Home Worldwide Indonesia May, 2008 Non-muslims should …

Jakarta (ANTARA News) — Religious Affairs Minister Muhammad Maftuh Basyuni called on non-Muslims not to interfere in the Ahmadiyah issue, much less further complicate the problem.

“I need to make this call so that Muslims can solve their own problem,” Basyuni said here on Tuesday at the opening of a working meeting of his ministry.

The minister said the Ahmadiyah problem was best solved by Muslims themselves. Intervention by outsiders would only compound it, he said.

However, he said the government could provide inputs because the government had authority regarding the issue.

Citing an example, he said when two groups of Indonesian Buddhists were arguing regrading the celebration of Waisak, the government helped them settle their dispute by offering them some options. At the beginning both groups opposed the government`s ideas but eventually they accepted.

On the government’s plan to issue a joint ministerial decree regarding Ahmadiyah, Basyuni said it would be issued soon. However, he reiterated that non-Muslims must not meddle in the affairs of Islam.

The government had earlier planned to issue a joint decree (signed by the attorney general, home affairs minister and religious affairs minister) to ban the activities of the deviant Islamic Ahmadiyah sect.

Muslims in Indonesia and in some other countries such as Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh and Pakistan, consider Ahmadiyah a deviant sect because it doesn’t recognize Muhammad as the last prophet and pays homage to Mirza Gulam Ahmad of Pakistan as its prophet.

The World Muslim League at its annual conference in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, in April 1974, recommended that all Muslim countries impose restrictions on the activities of Ahmadiyah and declare the group a non-Muslim minority. (*)

Copyright © 2008 ANTARA Source: www.antara.co.id/en/arc/2008/5/27/minister-non-muslims-should-not-meddle-in-ahmadiyah-issue/