JakartaPost-Aug 3, 2023
A Muslim preacher has been arrested on charges including blasphemy and hate speech after his Islamic boarding school provoked protests for allowing women to preach and pray beside men, police said Wednesday. The Al-Zaytun boarding school in Indramayu, West Java, the country’s most populous province, has faced backlash from conservative groups that have accused it of following a version of Islam incompatible with the Quran. School head Panji Gumilang, 77, was detained early on Wednesday after questioning, National Police spokesman Brig. Gen. Ahmad Ramadhan told reporters. Panji faces five years in prison for blasphemy, six for spreading hate speech and 10 on the charge of spreading fake news and intentionally causing chaos in public, according to the charges. Founded in 1996 and home to roughly 5,000 students, the boarding school has caused a stir with practices like allowing men and women to pray alongside each other, and women to become preachers, which are uncommon in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. The country does not follow Islamic law and has a tradition of pluralism and moderate Islam, although more conservative interpretations of the religion have gained ground since the fall of authoritarian leader Soeharto in 1998. The school sparked uproar in conservative circles and protests outside its compound when social media footage in late April showed women praying in the same row as men. Women are typically expected to pray behind men in traditional Islamic prayer. Another practice of the school that sparked controversy was allowing women to give a sermon in Friday prayers, a task usually reserved for men in traditional Islamic teaching. The school is also accused of ties to Darul Islam, a group that fought for an Islamic state in Indonesia in the 1950s and 1960s and survived a military defeat. Thousands have gathered outside the school several times since late June to call for its closure. Read more at: https://www.thejakartapost.com/indonesia/2023/08/03/islamic-school-leader-panji-gumilang-detained-for-blasphemy-hate-speech.html.
