... [I]t came to light in the news accounts that the 'syahadat' statement used for conversion of Ahmadis by the Religious Affairs Minister and FPI was not the traditional authentic Islamic creed in practice since the time of the Prophet Mohammad.
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| Suryadharma Ali meeting with Islamist leaders [file photo] |
Source/Credit: The Jakarta Globe / Detik.com
By Jakarta Globe | Edited by AT | May 20, 2013
Some members of the non-violent Ahmadiyah sect in Tasikmalaya, West Java, supposedly accepted an Islamist group's version of Islam on Monday and declared their allegiance to Indonesia’s violent religious group.
According to Nurul Mubin, the head of the Islamic Defender’s Front (FPI) in Tasikmalaya, as quoted by Detik.com, the conversion took place during a ceremony at a mosque where the Minister of Religious Affairs, Suryadharma Ali, personally appeared to oversee the conversion and the Ahmadis were required to recite the 'syahadat' to affirm their faith.
“They [converts] pledged allegiance to their [new] faith three times and it was witnessed by the Minister of Religious Affairs and the Tasikmalaya district head,” Nurul Mubin was quoted as claiming in the media.
However, it came to light in the news accounts that the 'syahadat' statement used for conversion of Ahmadis by the Religious Affairs Minister and FPI was not the traditional authentic Islamic creed in practice since the time of the Prophet Mohammad, which reads:
"لَا إِلٰهَ إِلَّا الله مُحَمَّدٌ رَسُولُ الله (lā ʾilāha ʾillā l-Lāh, Muḥammadur rasūlu l-Lāh) (in Arabic) - There is no god but Allah, Muhammad is the messenger of Allah."Ahmadi Muslims already subscribe to this creed.
The creed invented by FPI and the Indonesia's Minister of Religious Affairs reads that "there is only one god and that Muhammad was his last prophet," the newspaper has reported.
Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali reportedly said that he was so proud that he “began to cry when they recited the syahadat” and he also promised to provide school scholarships for the children of the newly-converted Ahmadis.
[The following report is published by the Jakarta Globe]
Meanwhile, Nurul claimed that prior to these new converts, a total of 728 Indonesian Ahmadis have accepted mainstream Sunni Islam.
“This is not a new development,” Firdaus Mubarik, a spokesman for the Indonesian Ahmadiyah Congregation (JAI), said. “It’s normal that the government would bring up the issue of Ahmadiyah conversions after recent attacks on Ahmadiyah mosques.”
He was skeptical of the validity of the supposed conversions, and in his view, there were two possible scenarios that could have unfolded.
One possibility is that these Ahmadis were forced to convert to Sunnism on threat of being expelled from their villages with their families, as what happened in Cianjur, West Java, in March 2012.
“The second possibility is that they’re actually the same people who claimed to embrace [Sunni] Islam several months or even years ago. Journalists should seek out the data and find out if they have truly converted,” he said.
Firdaus went on to recommend that the government make available the list of Ahmadis who supposedly converted to Sunni Islam.
According to Firdaus, there are more than 10,000 Ahmadis living in Tasikmalaya.
Furthermore, he did not understand why people think that the Ahmadiyah need to declare their faith by reciting the syahadat, as Ahmadis also utilize the same affirmation.
The Ahmadiyah community has faced years of discrimination in Indonesia, where the sect’s branch of Islam has been named “deviant” by the FPI.
Last month, 30 Ahmadiyah members were sealed in the Al-Misbah mosque when the Bekasi government shuttered the building.
Religious intolerance is on the rise in Indonesia, where minorities find themselves targeted by members of an increasingly vocal hard-line fringe. In few places is intolerance more routine than West Java.
Read original post here: Twenty Ahmadis Convert to Sunni Islam in West Java
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