Southeast Asian nations to meet on Islamic sect
Southeast Asian nations to meet on Islamic sect
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuter): Southeast Asian countries will meet
next week to discuss banning a messianic Islamic sect that has
aroused security concerns around the region, a Malaysian official
said on yesterday.
Ministers in charge of religious affairs for countries in the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will meet on
Malaysia's northern island resort of Langkawi on Aug. 3 and 4, an
official in the prime minister's department said.
"We need to adopt a joint strategy against the movement as it
has numerous followers and sympathizers in the region," the New
Straits Times yesterday quoted minister Abu Bakar as saying.
Dozens of members of Al Arqam, a Sufi group that believes an
Islamic messiah is coming soon to usher in a new age of Islam,
have been arrested over the past week for distributing leaflets
answering charges leveled against it by the Malaysian government.
Police say they are being charged with violating the Printing
Presses and Publications act for not identifying the name and
address of the printer on the leaflets.
Malaysia's state-sponsored Islamic center had accused the
group of training suicide warriors in Bangkok but later backed
off when the charge was denied by officials in Thailand.
Several members of ASEAN -- which groups Brunei, Indonesia,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand -- have already
taken action against the sect, whose male members are easily
identified by their long robes and turbans.
Indonesia is considering a ban on the movement's teachings and
Malaysia is set to do the same. The tiny Borneo sultanate of
Brunei has banned the group for years. Singapore earlier this
month deported the group's charismatic leader Ashaari Muhammad.
Abu Bakar said Islamic officials and scholars were upset by
Ashaari's claims in one of his 64 published books that he has had
a dialog with the Prophet Mohammad.
"They have come to hero-worship Ashaari to the extent of
claiming to have seen his image on the moon," Abu Bakar was
quoted as saying of the movement's followers. Al Arqam claims
100,000 members in Malaysia and many more elsewhere.
Al Arqam, founded in 1968, formed a holding company last year
claiming assets of US$115 million. Its many businesses include
farms, food processing factories, a chain of restaurants and
mini-markets, and an oil services company.