JAKARTA: A few months ago, I travelled to Banda Aceh - for the third time in two years - for a feature on the Aceh's future and to gauge the sentiment of young people with regards to jobs and their aspirations.
I asked those I interviewed about the impact of syariah bylaws on their daily lives. Many expressed concerns that it was being taken too far by the Wilayatul Hisbah (WH) or syariah police, and was giving Aceh an unnecessarily bad reputation.
They said that as pious Muslims, they believed that syariah principles should govern their behaviour but that it should not be enforced aggressively on residents.
Neither should syariah be used as the basis for local officials to abuse their power, they added.
Yesterday, the Human Rights Watch released its report on abuses in the application of syariah laws in Aceh. They highlighted commonly-heard examples of abuse - of women who were confronted by WH for sharing a meal in public with ale friends, of women being detained for supposedly dressing immodestly, and of sexual harassment of women by WH and vigilante members of the community.
Things got interesting in the Q&A session afterwards. A man who looked to be in his late 20s stood up and declared that he was a member of the hardline Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia group. The group has campaigned against democracy, called for stonings and believes in the widespread implementation of syariah law, despite Indonesia being a diverse melting pot of ethnicities and religions.
He then launched into a diatribe against capitalism and how it encourages discrimination against women. When the event moderator, a well-known human rights activist, asked him to get to the point and ask his questions, he said that it was not possible for society to live without laws and asked the group if they believed that people could live without regulations.
He then added: "And is it fair to stigmatise those who commit abuse and then say that all Islamic law is not good because of these perpetrators?"
Several among the 40 or so journalists, diplomats and civil society representatives had scrunched up their noses at the man as he spoke. The panelists - comprising Human Rights Watch representatives and members of civil society - did not answer the man's questions directly and they probably made the right decision.
Previous instances of dialogue between hardliners and more secular or moderate members of society here have not necessarily turned out productive, let alone positive.
And the event was hardly the place for a discussion on whether syariah law should or should not be implemented. It was a means of pointing out that the way it is currently implemented lends to human rights abuses, and is not in keeping with Islamic principles.
To quote the HRW report: "Several Islamic scholars, from Aceh as well as elsewhere in Indonesia, stressed to Human Rights Watch that there is not an inherent theoretical conflict between most aspects of human rights law, Indonesian national law, and the implementation of syariah law in Aceh."
Academic Yusni Sabi, who was quoted in the report, added that the basic teachings of Islam are compatible with human rights.
This point was raised many times by two senior officials I spoke to, who were from the government office in charge of implementing syariah bylaws. They were extremely persuasive in their argument that Aceh's syariah bylaws were for the benefit of society.
One official said that the laws existed as a form of "protection", adding that if women could not be bothered to dress modestly or keep themselves "pure", the local government should act as their moral compass.
When I asked the other official what he thought of the West Aceh regent who had implemented a no-pants bylaw for women in his regency, the official paused and said while he agreed with the fundamental aim - to promote non-figure hugging clothes - he felt the policy could have been explained and communicated better, so that it would not be seen as an attack on women's rights, especially by foreign media.
As I stood up to leave his office, he complimented me on the beige pants I was wearing.
"Ah, these are suitably loose-fitting," he said, reaching out to grab the cloth along my right calf.
"They're from Singapore? The shops should sell pants like these here," he exclaimed, as I hastily but politely took my leave.
Read Lynn Lee's story on the Human Rights Watch report in the paper today