Indonesian Cleric Who Helped Write Adultery Laws Caned Over Affair

Police found Mukhlis bin Muhammad one night this September in a
car parked by a beach. The 46-year-old was with a woman. She was
not his wife.

For most men around the world, this would not be making
headlines.

But Mukhlis is an Islamic religious scholar and leader in the
very conservative Aceh province of Indonesia, the world’s largest
Muslim-majority country.

Mukhlis is part of the Aceh Ulema Council (MPU), the religious
body that advises the local government and helped to write its
anti-adultery law, along with others like it that ban gambling and
same-sex relations.

“This is God’s law,” Husaini Wahab, deputy mayor of the district
where Mukhlis lives, told BBC News. “Anyone must be flogged if
proven guilty, even if he is a member of the MPU.”

So Mukhlis was flogged. On October 31, he was publicly flogged
28 times. The woman he allegedly had an affair with was caned 23
times.

Husaini told the BBC that Mukhlis would also be kicked off the
council.

Human rights groups have previously called for the repeal of
Aceh’s public floggings and canings.

In other Muslim-majority countries such as Saudi Arabia,
Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brunei and Somalia,
adultery is also criminalised. In Saudi Arabia it can be punishable
by death.

India only removed its anti-adultery law in 2018. South Korea
struck down a law in 2015 that criminalised adultery with up to two
years in jail.

Twenty-one states in the United States still have laws making
adultery a criminal offence, though they are rarely enforced or
don’t carry heavy sentences.

The Washington Post