Source: Associated Press
By STEPHEN WRIGHT
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Riding a tsunami of moral conservatism and anti-gay prejudice, Indonesia’s Islamic political parties appear on the cusp of a major victory: outlawing all sex outside marriage.
Revisions to Indonesia’s criminal code being considered by Parliament would allow prison sentences of up to five years for sex between unmarried people. Those changes would also criminalize gay sex, the bugbear of Indonesia’s Islamic and secular political parties.
Rights groups and legal experts fear a profound setback to human rights and privacy in Indonesia, one of the world’s largest democracies, and the spread of vigilantism, already common in parts of the sprawling Muslim-majority nation of more than 250 million people. They are racing to organize opposition. An online petition launched this week has gathered more than 20,000 signatures.
Categories: Asia, Indonesia, Marriage, The Muslim Times
These kinds of laws are highly questionable. If they are following the Qur’an, we are told that one needs 4 eyewitnesses to the actual event on the one hand and also NOT to spy on one another.
So, the vigilantes and the ‘moral’ policing are ALL acts of spying and interfering in people’s personal lives.
Yes, if the acts are committed in broad daylight, then maybe, they have a point… But, this kind of infringement is a definite interference. What a person does within the four walls of a room/house is none of anybody’s business and least of all the state’s!
It’s these kinds of ‘laws’ being applied by so-called ‘Islamic countries’ that give our religion a bad name.