I went to Aceh, Indonesia, for the first time when I was a PhD student. I was looking at the way in which a programme of Islamisation of the law was being introduced by the government (by incorporating certain aspects of sharia religious law into regional regulations, known locally as qanun) and implemented in this province. For many years, travel to this part of Indonesia, which is located at the northern tip of the island of Sumatra, was restricted. Since 1976, Aceh had been an area of prolonged conflict between the Indonesian military and the Aceh independence movement (GAM). While this had begun with heavy armed fighting and killings in several specific districts, from 1999 onwards there was escalation of the conflict and clashes occurred in almost every district, including the capital of the province, Banda Aceh.

It was late May 2004 when I first stepped on Aceh's soil. The ‘military emergency’ status in Aceh had ended just a couple of weeks before and had changed to ‘civil emergency’. The Garuda Indonesia airplane that flew me from Jakarta landed at noon, and, along with other passengers, I walked into the terminal building. At the entrance doors of the Blang Bintang airport building, I was stunned to see so many soldiers standing around with weapons in their hands. They may have just been doing their job, yet, as a native Indonesian originally from a different island (South Sulawesi) and having often travelled to a number of cities in Indonesia without ever encountering this type of situation, I quickly felt that there was something different in and about Aceh and I realised that this province was not comparable to the others. During this first experience of visiting Aceh (for almost a week) I was overwhelmed with anxieties and fears. Five months later, I returned to Aceh during the Ramadan fasting month (October 2004), two months before the Boxing Day tsunami. This time, although I became used to seeing the same scene, I still experienced the same feelings as before.