The Jakarta Post | Mon, 01/17/2011 5:21 PM |
The history of Ahmadiyah in Indonesia began in the 1920s when three young aspiring scholars from Sumatera Tawalib — a prestigious Islamic boarding school in West Sumatra — decided to further their studies overseas.
The wave of Islamic modernism was then sweeping the archipelago — two decades before the predominantly Muslim population proclaimed independence from the Dutch.
This was in the days when few Muslims scholars believed that returning to the true, uncorrupted teachings of Islam and embracing modernity was key to ending centuries of living under Western imperialism.
The scholars — Abu Bakar Ayyub, Ahmad Nuruddin and Zainin Dahlan — initially planned to leave for Egypt, which was renowned as the center of Islamic studies where ideas of progressive Islam bloomed.
But their teachers advised them to go to India instead, saying the study of Islam also thrived there.
They followed this suggestion and went to India, only to be inspired by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s teachings, introduced to them by members of Anjuman Insyaati Islam, an organization established by several Ahmadis who considered Mirza to be no more than a reformer.
They later visited Qadian in India and pledged spiritual allegiance to then Ahmadiyah leader Hadhrat Haji Mirza Basyiruddin Mahmud Ahmad, who believed Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was more than just a thinker, but also a messenger of God, though he was not sent to annul Prophet Muhammad’s teachings.
“The pledge made by the three would later change the face of Islam in Indonesia,” the Ahmadiyah website www.alislam.org claims.
In 1925, upon a request from the three scholars, Basyiruddin sent a delegate, Maulana Rahmat Ali, an Indian who had graduated from Punjab University, to the East Indies to propagate Ahmadiyah.
Maulana’s first stop was Tapaktuan in Aceh, from where he continued the journey to Padang, West Sumatra, where within a year he managed to establish Ahmadiyah as a legal organization.
Five years later, the pioneers made their way to Jakarta, gaining more followers, and began to face resistance from local Muslim clerics who accused them of deviating from the orthodox Islam.
In the 1930s, under Dutch rule, public debates were staged between Ahmadi and mainstream Muslim clerics, including the renowned cleric from Persis, Ahmad Hassan.
In 1935, Jakarta was declared the center of the Ahmadiyah movement in Indonesia before being moved to Parung, Bogor, West Java, in 1987.
There was no persecution of the new faith until the 1950s when hard-line Darul Islam rebels killed a group of Ahmadis in West Java for refusing to denounce their faith and returning to “true” Islam.
However, in 1953 the Sukarno administration endorsed Ahmadiyah as an official Islamic organization, paving the way for the group to widen its missionary outreach in peace.
It was not until the Muslim World League (Rabita al-Alam al-Islami) in 1974 declared Ahmadiyah heretical and not part of Islam did Ahmadis begin to feel the heat of hate speech and mistreatment from mainstream Muslim leaders, who were apprehensive of the group’s growth.
In the 1980s, the Ahmadiyah website claims, Soeharto’s regime banned the Ahmadis from conducting religious activities while their mosques were attacked following a fatwa from the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) insisting the group’s teachings strayed from Islam.
Ahmadiyah in Indonesia staged a brief revival in the 1990s when the international Ahmadiyah organization launched the TV channel Moslem Television Ahmadiyya, spreading its teachings globally.
After the fall of the New Order in 1998, the Ahmadis found safety in the democratic rule of president Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid, who welcomed the visit of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s grandson, Mirza Tahir Ahmad, to Jakarta in 2000.
Gus Dur’s successor, Megawati Soekarnoputri, Sukarno’s daughter, also refrained from banning Ahmadiyah. But the peace did not last.
In 2005, under the administration of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the MUI, backed by hard-line Muslim groups, including Hizbut Tahrir and the Islam Defenders Front (FPI), asserted that Ahmadiyah was heretical and should be declared a different religion. The fatwa led to a series of attacks on Ahmadis that continue to this day.
“I think the President approves of the violent acts against the Ahmadis because the government is definitely turning a blind eye to the persecution,” Nurahim, the secretary-general of the Ahmadiyah community in Manislor village, Kuningan regency, West Java.
- JP/Arghea Desafti Hapsari
— JP
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