Institutskolloquium: Sita Hidayah (Freiburg): „Shari’a Aceh. Between Content and Context”

This presentation begins with a description of shari’a law Banda Aceh, Indonesia. Firstly, a brief introduction to the key points of what shari’a law is will be presented. This will be followed by a consideration of who are the actors involved in the formation and the implementation of the contemporary shari’a law, when shari’a law was first introduced, and where are the shari’a law jurisdictions. The first part will end with a representation of Acehnese meanings, expectations, and evaluations of shari’a law.

The second part of the presentation discusses fieldwork findings from my research conducted in Aceh in 2014 to 2015. The research was about women’s experiences of shari’a law in Banda Aceh. The embodied experiences deal with shari’a norms and practices, attitudes and sensibilities in the everyday life in Banda Aceh. While in-depth, person-centred interviews were prominent during fieldwork, this ethnography also relies on participant observation of particular ways of being-in-the-world.