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View all search resultsLetter: Attack on Ahmadiyah
These are comments from the website to the article entitled “Attack on Ahmadiyah condemned by most, survey reveals”, published on Sept
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T
hese are comments from the website to the article entitled “Attack on Ahmadiyah condemned by most, survey reveals”, published on Sept. 8, 2011.
Of course if you ask people whether they support horrific violence in the name of religion then they will tend to say no. But it would have been more revealing to know how many respondents supported full religious freedom for members of the Ahmadiyah community.
The reality is that many mainstream Muslims support restrictions on the freedom of Ahmadis to worship and express their opinions openly. Hence, they tend to support oppressive measures and threats against Ahmadis by national and local government ministers and regents, which radical groups correctly interpret as a green light to intimidate and assault Ahmadiyah followers. Police officers and judges in turn effectively condone violent attacks of the kind seen in Cikeusik.
As long as most Indonesians remain opposed to genuine religious freedom, oppression of minorities in one form or another is sure to continue.
John Hargreaves
East Jakarta
The Ahmadiyah movement began more than a century ago, approximately 80 years ago in Indonesia. They fought against the Dutch, one Ahmadi composed the national anthem and after Wahhabi alumni began to infest Indonesia with their kafir teachings 10 to 15 years ago, suddenly the Ahmadis became “deviant”.
Are the haters of Ahmadiyah (like the ignorant 40 percent of the survey) claiming for themselves that they are “telmi” (very slow thinkers) or do they envy them so much that they take any straw, even the most absurd ones (Wahhabi lies), to vent their anger and hate towards others? If the Ahmadis were wrong from the beginning, they would have been banned more than 100 years ago.
All the debate is about the Imam Mahdi. Is he a prophet? If so, then Muhammad was never the last, and haters of Ahmadiyah are deceiving themselves and others. But if the Imam Mahdi is not a prophet but something different, then the Ahmadis are in their right to believe that this Mahdi has already arrived, as this is not against Islamic teaching and therefore they are not deviant.
Only supporters and radicals from the violent cults of Wahhabism and Salafism want them (and other “non-Muslims”) banned, exterminated or exiled on an uninhabited island. Who will be the next “deviant” group after the Ahmadis to be accused of being “not Islam”? The Shiites? The Sufis? The NU? The kejawen (Javanese syncretism)? They are already feeling the heat, too.
Edo E.
Jakarta
