A leader of Malaysia's Islamist party wants its secular allies to apply strict Sharia law in the country.

The hardline Parti Islam se-Malaysia, which made strong gains in March elections, has enacted laws in five states to punish rapists and adulterers with stoning to death.

Thieves would have hands and arms cut off.

However, the country's federal government has barred the party from enforcing the laws.

An official in-charge of Sharia law in Aceh calls for more laws to punish crimes after a mob attempted to carry out a Sharia-style punishment by amputating the hand of a thief.

A group of residents in a North Aceh village to tried to cut off the hand of an alleged thief on Saturday. This was the first time an attempt was made to carry out a Sharia-style punishment of this kind in the province.
What we need is more Sharia laws, said Dhiauddin, the deputy director of Dinas Sharia Islam Banda Aceh, the official that is in-charge of proclaiming Islamic laws.

Aceh is the only province in Indonesia that has the right to apply Sharia law beyond matters pertaining to marriage, divorce and inheritance. However cutting off the hand of thief, is not listed as a punishment in Aceh.

The people's reaction derived from the lack of precise laws on how to punish certain crimes, Dhiauddin told AKI. However Dhiauddin stressed that the mob that was behind the attempt to cut off the thief's hands, should be judged according to secular law.

According to a report on the Jakarta Post newspaper the alleged thief, Saidan, was rushed to the hospital after he was accused by locals of having stolen cattle. They reportedly beat him up before trying to sever his left hand.

Indonesia's Aceh province will begin testing candidates for next year's provincial elections on the Koran, an election commission official said.

More than 1,300 Muslim candidates will recite verses from the holy book before a jury for about five minutes, said Nurjani Abdullah, a member of the Aceh Election Independent Commission: It is based on sharia law under which a legislator in Aceh province has to able to read the Koran, said Abdullah.

Aceh province, on the westernmost end of Indonesia, is the only area officially allowed to use sharia, or Islamic law, as part of a local autonomy deal.

Muslim women in the Indonesian district of West Aceh are to be banned from wearing tight trousers or jeans.

One local official said women found breaking the law will have to change into a government-issue skirt and their banned garments will be cut up.

The rule, to take effect next year, will also ban men from wearing shorts, said district chief Ramli Mansur said. If a woman flouts [the rules], her trousers will be cut up on the spot and replaced with a skirt that will be provided free of charge by the West Aceh government, Ramli Mansur told AFP news agency.

We're not stopping women from wearing trousers. What's prohibited are tight trousers and jeans. If they have to wear trousers, the trousers must cover their ankles and be worn under loose, long skirts.

The rule would only apply to Muslims.

The sharia regulation prohibiting women from wearing pants in West Aceh regency drew strong condemnation from public circles in Aceh province.

The enforcement of the regulation is an accumulation of the negative views against women from the perspective of Islamic sharia, said Norma Susanti, the women and children's division head of Aceh Human Rights NGO Coalition. She added that the regulation, issued by the West Aceh regent, was very discriminative in nature and very detrimental to women: Islamic sharia is not discriminative against women, but it's different when it is used as a political means by men to restrain women's movements.

Although Aceh has enforced Islamic sharia law, social problems have instead upset society further, such as the crime rate that has continued to rise, with increases in robbery, murder, rape and abduction cases.

Legal expert Saifudin Bantasyam from Syiah Kuala University said the ban on women wearing trousers was not legally strong enough to be enforced: The ordinance is merely a circular which has no legal standing, except for the internal interests of the regency administration. He added the bylaw could not be implemented because Aceh already had a provincial ordinance regulating the dress code in accordance with Islamic sharia.

Aceh Ulema Assembly (MPU) chairman Muslim Ibrahim similarly criticized the regulation, urging it to be reviewed. We should not be arrogant and force others not to wear pants, he said.

Also slamming the regulation was Taufik Riswan, director of West Aceh Women and Child Protection Research Institute, who said the regent was overreacting. The regulation is against the principles of human rights and the 1945 Constitution.

In September the provincial parliament approved a new criminal code that includes a provision for adulterers to be stoned to death. The move was condemned by human rights groups, and has alarmed local businessmen, who fear it will harm Aceh's attempts to attract investment following the tsunami five years ago. The provincial governor, Irwandi Yusuf, has refused to sign the new code, so for now it remains in an uncomfortable limbo. That has not prevented the Wilayatul Hisbah, sometimes compared with Saudi Arabia's notorious vice and virtue police, from pursuing their task with zeal. And Aceh is not alone. Across Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, dozens of local governments – given wide scope to enact their own laws under a decentralised system – have adopted Islamic regulations on dress and behaviour.

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A serious blow to the credibility and morality of Sharia police in Aceh province, has occurred after several members were detained for an alleged gang rape in Langsa regency.

Police in the regency said that they had arrested two Sharia police officers, or Wilayatul Hisbah, for reportedly raping a female detainee at the Langsa Sharia Police Station. The Langsa Police are also hunting down another suspect who is currently on the run.

Langsa Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Yosi Muhammartha said the three suspects were accused of jointly raping a university student when she was held in a cell at the station.

Yosi said the issue began when Sharia police officers were conducting patrol on the night of Jan. 8, and found a couple on the side of the Langsa ring road. The police brought the pair to the Sharia police office in Langsa. The suspects then questioned the couple in relation to violating the 2003 Sharia Public Indecency Bylaw

The Aceh office of the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission has proposed a draft of the province's broadcasting qanun , or bylaw, that will be used as a standard to censor films, TV and programs to ensure they adhere to Islamic law.

The draft, however, received strong opposition from the local branch of the Independent Journalists Association (AJI), which objected on the grounds that the proposed measure violated press freedom laws.

Mukhtaruddin Yakob, head of the local branch of the AJI, said the draft had been submitted at the end of January to the governor's office for preliminary review: The proposed qanun is inconsistent with the [national] Press Law and the Broadcasting Law, he told the Jakarta Globe.

Mukhtaruddin said the qanun would require inappropriate censorship of the program content of broadcasters operating in the staunchly Islamic province.

The proposed bylaw would require radio and television stations to broadcast live the obligatory weekly prayer on Fridays and prohibit them from airing crime reconstructions, obscene material and sexual harassment cases.

It also bans broadcasters from airing fund-raising efforts that are not in the Muslims' interests, Mukhtaruddin said.

Under the qanun, movies, television shows (including soap operas and documentaries) and commercials would be subject to censorship by the Aceh Film Censorship Board and Aceh Film Advisory Board (Bapfida).

The Aceh Provincial office of the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission said it has proposed a draft regulation to ban non-islamic contents of broadcasting in the province. journalists.

In a discussion held by the Alliance of Independent Journalists a member of the Provincial Broadcasting Commission Muhammad Yusuf said the specific law or Qanun will authorize the regional authorities to impose further censorship on all film or television and radio production despite having past the National Censorship Body.

The draft regulation will also allow regional government to ban all forms of show of programs ranging from fund-raising, educational, documentaries, films, soap operas, dramas, features and investigative news, songs, music, advertising, health service messages, quizzes, and religious programs which do not serve the interests of Islam.

The Alliance of Independent Journalists, organizer of the discussion said it rejected the regulation and will file a judiciary review to the legal basis of the regulation.

Religious police in Indonesia's Aceh province have been issued with 20,000 long skirts and ordered to cover up women deemed to have broken Muslim dress codes, an official said.

The province on northern Sumatra island has banned Muslim women from wearing figure-hugging clothing such as tight trousers, under Islamic by-laws.

Vice and virtue officers in West Aceh district have been told that they should ask women wearing the wrong clothes to put on the government-issue skirts on the spot.

West Aceh district chief Ramli Mansur said that one day he would have to answer to God about what he did to enforce sharia or Islamic laws, so residents should expect increased vigilance and raids by the morality squad, known as the wilayatul hisbah.

The Islamic police do not have the power to arrest women for violations of the dress codes but they regularly stop them and demand they change their clothing. The force can however arrest people for other religious offences such as gambling, adultery and drinking alcohol, for which the punishment is caning.

Two couples were caned in Indonesia's Muslim Aceh province after being caught having extramarital affairs, a prosecutor said.

About two hundred people gathered after Friday prayers to watch the four people receive their allotted lashes at a mosque in the city of Jantho, southeast of the provincial capital, Banda Aceh.

The reason for the harsh punishment is that both of them are already married to other people, prosecutor Bendry Almy said.

The other couple punished received seven lashes for the husband and four for the wife.

The crowd shouted abuse at the victims and were baying for more strokes of the cane.

Religious police in the Indonesian province of Aceh have forced two women to have their marriage annulled and sign an agreement to separate.

The women had been legally married for a few months after one of them passed as a man in front of an Islamic cleric who presided over their wedding. But suspicious neighbours confronted the couple and snitched to police.

The two women were forcibly separated and are now under surveillance by the Islamic police.

The local Sharia police chief told them Islam said they must be beheaded and burned for what they had done.

Three Indonesian soldiers were among 14 people arrested for illegally being in close proximity to unmarried members of the opposite sex during raids in Banda Aceh.

More than 100 policemen from the Public Order Agency (Satpol PP), police and Indonesian Military swooped on locations throughout the provincial capital, including a burger stall, Ulee Lheu beach and three boarding houses, he said.

A total of seven couples were caught.

Mayor Illiza claimed that the public had demanded the raids be carried out: We have received a lot of reports about people selling alcoholic drinks and prostitution in some areas of Banda Aceh.