Regulating Crimes under Muslim Law and European Civil Law Framework in Indonesia Lottery Gambling as a Case Study

Abstract

Indonesia’s penal code, derived from Dutch colonial law, defines gambling as speculative betting on luck—a vague formulation that leaves room for ambiguity. Because Indonesia incorporates Islamic law into its legal system, clarifying the definition of gambling becomes especially crucial. However, divergent and often contradictory interpretations among Islamic jurists, particularly regarding whether gambling falls within the scope of punitive criminal law, complicate this task within Indonesia’s framework of legal pluralism. This study traces the evolving interaction among Islamic law, customary law (adat), and state laws in Indonesia, using the controversy over the Porkas/SDSB lotteries of the 1980s and 1990s as a case study. The central argument is that, although fiqh remains largely marginalized in the Indonesian Penal Code, adjudicators occasionally draw on Muslim legal sources—particularly adat laws—to define criminal offenses. Even in the SDSB case, however, European civil law exerted more influence over the criminalization of gambling than Islamic law. While muftis continue to play a limited role in penal legislation, despite having lesser political influence, their views often influence public opinion or institutionalized norms, further sidelining fiqh in defining the legal contours of gambling.

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