Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/197

 In the law of Islam a small place is allotted to the adat, i.e. the different manners and customs of different places, but it does not admit of any special representatives of adat or systems of rules to carry it out. Where recourse is had to laws which are to a great extent based on adat or are called into being by human choice or agreement, this can, as we have seen, be only excused on the ground that the men and the conditions of the present time are too evil to be governed by the holy law.

When this is once recognized, the questions to be brought before the qādhī are strictly defined, and the rest are submitted to secular judges, subject to the proviso that in all cases there shall be an appeal allowed to the sacred law; or else each question is first submitted to the executive, which in certain cases (as for instance rights connected with marriage and inheritance) refers them to the qādhī. Thus the position of affairs though by no means theoretically correct, is practically workable. It is only in rare cases of mutinous behaviour, oppressive injustice or the introduction of objectionable novelties, that the complainants resort to the qādhī crying, "the law of Allah!" In such cases the ecclesiastical judge, dreading this rude intrusion on his usually peaceful life, as often as not absconds in alarm till the storm blows over.

Where a Mohammedan government is compelled to establish a court of justice to deal with all matters connected with the sacred law, there arises of necessity a conflict as to the limits of the functions of such a tribunal. Here again the party of the adat must as a rule yield to that of the hukōm in theory, and can only save itself by having recourse to circuitous methods, or by seeking a reason for abolishing the court thus incautiously instituted.

Such was the case with the balè meuhakamah which the Habib succeeded in forcing from the adat potentates; he drew almost all questions within the purview of this court, and thus robbed the constituted authorities, whom he had made powerless elsewhere by his reforms, of all control in this department also.

The following is an example of the strategems which his enemies employed against him. Certain highlanders were instigated to bring before him suits which, if dealt with according to the letter of the sacred law, could never have been brought to a pacific conclusion. The Habib was disposed on such occasions to resort to compromise and to set the spirit of the religious law above the letter. How would it