A ban on female passengers sitting astride motorcycles would soon be issued in a city in Indonesia's Aceh province, its mayor said Thursday.
"The government is only preserving an endangered tradition," said Suaidi Yahya, mayor of Lhokseumawe, Aceh's second-largest city. The government plans to consult the public on the new law, which would require female passengers to rise side-saddle, he said.
Yahya said the law would also ban women from wearing jeans, arguing that such fashion is banned in Islam.
But Al Yasa' Abubakar, a professor of Islamic studies at the State Islamic Institute in Aceh's capital, Banda Aceh, said no such prohibition exists in the religion.
Abubakar called the proposed regulation on motorcycle riders restricting and "unmodern."
Aceh, located on the northern tip of Sumatra, was allowed to implement a form of sharia, Islamic religious law, in 2003 as part of Jakarta's efforts to quell a rebellion in the region, which ended with a 2005 peace agreement.