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Government wants Gafatar members to fit back into society
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Rehabilitation: Military and police personnel help Fajar Nusantara Movement (Gafatar) followers disembark from naval vessel KRI Teluk Gilimanuk, which transported them from Pontianak, West Kalimantan to Tanjung Emas Port in Semarang, Central Java, on Jan.25. Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung has said the government wants Gafatar members to return back to the wider community. (ANTARA FOTO/Risky Andrianto)
T
he government is discussing the best ways to help members of the Fajar Nusantara Movement (Gafatar), which has been declared heretical by the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), to return back to normal society, a minister has said.
“We want them to live normally, return back to society,” Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung said as quoted by kompas.com at the Presidential Palace in Jakarta on Wednesday.
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo will soon hold a meeting with relevant ministers to discuss the impact of the relocation of Gafatar members. The meeting is scheduled to be held in the middle of February.
Meanwhile, Religious Affairs Minister Lukman Hakim Syaifuddin said Gafatar members should be protected from any kind of discrimination and violence.
Despite an MUI fatwa that declared Gafatar a heretical organization, the minister said the government would continue to protect and help rehabilitate Gafatar members.
“A religious belief should be built with an emphatic approach so it can hold on to the main principles of religious teaching that are not considered heretical by all Indonesian people,” said Lukman.
In its fatwa issued on Wednesday, the MUI declared Gafatar to be a heretical organization and its followers to be murtad (apostates).
“Those who have believed in Gafatar’s views and religious teachings are apostates. They must repent and ask God for forgiveness and immediately return back to Islamic teachings,” MUI chairman Ma’ruf Amin said as quoted by Antara in a press conference in Jakarta.
He said Gafatar was proven to have mixed up, or syncretized, three religions, namely Islam, Christianity and Judaism; thus, the MUI declared Gafatar to be heretical.
Ma’ruf said the MUI came to such a decision through a long and thorough examination. The council observed that Gafatar stemmed from a religious organization created by Ahmad Mussadeq, namely Al Qiyadah Al Islamiyah, which then transformed into a new group called Komunitas Millah Abraham (Komar).
Ma’ruf said Mussadeq was the key figure in Gafatar as he was the spiritual leader of the organization.
In 2007, the MUI declared Al Qiyadah Al Islamiyah to be a heretical organization and accused Mussadeq of committing blasphemy in his claim that he was the successor of Prophet Muhammad. (ebf)
