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Indonesian Scholars Want "Deviant" Group Banned
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Jumblatt's supporters wave a flag as they campaign in Aley town in Mount Lebanon. (Reuters)
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JAKARTA,
July 29, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) - Different Muslim groups are pressuring
the Indonesian government to ban Indonesian Ahmadiyah Congregation
(JAI), a deviant religious movement with branches in Singapore and
Malaysia, according to press reports.
The
country's highest Islamic authority, the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI),
recommended the ban at its national congress, saying that the group's
activities threaten public order in the country, The Straits Times
reported Thursday, July 28.
It
has also called on the government to act against groups that claim to be
"proponents of liberal Islamic thought."
Jemaah
Ahmadiyah hit the headlines recently when an angry Muslim mob ransacked
its Kampus Mubarok spiritual center in Bogor, near Jakarta, two weeks
ago.
Police
had to evacuate about 100 Ahmadis and their families to safety, the Times
said.
"If
the Ahmadis here refuse to disband, they will have to face the full
force of the Muslim community," said Amin Djamaluddin of the
Islamic Studies Council.
He
claimed that his group was acting to enforce a 1980 religious ruling
(fatwa) of the MUI which calls the Ahmadiyah "a following which is
outside the fold of Islam ... deviant and astray."
“Ahmadiyyah
is a movement that started in India in the beginning of the 20th
century. The founder of this movement, Ghulam Ahmed, from the village of
Qadiyan in Punjab, claimed to be the Messenger of Allah," according
to IslamOnline.net fatwa desk.
Because
of this claim, the scholars of Islam unanimously consider him as a
non-believer. Some of his followers still believe that he was the
Messenger although they say that he was not the full Messenger, but a
subsidiary Messenger.
The
movement, which is registered officially as an organization, has been
allowed to exist by the government as long as it does not proselytize
among mainstream Muslims in Indonesia, the biggest Muslim nation on
earth.
But
of late, the movement has taken a high profile, holding annual
conventions in Bogor, enraging Muslim groups, according to the paper.
Freedom
Dins
Syamsyuddin, MUI secretary-general and leader of Muhammadiyah, said:
"We have no problem if the Jemaah Ahmadiyah do not call themselves
Muslims. They are free to believe and practice their religion.
"However,
once they call themselves Muslims, their tenets of belief must be the
same as those in the Muslim world."
They
misinterpret the verse of Surat Al-Ahzab where Allah Almighty says, “
Muhammad is not the father of any man among you, but he is the messenger
of Allah and the Seal of the Prophets; and Allah is Aware of all
things.” (Al-Ahzab: 40).
They
claim that the word Khatam An-nabiyyin doesn't mean the last
Prophet, but the best Prophet.
According
to them, Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, was the best
Prophet, but it is possible to have "lesser or minor
Prophets".
However,
this is obviously a wrong interpretation because there are many other
verses and Prophetic Hadiths that indicate that Prophet Muhammad, peace
and blessings be upon him, was sent as a Prophet of Allah for all
people, and there are many authentic Hadiths, of which the Prophet,
peace and blessings be upon him, said that there would be no Prophet
after him, according to IOL fatwa desk.
So
Ahmadis have rejected a basic principle of Islamic faith and because of
this, they are not considered Muslims.
Among
them, there is a group that says that Ghulam Ahmad was not a Prophet,
but that he was the Messiah or the Madhi or things like that.
However,
that is also obviously wrong because the Messiah and the Mahdi will come
at the end of the world and the end of the world has not come yet, so
that shows that this claim was a false one.
The
Jemaah Ahmadiyah is contemplating suing MUI, blaming it for the attacks
on its premises.
It
has support from liberal Muslim groups and human rights activists which
condemn the attacks as “religious persecution”.
"Which
is higher, the MUI fatwa or the Indonesian Constitution that guarantees
freedom of religion?" Human rights lawyer Adnan Buyung Nasution
told the daily.
Muslim
scholar Azyumardi Azra of the Syarif Hidayatullah Islamic State
University and Muslim intellectual Dawam Rahardjo urged MUI to lift its
fatwa on the Ahmadiyah.
But
Ma'ruf Amin, head of MUI's edicts committee, said: "We cannot
change the fatwa because the Ahmadis' religious beliefs have not
changed.
"At
any rate, all Muslim scholars had agreed in 1974 in Mecca that the
Ahmadiyah movement is outside the fold of Islam."
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