High-living Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei imposes Islamic hudud law
Brunei's ruler lives in a huge mansion and hires pop stars for his parties. Now he's imposing Islamic laws that will see adulterers stoned to death.
Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah lives in a 1,788-room palace and has a garrison of British troops on his payroll to help secure his oil-rich nation.
In 1996, late pop idol Michael Jackson was paid a reported US$17 million to give a concert to mark the sultan's 50th birthday.
His brother, Prince Jefri Bolkiah, has been embroiled in scandals that revealed a jet-set lifestyle, including allegations of a high-priced harem of Western paramours and a luxury yacht called "Tits".
This royal reputation for excess and extravagance stands in stark contrast to the religious turn that the country took last Wednesday, when the sultan introduced hudud - an Islamic penal code that calls for death by stoning for crimes such as adultery.
But according to people with inside knowledge of the royal family, Brunei's journey to hudud law, which harks back to the time of the Caliphate, has been a long time in the making.
The Sultan's spiritual influence lies some 1,400 kilometres away to the west, in Malaysia's state of Kelantan, where a Muslim cleric by the name of Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat resides.