‘Scholars’ Escalate Java Jihad – Another Creed Outlawed?


http://nasional.inilah.com/read/detail/1919007/resmi-mui-desak-gubernur-larang-syiah-di-jatim

Inilah.com has reported from Surabaya that those  self-styled ‘scholars’ of the MUI  –  Indonesia Ulema Council – have dropped any pretence at tolerance and urged the East Java Governor to outlaw Shia dissenters.

Overseas readers should be fully aware that the MUI is not another FPI, not some white-shirt goon squad that revels in brutal hoodlum street brawls. Far from it.

They are state-sponsored and it’s not unusual to have Indonesia’s President showing up at their conferences. They have opulent HQ in Jakarta and since Suharto’s time have battened like leeches on the public purse. (for a learned study of the MUI’s origins as a creature of the Suharto doctatorship, see http://www.hum.uu.nl/medewerkers/m.vanbruinessen/publications/Bruinessen_State_Islam_or_Islamic_State.pdf)

So when they thus declare open season on religious liberty – and they’ve been doing so for a while, only expanding their range of victims – they do so in the sure and certain knowledge that they will bring international ridicule and dismay down on their country.

Here’s the old bigot at the centre of the issue. 

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Buchori

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“If the governor is pleased, MUI propose that the Shia doctrine be also prohibited like the Ahmadis in East Java. Regulation 55/2012 was set up in general, there is no specific sentence on Shia,” East Java MUI chairman KH Abdusshomad Buchori told reporters at the office of the Governor of East Java after a meeting of the scholars’ Ulama Board  Pesantren Madura (Basra) with Deputy Governor Gus Ipul, Tuesday (10/23/2012).

So this clique wants a nice easy solution, just tag the Shia onto a lengthening list of proscribed faiths, wallowing in ‘victory’ over yet another creed that irks them.

How narrow the minds, how gross the ambition.

Decree (SK) East Java Governor 188/94/KPTS/013/2011 No. Prohibition of Activities Jemaah Ahmadiyah Indonesia (JAI) in the province. He asked the provincial government also to list 12 Shiite centers in East Java which need to be monitored. The books containing the teachings of the Shia should be investigated.

Investigated? And then what? Burn them, as Gramedia, the Jakarta Post’s parent company, did in Jakarta, under the malign and ever-watchful eyes of the MUI here?

The fanatic goes on to rail at Shia on the issue of kawin kontrak, contract marriages, which he seems to think are an East Java phenomenon caused by Shia, when everyone knows they are very common in West Java, with or without input from Sunni or Shia. It is just a form of prostitution which nobody does anything about.

What makes this ‘cleric’ and his cronies most deplorable is the way they openly assert that they have no quarrel with respecting the Shia internationally.

It’s ONLY because the Shia minority locally have become victims of murderous thuggery  – at the hands of Sunni savages – that the MUI want to put them down as outlaws. Why not urge a clamp-down on  the blood-thirsty mob who attacked them!

How low can the MUI get? 

 East Java MUI did not dismiss the Shia recognized internationally. But, so as not to disturb security and comfort in Java, the Shia should be prohibited from developing in East Java. “I agree it be disbanded, because it can trigger events that interfere with the safety and comfort in East Java,” he said. [http://www.beritajatim.com/detailnews.php/6/Politik%20&%20Pemerintahan/2012-10-23/150138/Resmi,_MUI_Desak_Gubernur_Larang_Syiah_di_Jatim!.]

Not much lower, I fear.