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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Great news, everyone. Support for this episode of Today Explained comes from Quip Electric Toothbrushes. The Quip chart's just $25, and if you go to getquip.com slash explained right now, your first refill pack is free with your purchase of a Quip Electric Toothbrush.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That website, once more, is getquip.com slash explained. Jen Williams, you are one of the hosts of the Worldly Podcast at Vox. Why are so many celebrities mad at Brunei right now?
--:-- Jen Williams: So Brunei just enacted a series of really super harsh repressive laws. They're based on a really radical interpretation of Islamic law, Sharia. And basically they say that gay people can be stoned to death for having sex.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's not just that. That's the big one. Also, people who commit adultery can be killed by stoning. And then for theft, on your first offense, if you're caught stealing, they cut off your hand. Where did this package of laws come from? Why is being gay and cheating on your spouse and being a thief being lumped together in this really sort of scary way?
--:-- Jen Williams: So it's part of this broader push that the Sultan of Brunei has been instituting, starting basically in 2014. Before then, the country's legal code was based on English common law. So they were colonized. They only recently got independence in the 1980s. Since getting independence, they've been kind of shifting more and more toward becoming kind of more Muslim, more Islamic in general.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then in 2014, the Sultan decided to begin implementing a Sharia-based penal code that includes punishments such as amputations and death. Now, before this time, we had these kind of parallel legal systems, right? So for criminal law, like if you get caught stealing, running a red light, that was like the common law. That was the secular law. For family law, so things like divorce, adoptions, adultery, that was Sharia, right? But there weren't criminal penalties. Now they're taking that and they're taking the Islamic Sharia law, basically, and making the whole kind of legal system in line with their interpretation of Sharia.
--:-- Jen Williams: And do people actually get stoned to death in Brunei? So they haven't executed anyone in years. It's a pretty high bar for evidence. So you have to have like several witnesses. They have to all be Muslim. And, you know, when we're talking about things like adultery and homosexual relations, like that's not necessarily something that's going to be happening with like a whole bunch of witnesses.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sure. This is brand new. So we don't know for sure like how this is going to actually play out. Tell me a little bit more about Brunei.
--:-- Jen Williams: Brunei is this really teeny tiny little country in Southeast Asia. It borders Malaysia. It's over kind of near Indonesia and the Philippines. It's really small, though. We're talking a little more than 450,000 people. That's smaller than the population of Washington, D.C. Right. Geography-wise, it's smaller than the state of Delaware. But it's super rich thanks to huge oil and natural gas exports. And it's all run by one guy, this sultan who has been in power for over 50 years. His name is Sultan Hassan al-Bukia. He's the one that is driving this push for this new legal code.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What's the country's relationship with Islam?
--:-- Jen Williams: The country is like about two-thirds Muslim. Islam is the official religion. It's also in a region that is also Muslim. So you have Malaysia and Indonesia nearby. It also has really close ties to some of the more influential countries in the Persian Gulf. So Saudi Arabia in particular. The first time that they announced this legal code in 2014 in Brunei, King Salman came for like the first time in a really long time and went to Brunei and visited. So it was kind of this like stamp of approval from this like really influential Islamic country in the Middle East.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You mentioned that the country is only two-thirds Muslim. Do we have any idea what it's like to be gay in Brunei, whether you're Muslim or not?
--:-- Jen Williams: In terms of being gay in Brunei, you aren't. What I mean by that is you may be gay, but you're not going to act on it. You're not going to portray yourself as gay. You're not going to say that you're gay. You're not going to be caught doing that. Because even before these laws, it wasn't that LGBT laws were like super liberal and all of a sudden they're not. Like it was not okay.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So is anyone in the country speaking out about this law?
--:-- Jen Williams: Not really because you can't. There's complete control over, like, the press, over free speech. Communications are monitored by the government, so, like, email communications, social media. Like, literally everything you do is watched, is monitored, and nobody going to risk speaking out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I was watching a really great documentary on this recently and you know they were interviewing this driver who was like look you know I love my country So the sultan looks after his people Very well, yes. He's a very, very generous sultan. This is the best place ever, which, you know, you expect to hear that from a cab driver. Yeah. But then they ask him, like, would you want your daughter or your son to be stoned to death for, like, adultery? What if your daughter was to grow up and have an affair? Nah. Should she die for that? Yeah, she'll die for that. Is that okay? Well, punishment is punishment. And punishment has been written in the Holy Quran. So we have to follow that.
--:-- Jen Williams: Just that disconnect of like, wow, okay, you know, maybe that guy does believe that. Maybe he doesn't because he's on camera and representing the country. So like, of course you have to say that. So there's no way to speak out. So that's why people outside of the country are speaking out. Like Human Rights Watch, like celebrities. So you have George Clooney and Ellen DeGeneres and Elton John.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Actor George Clooney is taking aim at the Sultan's $20 billion fortune, calling for a boycott. He writes, So the Sultan owns a ton of really fancy, high-class hotels around the world. Which ones? Do we know them?
--:-- Jen Williams: Yeah. These are some of the most exclusive in the world. Dorchester collection. So basically like Beverly Hills Hotel, Hotel Bel Air, Hotel Plaza Athene in Paris, Dorchester in London. We're talking like swanky high-end hotels.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so these celebrities are speaking out and saying, you know, we're not going to patronize your hotels until you change this law, which is like great in theory, except that for like the average person, I can be like, oh, I'm totally boycotting the Beverly Hills Hotel that I could never afford to go to anyway. So while it's good they're speaking out, it's not exactly the most effective protest.
--:-- Jen Williams: So does that mean it's not really going to work? Yeah, I mean, this is definitely not going to do anything. Back in 2014, when they first kind of announced this, George Clooney and other people did the same thing. They spoke out, they protested, they boycotted hotels, and nothing changed.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Did George Clooney go back to staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel? I don't know. I haven't been tracking carefully his hotel stays. Fair.
--:-- Jen Williams: So we kind of worked for a while. People boycotted the hotels. But then it kind of got out of the news and people, for the most part, kept going to these hotels, obviously, because they're still there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I know George Clooney and Elton John and Ellen DeGeneres probably aren't super tight with, like, say, the president. But have any powerful politicians spoken out about this policy?
--:-- Jen Williams: So President Trump himself hasn't said anything that I'm aware of, but the U.S. State Department did. They issued a statement saying that Brunei's penal code runs counter to international human rights obligations. So they definitely condemned it. They said all governments have an obligation to ensure that all people can freely enjoy universal human rights and fundamental freedoms.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now, President Trump hasn't tweeted about it, so I'm not sure if he's even aware of it. He's into hotels, though. He is into hotels, and he does watch a lot of Fox News. And I'm sure that Fox News is covering this probably pretty heavily because they're not a big fan of Sharia.
--:-- Jen Williams: This whole thing is about Sharia, but it turns out the guy who runs Brunei might not actually be that into it. That's next on Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: People like to tweet their toothbrush purchases at me. It's an aspect of this job I didn't really expect. Uh this weekend one uh Chris Furnace tweeted at me. So at Ginny Juice got the whole family Quip toothbrushes. I blame at Ramesverum. Sorry? You're welcome?
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Jen, I want to talk a little bit more about Brunei's relationship with Islam and Sharia law, but I thought maybe before we do that, we should talk a bit more about the Sultan of Brunei. Who is this guy?
--:-- Jen Williams: Yeah, so Sultan Hassan al-Bukhia, he's 72 years old. He's basically been in power for over 50 years. He became crown prince at age 15. And then he became Brunei's 29th sultan in 1968, the year after his father abdicated. So this guy has been in power for a really long time, basically. And he's in charge of literally everything in the country. Like he's prime minister. He's defense minister. He's finance minister. He's foreign minister. It's too much for one person. Yeah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The government's money and your money is kind of all the same thing because you run this entire country as your little personal fiefdom, basically. And we're talking about lots of money. Yeah, he is one of the wealthiest men in the world. And he lives like it too, which is really crazy when you actually stop and kind of compare his lifestyle to the kind of strict, ascetic, like very conservative Islamic law that they're implementing. It's completely at odds.
--:-- Jen Williams: What's his lifestyle like? The sultan has like a harem of young girls that he basically gets from around the world. They have people that go around and do casting calls, essentially. Like, hey, are you in New York? Are you like a young girl looking to be an actress or a model? Come try out. And they basically say, hey, we're going to fly you to Brunei. And they're like, oh, that's cool. It's exotic. And they end up being entertainers, which basically means having a lot of sex with the Sultan and his family, like his brother, who's also a total playboy. Some of these girls are young. Some, you know, as young as 15.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we're talking lots of adultery, lots of extramarital sex. The thing that he just... The thing that he is literally saying you can't do. Right. His brother literally has a yacht that he named Tits. Classy. Yeah. And it has two side boats that all come out, nipple one and nipple two. Is he 12? Basically. So their lifestyle choices and the way they act in the world certainly doesn't look like someone who is devoted to God. So why pass this law, this strict, strict law about adultery and gay sex and fevery?
--:-- Jen Williams: So again, it goes back to this kind of issue of wanting to look more like a conservative Muslim country, trying to bring itself in line with some other really powerful, really influential conservative Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia has a lot of money to spend around the world and invest in a lot of places. And, you know, if you want some investment from Saudi Arabia, I guess the idea here is like maybe we could do this. Touching on the attainment of blessings from Allah, I want to see Islamic teachings in this country grow stronger and more visible in the country. This system preserves and guarantees the rights of all the people, regardless of their race and faith.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Plus, there's also this really weird dynamic where the sultan, you know, is trying to diversify his economy, so it's not just dependent on oil and natural gas. And tourism is one of the big branches of that that he's trying to build up. But I mean, it's not like you're going to be a huge tourism hotspot if you're stoning gay people to death. Right. But can't all these other countries just see right through them? I mean, the nipple and the nipple too and the tits, like, does it add up?
--:-- Jen Williams: Yeah. So luckily, most of the leaders of all these other Muslim countries are super shitty too. I've personally been in an academic environment, been around several young members of the Saudi royal family. And, you know, we're talking guys who are in their late teens, early 20s, and they're openly throwing money around and arguing over which country has the best hookers and drinking heavily at bars and stuff.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the benefit, if you want to put it that way, of being a royal in these kinds of countries is that you don't actually have to follow any of the rules. They don't really apply to you. Whereas, like, all the regular people who don't get a vote, who have no say in the press, no say in their own lives, their emails, again, are being read. Social media, everything like that is under control. Those are the people who the laws actually apply to.
--:-- Jen Williams: Do we have any idea what the people of Brunei think of their leadership?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: No, not really. For the most part, it's really hard to get messages out. So we usually hear from like expats, people who have fled and sought asylum in the West, speaking out about this.
--:-- Jen Williams: There have been some interviews in the media recently with people from Brunei. We were told to expect that something like this would always come about from religious school. We were taught that Sharia law was going to be the law of the land but ever since 2014 even though the king announced that he was going to put in Sharia law I could never imagine it in the country.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We do occasionally hear from people inside the country who manage to basically sneak a message out. There was a bisexual man who was still in Brunei who spoke to a Washington LGBT news outlet using WhatsApp, the encrypted messaging app and basically was saying look, like I'm afraid for my life. I'm afraid for what I'm supposed to do living here with my partner and really spoke to the sheer terror of that.
--:-- Jen Williams: And the thing is when you control communications like this, when you control people's lives to this degree, when you have this kind of like economic and political and security relationship where you basically own the whole country, there's no place for people to get together and really organize because they're all monitored and watched. And they're also raised and taught to believe in this stuff, right? To think that this is good and that this is essentially family values, right? Like this is the way to run a just moral society.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Jen, you're Muslim. What do you make of this interpretation of Sharia?
--:-- Jen Williams: When you talk about Sharia, it's like this big body of law. There's no one thing that is Sharia or isn't. So probably the best way to think about it is like U.S. constitutional law, for example, right? So you have this like fundamental thing, the U.S. Constitution, and then you have all these like laws over hundreds of years that have evolved and people interpreting this kind of, I think they meant this, no, they meant this, and laws change and they go back and forth. People argue over it. Sharia is the same way. It's based on the Quran and other sources. And it's over hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years that people have argued back and forth. And there's like legal theory and there are different schools of jurisprudence. And it's this whole big body of argument of law. And you can basically pick and choose different versions of interpretation. So there's no one Sharia.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So when people talk about Sharia law, like you'll hear this a lot on Fox News. It's like Sharia law. Muslims in America want Sharia. We decided to launch a special Hannity investigation to find out if American Muslims think that Sharia law should supersede the U.S. Constitution. Well, if you go ask like any average Muslim, do you believe in Sharia? They're gonna be like, yeah, because it just means path for how to live like a moral life and how to set up a society in a moral, just, socially just way. But depending on who's interpreting it and what century you're going back to for interpretations, like any religion, you're going to have stuff that reflects the culture at the time, society at the time.
--:-- Jen Williams: So there are LGBTQ Muslim groups that are very active and who are like, no, this is Islam. Like, Muslims can be gay and you can be gay and be Muslim. But this is one very strict interpretation. It just so happens to be that the sultan, this guy who runs this whole country as his own personal fiefdom, has ascribed to this very specific, narrow, really fundamentalist, really hardcore, brutal version of Islam that he is implementing in his country. That means that all these people under his rule, they have to believe and act and live in a way that the Sultan says so, even though he doesn't actually live that way himself.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Jen Williams is the foreign editor at Vox. I'm Sean Rameswaram. This is Today Explained. Thanks to the Quip Electric Toothbrush Company for supporting the show today. The Quip Electric Toothbrush starts at just $25. That's like an IMAX movie, but clean teeth, no popcorn. Anyway, you can find it at getquip.com slash explained. That website is getquip.com slash explained.
