TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Ponari's practice should be stopped: MUI
The East Java branch of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) has urged the provincial admi-nistration to stop the practice of 9-year-old child "healer" Ponari, after four people were killed outside his home
Change Size
The East Java branch of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) has urged the provincial admi-nistration to stop the practice of 9-year-old child "healer" Ponari, after four people were killed outside his home.
"The practice could claim more victims, it must be ended," East Java MUI chairman Abdusomad Bukhori said Wednesday.
He added the MUI had sent a letter to newly inaugurated Governor Soekarwo to urge him to take action to prevent more deaths.
Four people died of asphyxiation after being caught up for hours in huge crowds of thousands of people who had flocked to the child's home in Jombang to seek cures for various ailments.
Abdusomad said that based on the MUI's observations, the so-called practice of healing patients through the use of gutter water and mud, or rainwater dripping from Ponari's roof was an exaggeration. "If people believe Ponari's stone can cure diseases, then that's dangerous and could damage the principle belief of Islam," he said, urging Muslim not to believe the hype.
East Java Deputy Governor Syaifullah Yusuf said Ponari's "ability" to heal illness depended on people's personal beliefs, but stopped short of calling for the practice to be stopped.
"As I see it, the people are taking a shortcut. The only certain thing is that Ponari's emergence has claimed four human lives," Syaifullah said last week.
Ponari become a phenomenon for his alleged ability to heal various illnesses through the use of a "miraculous" stone. The child reportedly got the stone during a heavy rain marked by lightning, during which he threw the stone away three times but it returned to him each time.
More than 5,000 patients from Jombang and further afield flock to his home each day. Although police closed the practice at one point, they failed to keep it shut. Thousands of would-be patients still descend on the house, with some allegedly cured of their illnesses afterward.
The child's father, Kamsen, and his mother, Mukaromah, recently attempted to halt the practice, but were prevented from doing so by the practice's self-appointed "committee", made up of their neighbors. Kamsen was at one point assaulted by them when he tried to take his son home to put him back in school.
"I just wanted to pick up my son, but I got beaten up," said Kansen, currently being treated at a nearby hospital.
The neighborhood has devolved into a three-ring circus, with residents lapping up the attention by setting up food stalls, parking lots and even lodgings for the patients and their families. Daily turnover in the neighborhood reportedly reaches Rp 1 billion (US$84,745).
For daily parking fees, car owners are charged Rp 50,000 each, and motorcyclists Rp 10,000. The price of food and beverages in the area has also increased sharply.
