It was after midnight on a Saturday in June 2008. People of a small village in North Aceh were watching live coverage of the European Championship football match on their televisions. On that early morning, Sardan, fifty years old, walked soundlessly into the goat stall belonging to one of his neighbours. In his hand was a sharp knife. He intended to use it to slaughter a goat inside the stall. He might have done it, had the goat not groaned and bleated. The goat owner, who lives nearby, was immediately alerted by the terrible noise he heard from the goat stall. Aware that a thief had intruded into the stall, he shouted loudly for help. His outcry quickly attracted the attention of the surrounding neighbours, who were still awake viewing the TV sports programme. The villagers hurriedly ran to the stall and discovered Sardan trying to butcher a goat. They were outraged and lost control of their tempers. Sardan, who was alleged to have previously committed this kind of crime repeatedly, was punched many times in the face. Disastrously, the villagers almost cut off his left arm. This vigilante action was perhaps the harshest communal chastisement ever imposed since Aceh was formally granted permission to apply Islamic sharia law in the post-Suharto period.

Aceh officially began the implementation of sharia in 2001. Yet the punishment of cutting off a thief's hand is not (yet) applicable in Aceh. As of 2003, crimes violating Islamic norms were introduced into the local legislation in Aceh, but in a very limited scope. The Aceh provincial regulations, known in Aceh as qanuns, had listed certain minor Islamic crimes, such as gambling, liquor consumption and the khalwat of an unmarried couple. Passed in 2003, those qanuns stipulated a variety of punishments for offenders. Apart from fines and imprisonment, one particular penalty was regarded as ta'zir (discretionary punishment).