cultural resistance to shariatism in aceh 265
punk community to which Lowbat belongs is called Tanggoel Rebel.
They have often taken to the streets to announce that they have the
right to live in Aceh and they have protested against the arrest of several
of their members. Boeloek himself is an educated young man. He is
finishing his studies at the Economics Faculty of Syiah Kuala University.
Boeloek condemns the government of Banda Aceh which, through its
Department of Sharia Law, has generalised and categorised the existence
of the punkers’ ways of life as ‘penyakit masyarakat’ (social diseases).⁶⁰
Lowbat Boeloek claimed that they still carry out the five-times-a-day
prayers and they have helped to clear Banda Aceh’s streets of rubbish. It is
not the business of the Sharia police to worry about their hair and clothing
styles. Everything depends on personal tastes and aesthetic perspectives
and these clearly differ between people. Punk communities can easily
point out a number of cases of corruption implicating those who claim
to be religious (and claim to be Muslims) who, on different occasions,
would deliver sermons on morals and on how to maintain Sharia law.
Meanwhile, their deeds are far removed from Islamic teachings. Punkers
exist to fight against their hypocrisy, Lowbat continued.
The emergence of a Muslim punk community in Yogyakarta has been
an interesting phenomenon and provides a useful comparison for the
situation in Banda Aceh.⁶¹ Members of this group dress like punkers but
they emphasise their roles as Muslims. Besides singing on the streets,
these particular punkers also carry out regular religious study groups
called punkajian, a creative way of writing ‘Pengkajian’, which means
study. Dedi and Lowbat claimed that many of them also did what the
Yogyakarta Muslim punkers did. Nonetheless, the government of Aceh
and the Sharia police only look at the way these punkers dress and judge
it to be different from the local standard of ethics and local religious
understanding. Lowbat asserted that tastes will never be the same ‘until
Judgement Day’.
The fact that the punkers’ existence is not welcomed is not a problem
confined to Banda Aceh. Big cities in Indonesia such as Bandung, Jakarta,
and Yogyakarta also have punk communities and they often have to
deal with the police as well. I can accept the critical notion that it is
still too early to identify punk as a form of cultural resistance to Sharia
law in Aceh as it must be further problematised and debated. However,
Banda Aceh differs from the larger cities in Indonesia both in terms of
its size and for its introduction of Sharia-based regulations and in this
context gives punkers a different role. Lowbat Boeloek further stated that
Interview with Lowbat Boeloek.
http://punkmuslim.multiply.com/.