Banda Aceh, Indonesia: sharia to be enforced, caning for gamblers and drinkers, women forbidden from wearing tight pants and debate rages over stoning

Remember, this is the place hit by the tsunami in 2004 that killed hundreds of thousands and that was graced by your generous donations of money, food and other supplies, ostensibly to help the poor besotted people in their hour of need.

Feel better about yourself now?

From The Australian April 10

Aceh goes to the polls under the austere shadow of sharia

INDONESIA'S only province ruled by Islamic sharia was last night counting votes to elect a powerful governor in polls that will test a fragile peace following a 30-year separatist war.

The elections in Aceh are the second since the province suffered 170,000 fatalities in the Asian tsunami of 2004, and since the war against Indonesian rule ended in 2005, having claimed 15,000 lives.

Voters were electing the governor - the top post in the province - as well as 17 district heads and deputies.

At the village of Ulee Lheue, on the outskirts of the capital Banda Aceh early yesterday, voters were invited to cast ballots with a call from the local mosque speaker: "Assalamualaikum (peace be upon you), all residents of Ulee Lheue. Those who are eligible, please come now to vote," an official called.

Here, only 415 people out of a community of 6000 villagers survived the tsunami.

The population has since grown to about 800.

I have questions about gene drift and gene flow regarding the increase in population.  Is the increase due to an influx of new people, or has the birth rate been such that it could generate the doubling of the population within it's own narrow gene pool?  If the latter, it opens up a world of mutations and in-breeding, something Islam is very familiar with. 

Aceh, on the western edge of the scattered Indonesian archipelago, enjoys broad autonomy and is an anomaly in a country where most of the 240 million people practise a moderate form of Islam.

Alcohol is freely sold in the rest of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation, but it is banned in Aceh. In some of the province's regions, women are forbidden to wear tight trousers.

Gamblers and drinkers are publicly caned. Debate still churns in Aceh over whether adulterers should continue to be publicly flogged or stoned to death.

Adulterers in Islam, for a majority cases refers to a woman who is raped.  Yes, you are murdered because you were raped.  Seems a tad cruel, doesn't it?

Read it all