A kiss is still a kiss, as the old song goes, but in Indonesia’s Aceh province, it’s going to cost you. Not in terms of money, but in terms of the skin off your back. A young couple in Aceh just found that out after they shared a kiss on a TikTok stream, and found themselves hauled before a Sharia court and charged with violating the rules of modesty and the proper decorum that is to be maintained between an unmarried man and woman.
For that, they were each sentenced to 21 lashes, and the sentence was recently carried out before a gaping crowd of righteously indignant Sharia-adherent Muslims who know now never, ever to livestream a kiss. And so once again we see the true heart and soul of Islam: terror. While Muslim and non-Muslim Islamic apologists in the West continue to insist that the true Islam is benign and cuddly, and that terrorism is only a tiny minority of extremists’ “hijacking” of the religion, in reality, terror is at the very center of Islam. This latest caning in Aceh shows that anew.
The South China Morning Post reported Friday that “as each blow landed on their backs, the unnamed man, 22, and woman, 25, visibly grimaced. The woman later burst into tears, wailing in pain as the public punishment continued.” The Post noted that video of the canings had kicked up the usual firestorm: “It was far from the first such case to gain international attention and the response has become familiar: footage spreads online, rights groups condemn the punishment as inhumane and Aceh’s status as the Muslim-majority country’s sole sharia-enforcing province is thrust back into the spotlight.”
Yes indeed: “In a statement issued the same day as the flogging, Amnesty International said all forms of corporal punishment constituted torture or other ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment,’ while its co-regional director, Montse Ferrer, called the caning of the couple ‘a horrifying act of discrimination.’”
In Aceh, however, they simply don’t care: “Nurjani, a 62-year-old housewife in Banda Aceh, said she supported caning because it ‘was about religion’ and in line with sharia law.” She explained: “If you do not do anything wrong, then there is nothing to fear. I support caning and I believe that if you lead your life in the right way and walk the right path, no one will question you.” Another Aceh resident, Muhammad Nasir, agreed, saying: “If someone is caned, it will be a lesson for them so that they do not do the same thing again. It has a physical element to it, but it is mostly social and designed to make the person ashamed of their crimes.”
Yes, and more than just ashamed: terrified. The caning is designed to make people afraid to violate Allah’s law again. People who have been caned in Indonesia have ended up collapsing and being hospitalized. If you don’t want to end up permanently injured, or at very least to suffer agonizing pain in front of a crowd that has gathered to watch you suffer, then don’t kiss a girl on TikTok.
This has nothing to do with virtue, the idea of choosing to do what is good because it is good. This is all about fear from the beginning to the end. The Qur’an tells Muslims to “strike terror in the enemies of Allah” (8:60), and lest any of Allah’s obedient slaves are tempted to violate his law and thus become his enemies as well, they get terrorized, too.
Muslim women live in terror of Muslim men, who have Allah’s standing permission to beat them if they “fear disobedience” from them (Qur’an 4:34). In an Islamic state, Non-Muslims, both women and men, live in fear of Muslims, for their lives could be taken in an instant simply for a false charge of blasphemy, and even in the best of times, they have to live in subjugation and degradation, always subjected to discrimination and harassment at the hands of the Muslims.
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Even the Muslim man lives in terror of Allah, who can cast him into hell on a whim, for he created some people solely in order to torture them in hellfire forever: “And if we had so willed, we could have given every soul its guidance, but the word from me concerning evildoers took effect, that I will fill hell with the jinn and mankind together.” (Qur’an 32:13)
Terror is thus the glue that holds Islam together, the sole dynamic force that makes it tick. And so the poor couple in Aceh who just received 21 lashes can console themselves with one salient fact: It could have been worse. And soon enough, it probably will be.
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