The stoning of a couple for illicit intercourse by Habib Abdurrahman is one of the very rare recorded instances of the application of the Islamic stoning penalty (rajm) for zina (Achehnese dina) in Acheh. The execution was ordered by Habib Abdurrahman, an influential Hadhrami sayyid and supporter of religious law, and the news of it spread throughout the whole country. As a public enforcement of the hadd punishment ordained by Mohammedan law for adultery, the event remained a unique example, frequently invoked by the ulamas and repeatedly recalled by Snouck Hurgronje in his discussion of Achehnese criminal practice.
The law of zina and its usual non-enforcement
Mohammedan law prescribes for illicit intercourse — sexual intercourse between two persons not in the mutual relation of man and wife or master and slave — punishments which differ in proportion as the guilty parties may or may not have at some time in their lives had sexual intercourse in a lawful marriage. If so, the punishment is stoning to death; if not, one hundred stripes with the lash, followed (according to the Shafiʿite school) by banishment for at least one year. The application of this law is, however, extremely rare in Acheh, although its provisions are pretty generally known. This is undoubtedly due to some extent to the great difficulty of proving illicit intercourse according to the requirements of the Mohammedan law of evidence: it is not permissible to apply a punishment ordained of Allah to a crime which, clear though it be to human insight, is insufficiently proved in accordance with the rules of evidence prescribed by Allah’s law.
The exception made by Habib Abdurrahman
In the ordinary course, dina is the order of the day in Acheh, whilst its punishment is of exceptional occurrence unless where the injured party takes the law into his own hands. The uleebalangs are quite ready to punish the offence of dina, even when no one has complained of it, provided no disagreeable consequences result to themselves or their friends; but their sentences are almost always fine, compulsion to wed, abortion procured at the uleebalang’s command, or the lesser punishment of cheukiʾe (strangling and drowning combined). The full shariʿa penalty of stoning is virtually never exacted. It has, however, happened in some few cases that some influential supporter of religious law has endeavoured to make an example by applying it in all its rigour to this sin so universally prevalent in Acheh. This was done, for instance, by Habib Abdurrahman, and the news spread throughout the whole country that a couple had indeed been stoned for illicit intercourse.
Significance
The case is significant less for its frequency than for its exemplary character. When, subsequently, some uleebalang conceives the same idea of enforcing the hadd, there is generally found something lacking both in the proofs which the law requires and in the complete execution of the punishment. The Habib Abdurrahman episode thus stands out as the rare case in which the influence of an expounder of the law was sufficient to overcome both the evidentiary scruples of the ulamas and the political reluctance of the adat-chiefs. It illustrates the tension, central to Achehnese public life, between the written shariʿa and the customary law administered by the uleebalangs — a tension which, in the sphere of war, was to find its fullest expression in the holy war against the Dutch.
See Also
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.