Legal-Technical Secularization and the Reconstruction of Religion–State Relations in Indonesian Criminal Law Reform

An Analysis of the National Criminal Code and the 2025 Criminal Procedure Code

Abstract

Indonesia’s criminal law reform under Law No. 1 of 2023 on the Criminal Code and Law No. 20 of 2025 on the Criminal Procedure Code raises a fundamental question concerning the constitutional transformation of religious and moral values into enforceable criminal norms. Employing doctrinal legal research through statutory, conceptual, and functional-comparative approaches, this article examines legal-technical secularization, changing religion–state relations, and the safeguards governing criminalization. Three findings emerge. First, Article 2 and Articles 411–412 of the Criminal Code subject living law and morality-related offenses to legally defined conditions, offense elements, and complaint requirements. Second, Article 235 of the Criminal Procedure Code addresses categories of admissible evidence and the judicial assessment of unlawfully obtained or inauthentic evidence; such provisions do not, by themselves, resolve wider questions of privacy, equality, or proportionality. Third, Malaysia and Singapore demonstrate distinct approaches to the allocation of religious-law jurisdiction and institutional competence. The article proposes an integrative-constitutional model linking sources of normative value, the statutory construction of offenses, procedural enforcement, and constitutional review. Its four-stage assessment offers a structured test of legitimate interests, necessity, normative precision, and judicial safeguards without equating statutory codification with the disappearance of religion from law.