MUI: Not enough proof for case against Al Zaitun

Yuli Tri Suwarni, The Jakarta Post, Bandung

West Java's Indonesian Ulemas Council (MUI) said on Thursday that it lacks the evidence to declare that the Al-Zaitun Boarding School in Indramayu has breached the Islamic principles and wanted to set up an Islamic state despite widespread claims.

Many people said that the school "had deviated from Islamic teachings -- but we haven't yet found enough evidence to issue a fatwa saying that it was off-limits, and should be prohibited," Rakhmat Syafei, chairman of West Java MUI's law and Islamic study department, said here on Thursday. A fatwa is a binding ruling in religious matters.

National Police Spokesman Insp. Gen. Saleh Saaf said in Jakarta last week that the boarding school had practiced a kind of brainwashing on its students. For example, they considered non-members of the Al-Zaitun as infidels.

Saleh said that many people, including a number of parents, reported that they had been forced into making cash donations by school officials, who said it would go towards their plan to establish an Islamic state.

Rakhmat said that West Java's religious agency, the police, the prosecutors office and MUI held a meeting on Wednesday night to discuss the Al-Zaitun case. But no clear measures were taken during the meeting.

He added that the West Java MUI had asked the central MUI in Jakarta to investigate the boarding school. It also attached its request to the central MUI with a list of evidence, including news clippings, books, and reports from a number of witnesses over the course of the last five months.

"We've asked the central MUI to issue a fatwa soon, as we -- police and the prosecutors -- received complaints from many people who said that we've been very slow in dealing with the problem," he said.

He added that the boarding school's curriculum, combined with reports and complaints from a variety of people who apparently never attended the school, could not justify that the school had violated the Islamic teachings.

"We have to comply with the Islamic principle that issuing a fatwa without enough evidence is "zalim," or despotic.

But allowing it to continue as such is also zalim," he said, quoting a verse from Al Qur'an.

Rakhmat, who is also a lecturer of the state Islamic Study Institution (IAIN) Sunan Gunung Djati in Bandung, said that the efforts to set up an Islamic state not only pursued in West Java but also other people in other provinces.

"That's why we consider that the central MUI to be the right group to deal with the problem. But it will only issue a fatwa, and it will leave police and prosecutors to take legal action," he said.

Police and prosecutors, however, have also stated that they had no enough evidence to make it a legal case. "They're still investigating the case," he said.

The police, he said, complained over the fact that the public reported the boarding school's case to the province's legislative council, and not the police office.