegiance to the fundamentalist leader Abu Bakar Al-Baghdadi. Most are veterans of the jihad with extensive experience in Afghanistan or, on the domestic front of the Moluccas. Jakarta: some areas are "fertile ground" for enrollment. Jakarta (AsiaNews) - It has yet to make any startling conquests in the Asian nation, but the Indonesian section of the Islamic State (formerly ISIS, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) has already started mass recruitment - as recently reported- in over 16 provinces of...

Without much fanfare, the Aceh provincial administration and legislative council have approved the Qanun Jinayat (behavior-governing bylaw) that obliges every Muslim and non-Muslim in Aceh to follow sharia, the Islamic legal code. “The qanun does indeed oblige everyone in Aceh to follow sharia without exception,” councilor Abdulah Saleh, who was involved in the deliberation of the qanun in the council, confirmed on Thursday. The Qanun Jinayat was approved by the legislative council on Dec. 13 and signed by Governor Zaini Abdullah. It was a revision of the controversial 2009 Qanun Jinayat that introduced the punishment of stoning to death. Following...

A cave on the northwestern coast of Sumatra holds a remarkable record of big tsunamis in the Indian Ocean. The limestone opening, close to Banda Aceh, retains the sandy deposits washed ashore by huge, earthquake-induced waves over thousands of years. Scientists are using the site to help determine the frequency of catastrophes like the event of 26 December 2004.

Christians in India's semi-autonomous province of Aceh faced a tense Sunday, July 1, after local authorities ordered the demolition of 20 churches. Razali Abdul Rahman, the acting regent of Aceh Singkil Regency in Aceh, signed the letter already on April 30, but details recently emerged. He ordered the closure of 17 Protestant churches, two Catholic churches and one place of worship belonging to followers of a local nondenominational faith... Rights activists said the announcement came after 16 smaller Christian places of worship were recently closed in the same district. Rahman ordered members of the targeted congregations "to tear down" the...

Over a hundred members of the recently banned Millata Abraham Muslim sect on Friday underwent a mass conversion to mainstream faith at the Baiturrahman Raya Mosque in Banda Aceh. The sect’s leader, Zainuddin, said the idea to convert came to him in a dream on April 19 that he had while locked away in a jail cell. He is facing a five-year sentence for blasphemy stemming from his practice of the banned religion. The mass conversion comes in the wake of pronounced relgious hostility in the province. On April 6, Irwandi issued a gubernatorial decree banning the Millata Abraham, along...

SNIPPET: "The police arrested two terrorist suspects at the house: Fahri Tanjung, also known as Hilmi, and Hamzah. The police also found chemicals they believed were to be used to make explosives and an activated hand-made high-explosive bomb inside the house. West Java Police chief Insp. Gen. Sutarman said the police detonated the high-explosive bomb on location after failing to defuse it. Books and VCDs on jihad, as well as an air rifle were seized as evidence. One of the VCDs was titled Afghanistan jihad: The journey of the oppressed. Sutarman said the suspects had been involved in acts of...

Indonesian police have reportedly captured the nation's most wanted terrorist suspect in a raid in central java. Earlier reports that Abdullah Sunata was killed in the raid have proved unfounded. Abdullah Sunata is suspected of being a key member of the cell discovered in Aceh earlier this year. He was a veteran of religious conflict in Ambon and Sulawesi and a senior member of the network headed by the late Noordin Mohammad Top. He was previously jailed over his role in the bombing of the Australian Embassy in 2004. And he was arrested along with another man, who'd also been...

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama, who is due to visit Indonesia in June, was one of several suspected targets of Indonesian militants captured in police raids recently, an expert on militants said on Friday.

SNIPPET: "This past Sunday, six terrorists were captured in Medan, North Sumatra province, by Indonesia's counter-terrorist unit, Special Detachment 88. All were thought to be linked to a paramilitary camp in Aceh that was raided in February and two of them, Pandu Wicaksono Widyan Putro and Bayu Sena, were said to be tied to the twin hotel bombings in Jakarta last July." SNIPPET: "Special Detachment 88 will likely continue its raids in and around Aceh to round up those camp members that have thus far evaded the police dragnet."

Three Indonesian men convicted of playing dominoes for money escaped before a public caning in devoutly Muslim Aceh province. Local Islamic police chief Muhammad Rusli said they bolted during an unguarded bathroom visit minutes before the punishment for violating anti-gambling laws. The fugitives were caught playing dominoes for 1,000 rupiah (10 US cents) per game. They were to receive six strokes of the cane each outside a mosque.

Tsunami siren stirs anger in Aceh An earlier alert had sent thousands fleeing in panic Residents near the capital of Indonesia's Aceh province have disabled a tsunami warning system. The residents cut the power to the siren on a tsunami warning tower by throwing rocks at it. They were angered by a false alarm that sent thousands of people in the capital and a nearby area rushing from their homes to higher ground on Monday. Many people in Aceh are still traumatised by the 2004 tsunami in which thousands were killed. A false alarm on Monday morning in the Kaju...

An hour before dusk and the newest law enforcers in the Indonesian province of Aceh - its Sharia police - are getting ready for the evening patrol. They line up on the back of the pick-up truck, women on one side, men on the other, wearing uniform baseball caps and clutching walkie-talkies. Aceh is the only Indonesian province allowed to apply Sharia, or Islamic, law. But with the province preparing for its first election since last year's peace deal ended years of separatist violence, the Sharia police's role has become increasingly controversial. As the truck moves through the early evening...

ACROSS Indonesia's most religious of provinces, the sight of brown uniformed policemen has come to signify one thing. The brutal enforcement of Sharia law which is raising fears about the future of the world's most populous Muslim country. They haul unmarried couples into precincts and arrest people for drinking or gambling. Increasingly, many of the cases are pushed to the ultimate conclusion, public canings at mosques in front of excited crowds. In mid-July, a 27-year-old man sentenced to 40 lashes fainted on the seventh stroke of a rattan cane from a hooded man in the yard of a mosque here...

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Across this most religious of Indonesia’s provinces, brown uniformed policemen in black wagons enforce Shariah, or Islamic law. They haul unmarried couples into precincts and arrest people for drinking or gambling. Increasingly, many of the cases are pushed to the ultimate conclusion, public canings at mosques in front of pumped-up crowds. In mid-July, a 27-year-old man sentenced to 40 lashes fainted on the seventh stroke of a rattan cane from a hooded man in the yard of a mosque here in the provincial capital. The caning was televised nationally, with an announcer reporting that the man,...

August 01, 2006, 2:16 p.m. Everybody's Business By William F. Buckley Jr. The old injunction about minding your own business has always been a little problematic, because carried to formal lengths it distresses other laws, laws that have to do with being one's brother's keeper. From large-scale national perspectives, there are the laws that translate into maintaining balances of power. You can try to ignore it when you hear that Hitler has ultimate solutions about how to deal with Germany's Jews, but meanwhile it makes sense to maintain your fleet in good condition, never mind if regulating German Jews is other people's business.Itchy...