BANDA ACEH: "A new law, approved on September 13 by the Parliament, replaces portions of the civil code with Sharia law (Sharia is the body of Islamic religious law) and dictates that Muslims who commit adultery may be stoned to death, the AFP reported on September 14. The Governor of of Aceh, Irwandi Yusuf, had opposed the new law and had urged for a delay in the bill’s deliberation," International Religious Freedom News reports.

The Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia comprises 17,508 islands, and with an estimated population of around 237 million people, it is the world’s fourth most populous country, and has the largest Muslim population in the world.

Islamic scholars argue both for and against stoning within Islam. Seven out of fifty-two Muslim-majority countries in the world use stoning as a legally-sanctioned form of punishment: Afghanistan, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and now Indonesia.

Stoning, or lapidation, refers to a form of capital punishment, whereby an organized group throws stones at the convicted individual until the person dies.

Stoning has been used throughout history in a number of places, both in the form of community justice and also as a form of capital punishment. The practice is referred to in Islamic Shariah, as well as Christian and Jewish texts of antiquity.