Skip to main content

Bekasi Ahmadis remain in sealed mosque

Twenty Ahmadiyah followers have missed work and school, remaining holed up in the Al-Misbah Mosque in Bekasi, east of Jakarta, since local officials sealed it off on April 4.

The security coordinator for the Ahmadiyah Indonesia Congregation, Deden Sudjana, said on Saturday that the Ahmadis were in good condition and would stay in the mosque until the city administration allowed the followers of the minority Muslim sect to practice their religion and remove the fence sealing the mosque.

However, officials appear unlikely to honor that request.

Deden said that Bekasi Mayor Rahmat Effendi invited the Bekasi Ahmadiyah congregation members to a dialogue on April 11, which he said ended in deadlock and was attended by representatives of the Bekasi branch of the Indonesia Ulema Council (MUI).

The administration, according to Deden, had agreed to open the mosque only if the Ahmadis removed Islam from their congregation’s name or allowed officials to arrange all services at the mosque, including deciding on its imams.

“We refused to agree to the first point because, just like other Muslims, we are Muslims, too,” Deden said. 

“Please do not decide who will be the imam in our own mosque either.”

Deden earlier said that the administration justified shutting down the mosque under the terms of a West Java gubernatorial decree and the 2008 joint ministerial decree banning members of Ahmadiyah from propagating their beliefs.

The closure drew anger from groups promoting pluralism and religious freedom, with 200 clerics in Greater Jakarta taking to the street on April 8 to criticize the government for its failure to crack down on religious intolerance.

The clerics in their cassocks, along with the representatives of Shia, Ahmadiyah and practitioners of indigenous faiths, marched from Bung Karno Stadium to the House of Representatives’ compound in Senayan, Central Jakarta, calling on the government to heed the 1945 Constitution that guarantees religious freedom for minorities.

Eva Kusuma Sundari, a lawmaker on House Commission III overseeing law and human rights, met the 20 besieged Ahmadis on Saturday, saying that the Ahmadis had not met their families in 23 days.

The Ahmadis have been given food and water delivered through the fence from their fellow believers, Eva said.

“I witnessed how they did it. It was inhumane and I was sad about it, but it was the only thing that they could do for their fellow believers who are fighting for their rights,” the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) politician told The Jakarta Post.

Contacted separately, Hendardi, the chairman of the Setara Institute, which monitors religious freedom in Indonesia, said that Bekasi had a bad record on guaranteeing religious freedom for the Ahmadis and Christians.

“The administration has to protect and enforce religious freedom for minority groups, instead of being one of the actors attacking religious minority groups,” Hendardi said. 

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

HIGGS BOSON AND DR. ABDUS SALAM

There are four fundamental forces in nature, namely, electromagnetism, weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force and gravity. Electromagnetism can be observed in daily life experience. For instance, lighting is a natural phenomenon. Weak nuclear force is manifested in radioactivity, which is used to cure cancer. Strong nuclear force, on the other hand, is responsible for keeping the nucleus (protons and neutron) together. Whereas, the gravity is observed in everyday life, for example, the planets of solar system rotate around the sun due to gravity. It is important to note that electromagnetism and gravity are long range forces, i.e., these forces can act for longer distances, whereas, weak and strong nuclear forces are only manifested at very short distances, i.e., of the size of a nuclei which is about  10 -15  m . Gravity is very weak as compared to other three fundamental forces and it only manifests itself on massive objects. Since the mass fundamental particles like...
Read more

'People of other religions busy in useless activities during religious festivals': So say Pakistan's school books

LAHORE:   National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP) has conducted a content analysis of the revised curriculum of Punjab and Sindh textbooks for 2012-2013 for inclusion of biased and discriminatory content against religions other than Islam. The findings reveal excessive use of the words Hindu, Christian and Jew while discussing the history of Pakistan and Islamic Studies, which portray the said faiths in a negative light. For example, an Islamic Studies book of Sindh board for class 5, in a chapter on Eid (religious festivals), includes a line saying, “People of other religions usually stay busy in useless activities during their religious festivals. There is no concept of God or submission among them.” The chapter “Pakistan, an Islamic State” in the same textbook of Punjab board includes this line: “Hindus harmed Muslims in every way.” The content analysis has been published in Urdu to generate a debate on how the inclusion of discriminatory content in curric...
Post a Comment
Read more

Press Release UK: Global Minorities Alliance Urges Release of British doctor accused of blasphemy

Glasgow:  A UK-based human rights organisation is calling on the authorities in Pakistan to release a 72-year-old doctor who was arrested for ‘posing as a Muslim’ after being secretly filmed by a patient at his surgery. Global Minorities Alliance, a Glasgow-based human rights organisation which advocates for the rights of minority communities the world over, denounced the imprisonment as a further example of Pakistan’s strict blasphemy laws being used to persecute minorities and whip up religious hatred rather than seek justice in a country which is increasingly being divided by violence. Mr Masood Ahmad, a member of the Ahmadiyya community, was charged under Pakistan’s anti-Ahmadiyya blasphemy legislation after a religious leader posing as a patient attended his homeopathy clinic in Lahore and secretly recorded him reading a verse from the Quran. Mr Ahmad, who has dual Pakistani/UK nationality and previously lived in London, was arrested shortly after and is now in pri...
Read more