Indonesia is an extraordinary country, and it’s doing very, very well. But the only time we seem to hear about it in the United States is when somebody is whining about Sharia law. This video clears up the record on both counts. It documents the country’s incredible success, and points out how Aceh’s adoption of Sharia law isn’t anything to freak out about, and may even be a useful model.

Sharia law is a fascinating topic. If you watch Fox News you may have the sense that it is some lock-step box of evil that you can plug into a country to turn it into Afghanistan. In fact it means something different in every place it has been implemented. The Saudi Arabian version we are most familiar with is quite rare. Some countries treat it as an additional source of law. Some use aspects of it for family law issues. Some try to keep it in mind when drafting some aspects of their law. Having a special fear of “Sharia” makes about as much sense as having a special fear of the Code Napoleon. And No, it’s not coming to the United States any time soon. 99.9% of the public discussion of this issue is just idiotic. My hope is that this video is part of the .01%

One quick programming note. In the video, when I correct the Breitbart headline I’m actually wrong. A version of Sharia has been applied to all of Aceh province, which amounts to 2% of the population of Indonesia. In the video I corrected the headline to reflect that. But the article appears to actually talking about the North Aceh Regency, which has a population of 500,000 not 5 million. So

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Video Transcript after the jump…