Jakarta (Indonesia), Aug.9 (ANI): The beheading of Ruyati binti Satubi, a 54-year-old Indonesian grandmother, in June for killing an allegedly abusive Saudi employer, has stirred such revulsion here that even the most strictly observant Indonesian Muslims now ask how the guardians of Islam's most sacred sites can be so heedless of their faith's call for compassion.
While few doubt that Satubi stabbed her boss, the mother of three is widely viewed as a martyr, a victim of a harsh and often xenophobic justice and social system rooted in Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi creed, a highly dogmatic and intolerant strand of Islam.
Now, the Nahdlatul Ulama, an organization with about 50 million members and 28,000 Islamic boarding schools, is questioning the credibility of the Wahabi form of Islam.
There has been an acceleration of a backlash against harsh imported strains of Islam.
"Mecca is a holy place, but the people who live there are very uncivilized. There is nothing in Islamic law that says you can torture or rape your housemaid," said the executed maid's daughter, Een Nuraeni, who prays regularly and wears a veil pulled tightly over her hair.
Her mother, desperate for money, had worked for three families in Saudi Arabia since taking her first job there in 1998. On trips home, Nuraeni said, she complained of being spat at in the face, beaten, deprived of food and other mistreatment, but kept going back "for the sake of her children."
Migrant Care, an Indonesian group that lobbies on behalf of workers abroad, said it has this year already received 6,500 reports of violence, sexual harassment, rape and other abuses against Indonesians in Saudi Arabia.
Eighty percent of the more than 1.2 million Indonesians working there are women, mostly maids.
The Indonesian government, complaining that it received no advance notice of Satubi's execution, recalled its ambassador from Riyadh and announced a moratorium from August 1 on labor exports to the Gulf kingdom.
Police set up a special unit at Jakarta's main airport to enforce the order.
The acrimonious rift between the birthplace of Prophet Muhammad and Indonesia, home to the largest community of his followers, even led to calls for a boycott of Mecca by hajj pilgrims.
The mood became so testy that when Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa announced that he had received an apology over the beheading from the Saudi ambassador in Jakarta, the kingdom's usually mute embassy promptly issued a statement that accused the minister of lying.
Indonesia has traditionally embraced mostly relaxed forms of Islam and only began following a rigid form from the 1970s under then-dictator Suharto. (ANI)
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