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  • Jason Ng
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Brunei has shrugged off condemnation from international human rights groups and pushed ahead to introduce a set of harsh Islamic criminal laws that includes stoning for Muslim adulterers.

In a ceremony on Wednesday, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah declared that Sharia punishments would be enforced in phases starting today.

“With this, we repeat Islam’s legal history practiced several centuries ago in this country,” he said in his speech posted online.


Islam has long been the official religion of this tiny oil-rich Southeast Asian country, which practices a more conservative version of the faith than its Muslim-majority neighbors, Malaysia and Indonesia. The sale of alcohol and its private consumption are banned and businesses are shut for two hours during Friday prayers in Brunei.

The decision to implement the Sharia penal code “is not for fun, but it is on the basis of obeying Allah’s order,” the all-powerful sultan said. The reigning monarch, who has ruled for nearly five decades, is also Brunei’s prime minister and controls the defense and finance ministries.

Brunei has come under harsh criticism from human rights groups and the United Nations since announcing plans to implement Sharia law back in October. It had earlier deferred the implementation of the Islamic penal codes, originally scheduled for April 22 – though the sultan brushed off earlier reports of a delay.

Brunei was a British protectorate until 1984 and it has civil and criminal courts based on British laws. The new set of laws would broaden the scope of religious justice, which is currently limited to dealing with personal and family issues, such as marriage disputes.

The first phase of the law covers “general offences set by the state,” including disrespecting the Islamic fasting month of Ramadhan and not performing Friday prayers, which are punishable by fines, imprisonment or both, according to reports in the Brunei Times.

Corporal punishment, such as whipping and amputation of limbs for crimes such as theft, will not be enforced until the second phase, while the death penalty will come into force in the third phase, the paper added.

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, called the decision “a huge step backwards” for human rights in Brunei. “It constitutes an authoritarian move towards brutal medieval punishments that have no place in the modern, 21st-century world,” he said, urging the world to ask Brunei to immediately reconsider.

The sultan dismissed various “theories” by critics that such laws are harsh and unfair, adding that God’s demand shouldn’t be doubted. “Where is the value of theory in the face of Allah’s revelation?” he asked.

The roughly 400,000 citizens of the wealthy sultanate rarely challenge the monarch publicly, but widespread opposition to the Sharia penal codes spread across social media earlier this year prompted the sultan to issue a warning to critics.


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