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.