Trousers off for Women
May 26th, 2010, in News, by Patung
The wearing of trousers, jeans, or any tight clothing becomes illegal for women in West Aceh.
West Aceh (Aceh Barat) regency in the province of Aceh in trailblazing fashion has become the first administrative area to ban Muslim women from wearing any type of tight clothing, specifically jeans/pants/trousers.
Criminal
While in other parts of Aceh, where Islamic sharia law is fitfully and gradually being introduced, women are only required to at least cover their head hair and not to flaunt their womanly shapes, West Aceh has seized the day in specifically banning jeans.
Caught
Roadblocks and patrols will be carried out, with the local government preparing 20,000 long flowing skirts to be distributed to women caught in violation of the law. Offenders will be required to change into the skirts on the spot, with their jeans being confiscated.
Offenders will also have their names taken down, and on their third offence will be taken into detention.
Under the new law, coming into force on 26th May 2010, shops and traders will also be forbidden from selling women’s jeans and trousers.
Regent Ramli Mansyur admits the regulation is controversial, but that it is a necessary part of the application of Islamic law.
As a leader I have to implement this law because in the hereafter I will be held responsible for my actions on Earth, and I will be held responsible by society.
He says, in a democratic spirit, that all elements of society support the new law, in majority terms. okezone
265 Comments on “Trousers off for Women”
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@Ross
“The sorts I dislike are men and women who scrounge and take advantage.”Which is why you are disliked. You appear to have little sympathy, let alone empathy, with your fellows, treating us all with disdain and resort to cheap jibes.
Your ‘fiction’ is basically drama-documentary, essentially autobiographical, and I have been told by those more familiar with the current Jaksa scene than I am, though a week ago I described an encounter here, of your recent confrontation with the manic-depressive who you say “is featured affectionately.” Yep, maybe in your fiction, but in reality …?
Yes, I am an ‘ass’, and perhaps too a “silly arse!” in the immortal words of Lord Charles, the dummy of the very talented ventriloquist Ray Alan who died last month.
However, I view a silly ass as a court jester, the clown who pricks pomposity. And that is what I often try to do – including here.
Sorry, Ross, but I can’t meet you for the England match as I’ll be at Gedung Kesenian for a bit of culture. If any readers are there, please do come up and say ‘hi’, otherwise I’ll probably be the only non-indonesian there.
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Ross says:
I’ getting confused, I have to say, by these allusions based on narratives of events that you yourself haven’t witnessed. My jibes may or may not be cheap, but your lies are just lies. I hazard a guess you are richer than I. (yeah, I’m pissed off about the ‘fortune’ nonsense!)
I am obviously ‘disliked’ by you, and your coterie of informers, and I would probably reciprocate if they popped up and identified themselves, but since they have not yet had the nerve to do so, I don’t suppose they will now.Apart from telling off a guy, a month or so back, who was very drunk and talking foul-mouthed to a lady, I don’t recall any ‘confrontations.’ I saw him this week and suspect he didn’t remember the (verbal) clash – he was certainly friendly enough.
I don’t go looking for trouble and prefer to relax in agreeable company and observe what’s going on, as I am 60 pages into the next book and all raw material is welcome.
You’ve certainly given me some ideas! -
Odinius says:
diego said:
Actually I have a better idea…, a threesome between robert spencer of jihadwatch (jew), wilders (christian), and those islamists. Right, only group sex can unite those semitic religions together. They are products of a group sex after all (abraham + hagar + sarah).
Well, once they receive their visas for Idiot Island, they can engage in all the group sex they like. And you know they’d like to. I see how Habib Riziek looks at Spencer…
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I look forward to reviewing it, Ross. Always glad to be of assistance.
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I look forward to a fair-minded review….!?!
BTW, too busy to reach Jaksa at the moment but will be there later to cheer on the Aussies! -
realest says:
what’s with this bashing of Ross’s book? can’t a man make some honest money around here !? He’s an extremist conservative but at least he’s consistent. Statistically Ross stands for more voices than ppl may think. Although most don’t adhere strictly to ‘moral values’, they’re still acknowledged by the majority and being homo isnt one of them.
i was gonna link homos to belgium and somehow bring nigel farage into the picture but im too sleepy to do that. so y’all connect the dots =) -
Lairedion says:
And what an England game it was…. aye Ross?
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ET says:
@ Odinius
Wilders: another wildly ridiculous hate-monger. That’s something Islamophobes and militant Islamists have in common.
Sorry, but Islamic militancy preceded Islamophobia by a long stretch. Did you ever hear of the word Islamophobia before the wave of terrorist attacks since the late 90ies?
I suggest you take the time to seriously study the Koran and the Sunnah. Very revealing as far as hate-mongering is concerned. -
i was gonna link homos to belgium
Big chance their next prime minister will be one.
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Lairedion
The subject “kopvoddentax” is just too ridiculous to have an opinion.
If you take it literally it seems ridiculous indeed. But in my opinion he was only answering provocation with provocation, an effective way of making people aware about what is going on.
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timdog says:
Well, it was about time that you and I had a little dance, ET…
Sorry, but Islamic militancy preceded Islamophobia by a long stretch. Did you ever hear of the word Islamophobia before the wave of terrorist attacks since the late 90ies?
This is a patently absurd thing to say.
The very earliest “Western” responses to Islam could very much be categorised as Islamophobia. For the first century of Islam’s existence it was viewed by many European church authorities as a Christian schism – and bear in mind that in Medieval Europe schismatics upset the orthodox more than outright heathens. There was a veritable industry of vilification of “Mohammedanism” and “the Moors”.
The first ever European translation of the Koran (into Latin; there’s a fine copy in the Islamic section of the Museum of Asian Civilisations in Singapore) was subtitled “the Law of Mohamed the Pseudo-prophet”, and the next one got an introduction called “a refutation of the Koran”. These early Latin versions, by the way, were used as the sources for all the early translations into modern European tongues, and are clearly skewed to make Islam look as bad as possible. The habit of angrily waving carefully selected extracts of the Koran as proof of the evils of Islam was a sport that started not on the message boards of “faithfreedom” and “jihadwatch”, or even indonesiamatters, but in monasteries and seminaries in the First Millennium.
Dante put Mohamed with his guts hanging out in the eighth circle of hell amongst the other Christian heretics in the Divine Comedy, and “Mahound”, the demonic bogeyman version of Mohammad was well-known figure of fun, satire, vilification and hatred in Europe until the early modern period.
What is particularly interesting is how so much modern Islamophobia taps straight into these currents that are every bit as old as the earliest “Western” awareness of the existence of Islam. This is particularly the case in the focus on the person of Mohammad/Mahound, and the tendency to focus on his marital/sexual relations. The language, the inferences, the style used by Islamophobes on this topic today is exactly the same as it always was (there’s just been a slight shift – in the old days we were keen to point out that the Muslims were unbounded and indecent, raging sexual libertarians without stern Christian morality; post-sexual revolution we’ve largely flipped that on its head and made them victims of their own sexual repression)…
The “cartoons” issue is straight out of medieval satire.
And the hysteria about a “religion of the sword” is as least as old as the First Crusade.All other issues aside, though the pitch may have tipped upwards a little in the last decade, though it may have gained new adherents who are unaware that they are mouthing the clichés of a centuries old discourse, Western Islamophobia is much older than the post-modern cult of jihadism.
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It is quite an absurd thing to say, and demonstrates a lack a historical perspective. I’ll add the 20th Century to that narrative, timdog, because anyone who reads colonial documents from Dutch, British, French or American colonial authorities sees a simultaneous fear of and condescension to Islam.
Moving forward in time, no, Islamophobia did not emerge around 2001; the term became popularized around 2001. Blanket fear and demonization of all Islam and all Muslims is a common feature of Western history, and its modern manifestation really dates to the Iranian Revolution in 1979. After September 11, a lot of other prejudices–Arabophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment–refocused on Islam. Anyone who follows immigration debates in Europe, for example, should know that racial discourses concerning “Turks,” “banlieue residents” or “invandrare” were widespread prior to September 11. Anyone who watched American movies in the 1980s knows what prevalent opinions about Arabs were at that time. The attacks repurposed those discourses as religious ones.
As for reading the Quran and Sunnah to find evidence of the religion’s supposedly base nature? Come on. The Quran actually contains quite a few enlightened, pluralist passages, which those who seek to demonize Islam conveniently ignore. And the Sunnah? No two Muslim sects can even agree on what should be included. Some don’t even think any of it should be. So saying it has an “essence” is patently absurd.
The fact is: like all religions, Islam contains the tools for either a relaxed, tolerant religion; or an agitated, intolerant one. Depends on the ideologies and individuals present, and the historical/sociological circumstances they find themselves in.
…and it should be quite obvious to anyone except a partisan that radical Islam and radical Islamophobia really really need each other. They both benefit from regular folks feeling polarized, and so both deliberately stage provocations to affect that polarization.
That’s why I think they secretly want to have group sex together.
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Hans says:
was it not the like that before 2000’s it was not Islam directly seen as the enemy, but some leaders, al-Gaddafi (kaddafi), Yasser Arafat and
Ayatollah Khomeini, and other suspicious characters, who waffle around and lied to everyone and everything , and that Arafat received the Nobel Peace Prize is an insult to the runners, Arafat was a war criminal. We should put him on trial and tried him for war crimes. He has produced great misery and devastation of the Palestinian people and Israel. He is a murderer. -
ET,
If you take it literally it seems ridiculous indeed. But in my opinion he was only answering provocation with provocation, an effective way of making people aware about what is going on.
Let me put this another way. Would you support kopvoddentax if you were Dutch? And do you think it would properly address one of many challenges the Netherlands is facing?
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Lairedion.
Is that seriously being debated? My god (no pun intended)…that is one of the most illiberal things I’ve ever seen in a liberal democratic society in my lifetime. It’s one thing to ban face veiling in public buildings–it’s potentially a security concern–but singling out a single minority and taxing their religious behavior? That’s dark ages stuff. Specifically, it’s Muslim dark ages stuff, just like the jizya. That was pretty enlightened in the low-set-bar of the early Middle Ages, but it’s positively barbaric today.
Are these morons even aware of the irony?
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Morons? Are we talking about the belief that anybody who converts out of Islam should be kiiled? That appears to be widely held among all branches of that creed.
Or are we talking about moderate Islam, e.g. the NU, who think its okay for old freaks to wed little children?
Get a grip, Odinius, how can you criticise Jihad Watch, or Horowitz, or Wilders, when they are simply trying to wake their countries up?
Last week a bunch of savages in Barking, London, publicly reviled British soldiers who were being welcomed back home after a tour of duty. This exemplifies the most unacceptable aspect of Islam, the vicious ummat ideology, whereby sectarian allegiance takes priority over loyalty to one’s own country. Rather similar to communism, in that respect, if not in others.
Not what you should allow in immigrants.Lairedion, the England game was okay, but Australia deserved a better result tonight (last night!)
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Odinius,
Wilders proprosed this tax in a way to stir up the discussion but he quickly realized he went too far with this ridiculous idea so it’s not an issue anymore. I thought it was empty-headed and in no way helpful of addressing the challenge of Islamism. I was kinda surprised ET jumped on this one.
Besides that I agree with Ross. One also must not forget Wilders pays a heavy fine for his viewpoints. He has virtually no private life, has bodyguards around him 24/7 and wears bullet-proof vests when going out in public. I didn’t vote for him, I don’t like his style and his party is lacking solutions to other challenges the Netherlands is facing but the mere fact he’s forced to give up his freedom is really shameful and I don’t hear any of those left-wing sell-outs here in Holland addressing that.
England were really shite but I agree Australia deserved better. That penalty and red card was cruel.
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Lairedion
Wilders proprosed this tax in a way to stir up the discussion but he quickly realized he went too far with this ridiculous idea so it’s not an issue anymore. I thought it was empty-headed and in no way helpful of addressing the challenge of Islamism. I was kinda surprised ET jumped on this one.
This is exactly what I said
But in my opinion he was only answering provocation with provocation,
The emphasis with which the ‘kopvodden’ appear nowadays in Western public places has nothing to do with religious experience but everything with an attempt at domination and making its presence felt. In other words islamization. Wilders attacked this symbol of islamization with his ‘kopvoddentax’ and, judging as far as I can see from his election results, quite successfully. Of course it would be impossible to implement such a tax unless one recurs to a Dutch equivalent of the Wilayatul Hizbah. But sometimes it takes hilarious and demagogic ideas to wake people up.
@ Odinius & timdog
What strikes me is that your indignation about the kopvoddentax exceeds by far the one for ‘trousers off for women’ in Aceh under topic. A typical case of a certain Western academic tendency for playing the devil’s advocate? Dhimmitude avant la lettre?
I’ll come back to your other arguments in a couple of days because I have a plane to catch. Glad to return to Bali where thankfully there are less ‘kopvodden’ in the streets than where I come from.
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blindmen says:
Better closing eye then tight with trousers, forget it
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ET has ninjaphobia ;p
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madrotter says:
if they are ninja’s from east-jawa i’d have a fobia too
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ET said:
@ Odinius & timdogWhat strikes me is that your indignation about the kopvoddentax exceeds by far the one for ‘trousers off for women’ in Aceh under topic. A typical case of a certain Western academic tendency for playing the devil’s advocate? Dhimmitude avant la lettre?
You haven’t read anything I’ve written on islam too carefully, then, ET. You should know by now that I’m as negative as anyone on radical Islam, but make the point that you can’t take the extreme and extrapolate to the majority, and that Islam–in its broadest sense–can be quite liberal and tolerant. This is a notion I find you are often very resistant to, even though at times you seem to see it as well. Islam, like all religions, is a set of tools, like a hammer. A hammer can be used to build something or destroy it. Similarly, religion can be used in either positive or negative fashions. History shows every single world religion being used in both ways at some point. Right now, there seem to be more Muslims using it the second way than either non-Muslims or Muslims in past periods of history. At other points of history, this worked out differently. Colonialism, as you know, was rationalized as a Christian enterprise. In Aceh today, Islam is used by elites as a tool of domination and subjugation. I find that deeply objectionable, and many Indonesian Muslims agree. The president has said “Indonesia will never be an Islamic state.” He should extend that to Aceh.
But comparing to the Netherlands? Actually, ET, I hold liberal democracies to a higher standard of behavior than I do decrepit little pockets of theocracy. I’d say those who think those low standards should be emulated are the ones who show a lack of respect for Western traditions of constitutional liberalism and human rights. Wilders is a guy who sees a threat from radical Islam and thinks the solution is, well, their solutions. This has the same effect that radical Islamic activism has: to polarize and give individuals a false choice. It also has the effect of undermining exactly those values that make the Western system so damned great: liberty, equal rights and protections, and the idea that all individuals are equal under the law regardless of their particularistic affiliations. As a result, I find it infinitely disappointing that so many people would vote for him.
Now, that doesn’t mean hands-off multiculturalism is the answer either. There has to be balance between assimilation and respect for culture.
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Odinius,
There has to be balance between assimilation and respect for culture.
With more emphasis on assimilation than respect for culture. If an ideology (multiculturalism) becomes the norm a liberal democracy is doomed because a democracy doesn’t have an ideology.
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Exactly.
If you want to settle in Britain, you don’t bring in primitive customs from alien lands. You leave them behind in the primitve country you came from.That’s why Indians, not the Red ones but the Asian ones, are doing so well in the USA, They by and large adapt, with the result there are brown guys and gals running for high office for both main parties.
You can see the problems in Canada too. Multiculturalism is a mill-stone around a country’s neck, unless the country is an agreed amalgam of pre-existing cultures, like French and British in Canada, when it was still a healthy nation, or like Scotland, England, Ulster and Wales. Or indeed here in Indonesia.
Even then there are tensions.
Those savages in Barking illustrated precisely why multi-cult is a very bad idea. Scots and English and the rest may object to the wars but they are doing so in their capacity as Brits with Britain’s interests at heart. The Barking ratbags in their wierdo outfits were openly championing the enemies of the West, so they should not be allowed to live in the West. Let them go and enjoy Saudi or Iran.
Oya, Odinius, please drop by my new blog. (see top of IM home-page)
It’s boring without some pinkos howling at me. -
Ross,
It’s boring without some pinkos howling at me.
Why the name-calling, Ross?
Odinius is one of the few people here always commenting in a civilized way. I may disagree with him on certain matters but I strongly appreciate his decent style and manners. (This certainly does not apply to myself. I know my own flaws and I’m prepared to receive some backlash now and then).
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Lairedion said:
With more emphasis on assimilation than respect for culture. If an ideology (multiculturalism) becomes the norm a liberal democracy is doomed because a democracy doesn’t have an ideology.
I’m not a big fan of political multiculturalism, as it tends towards collectivism and, in the worst cases, illiberalism, though I do like and practice cultural multiculturalism, i.e. the idea that you should respect and seek out the good things you can find in any major human culture.
But on most practical political matters, I agree. Immigrants to the Netherlands need to learn Dutch; immigrants to the US need to learn English. Immigrants to liberal democratic societies need to accept both the authority of the law, and the moral basis of the law in individualism, equal rights and protections and a concomitant acceptance that no social group should have “special rights.” That’s the social contract, as articulated by Locke, which forms the basis of the liberal state. Every citizen and resident in countries like the Netherlands and the US are required to uphold their end of that bargain. As I see it, that’s non-negotiable.
On the other hand, both the Netherlands and the US were born out of powerful struggles for emancipation from political regimes deemed tyrannical, and particularly in the domain of religion. Both states have constitutional protections of the freedom of worship, which deliberately and explicitly give no special regard to any faith community. That means that, wherever the religious practice their faith in a way that does not violate the social contract, the state is constitutionally–and morally–beholden to protect their freedom to do so, and to do so in a manner that’s completely agnostic (pardon the pun) to the detail of what religion they seek to practice. It’s the actions, not the faith-system, that the liberal state allows itself to regulate.
What Wilders represents is something different–a particularistic, chauvanistic nativism that, really, fits somewhere in-between what you get from FPI or the milder PKS in Indonesia. His supporters claim all they are doing is “responding” to radical Islam, but radical Muslims claim all they are doing is “responding” to the West and whatever catalog of indignities they imagine the West has subjected them to. Each feeds off of the other, and really needs the other to survive. That’s why I think all these radicals really just want to have group sex with each other. 🙂
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hey that’s a consequence of democracy. under the right leadership, i’d rather live in a dictatorship(with limited terms ofc) where things get done effectively with decisions carried out swiftly without much hindrance. too much distrust and in-fighting having opposition supporting the opposite just for the sake of being an opposition. imo dictatorship has been misused too frequently to be judged fairly. there are good examples out there such as singapore and indonesia(hey im a chinese, i like the orba better :D)
hey where’s the image button !?
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I’d rather live in a good dictatorship than a bad democracy. Unfortunately, while there are plenty of the latter, there aren’t too many of the former, and even these are pretty crap in comparison with advanced democracies. Singapore, for example, is successful in most ways. But it’s a highly restrictive, highly conformist place with little culture outside food. So give me a good democracy over anything else.
As much of a douche as Wilders is, the Dutch system has enough safeguards to limit the damage he can do.
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Oigal says:
I’d rather live in a good dictatorship than a bad democracy.
What do you call Indonesia? Can’t call it a democracy ..not sure what the hell it is..Robber Baron Republic perhaps?
Me, I’d rather live in a place with a robust and protected free press. Contrary to the beliefs of some of the right/left wing and hard line nutcases and dingbats, a tendancy towards corruption and poor governance is not restricted to countries like Indonesia or other “developing” (I hate that word but for now)nations.
The thing that is missing is a robust and aggressive press, instead of slavering all over a naughty video. The press should have been hounding the various members of the DPR who the almighty gall to claim moral outrage.
Did anyone see the lastest piece of ignorant nonsense from the Ministry of Censorship and Intolerance. These guys are an international embarrassment, not that damage has not already been done by the evil mud brother empire.
Comment on “Trousers off for Women”.
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Same to you, Deta.
I can’t figure out why there is a big interest in my photo -I give my real name here, which most of my assailants are afraid to.