Constitutional justices entering the courtroom for the judicial review hearing of Law No. 19 of 2008 on Sovereign Sharia Securities, Tuesday (11/1/2022), to examine the revisions to the petition. Photo by MKRI/Ilham W. M.

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Tuesday, November 1, 2022 | 15:43 WIB

JAKARTA (MKRI)—The Constitutional Court (MK) held another judicial review hearing of Article 25 of Law No. 19 of 2008 on Sovereign Sharia Securities (SBSN) and its elucidation for case No. 100/PUU-XX/2022 on Tuesday, November 1, 2022. The petition was filed by Rega Felix, an individual citizen.

The revisions to the petition were mostly in the subject matter. He had also revised the Court’s authority by adding Law No. 13 of 2022 on the Second Amendment to Law No. 12 of 2011 on Lawmaking. “With regard to legal standing, the Petitioner added legal standing as a customer of state sukuk,” he asserted at the session chaired by Constitutional Justice Wahiduddin Adams.

Also read: Ambiguity of Sharia Principles and MUI’s Legitimacy Questioned

At the preliminary hearing on Wednesday, October 19, 2022, the Petitioner argued that his rights had actually and could potentially be harmed by the enactment of Article 25 of the SBSN Law and its elucidation, which he claimed had allow the Government to cherry-pick sharia principles. This, he alleged, had eliminated his right to worship according to his faith and to fair legal certainty over sharia principles. He argued that the phrase ‘sharia principles’ in Article 25 of the SBSN Law was ambiguous.

He argued that the meaning of ‘sharia principles’ based on the elucidation to Article 25 of the SBSN Law (“The institution with authority to determine fatwa in the area of sharia is the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) or any other institution as appointed by the Government”), refers to the number of institutions authorized to determine sharia principles. This shows that the plurality of sharia principles is determined by the plurality of the authorized institutions.

He added that the ambiguity in the Government’s logic shows that it does not want to lose control over the people’s religious beliefs and made it so that people would not be confused about choosing a fatwa institution, the determination of sharia principles on sharia banking to be done by the MUI. Meanwhile, the Government is free to appoint the fatwa institution. This is contrary to the principle of equality before the law as referred to in Article 28D paragraph (1) of the 1945 Constitution.

Therefore, in his petition, the Petitioner requests that the Court declare the phrase ‘sharia principles’ in Article 25 of the SBSN Law not legally binding as long as it does not mean ‘sharia principles’ and the phrase ‘or any other institution as appointed by the Government’ not legally binding conditionally as long as it is not interpreted as ‘the authority of the Indonesian Ulema Council as an institution authorized to stipulate fatwas in the field of sharia is temporary until the establishment of a state institution authorized to stipulate sharia principles in the field of sharia economics.’

Writer        : Utami Argawati
Editor        : Lulu Anjarsari P.
PR            : Fitri Yuliana
Translator  : Yuniar Widiastuti (NL)

Translation uploaded on 11/3/2022 17:18 WIB

Disclaimer: The original version of the news is in Indonesian. In case of any differences between the English and the Indonesian versions, the Indonesian version will prevail.

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