In the Indonesian province of Aceh: Passing the Qur’an recitation exam is a requirement for executive and legislative candidates | Miscellaneous

Jakarta- Indonesians are preparing for a new electoral season after the presidential elections were completed at the beginning of this year. On October 20, the new president and his deputy will be sworn in, and tens of millions of voters will then begin the process of choosing regional governors, mayors, and governors on November 27. These elections come on a unified date, after they were held at separate intervals during the past two decades.

The total of these regions is 545 regions, provinces and cities, where Indonesia is divided into 38 large regions, and these regions are in turn divided into 416 provinces and 98 cities. The Jogjakarta region is excluded from the total, which is governed by the Sultan of Jogjakarta with a special rule, as well as the unelected officials of the outskirts and islands of the capital, Jakarta.

In contrast to the procedures for candidates submitting their names and conditions for their candidacy in the various regions, the Indonesian province of Aceh, with its own autonomy, is governed by some legal exceptions in various areas of life, including elections and participants in them. Applicants for the positions of governor and deputy governor of the region, and the positions of governors of 18 provinces in the region and governors of 5 cities in it, must, They must pass the Holy Qur’an recitation exam, which is held in some of its mosques, such as the famous Baitul Rahman Grand Mosque in the city of Banda Aceh, the capital of the province, as a condition for accepting the registration of their candidacy with the Independent Election Commission of Aceh Province.

The exam focuses on the level of ability to recite the Qur’an with intonation, eloquence, and literature. The candidates for the positions of governor and deputy governor of the province attended the exam, namely: Fazlullah, Bastami Hamzah, Muzakir Manaf and Tengku Muhammad Yusuf Abdul Wahab. After the exam, the Independent Election Commission in Aceh Province informs the results of the test for the team of candidates. If his reading is not at the required level or the candidate did not appear for the test before a committee of readers and professors, the candidate’s team is asked to present an alternative candidate from the same party bloc that nominated him.

This condition goes back to Aceh Law No. 12 of 2016, Aceh Law No. 5 of 2012, and Law No. 3 of 2008, where these laws consider reading the Holy Qur’an a condition for the character of an applicant for an executive position in the region, and even for applicants for legislative positions in the local legislative councils of the region, its provinces, and cities. As part of implementing aspects of the teachings of Islamic law, according to the local laws of the region.

But this condition is for Muslim candidates only, and the law does not prohibit the presence of a non-Muslim candidate, even though the overwhelming majority of the region’s population are Muslims, amounting to 98.89% of a total of 5.4 million people, according to the Aceh Province Statistics Department, and the remaining percentage is distributed between Christians and Buddhists.

The implementation of these local electoral laws began after the tsunami disaster that shook the region about 20 years ago, and the integration of the Aceh Liberation Movement into political life and its laying down of arms, by signing the Helsinki Peace Agreement on August 15, 2005 with the Indonesian government, and giving up weapons and seeking to Separation from Indonesia, and the people of Aceh have laws that differ from other Indonesian regions in terms of economics, politics, etc., as part of the peace agreement in the region, and this includes the right to work through local parties that are only active within the borders of the Aceh region, which is not allowed in the regions. Others, as it is prohibited to establish parties based on ethnicities, races, or regions throughout Indonesia.

As for the religious dimension of these laws, they extend back centuries, before the establishment of the modern Indonesian state, as they go back to the establishment of the Muslim sultanates in Aceh, which flourished economically, politically, religiously and culturally, and had its own laws and judiciary emanating from Islamic values.