North Sumatra branch of Ulema Council sparks row after official said conversions were rampant in local district
An official at the North Sumatra branch of Indonesia's Ulema Council claimed many Muslims were being converted to other religions through marriage. (Photo: Unsplash)
A provincial branch of Indonesia’s highest Muslim clerical body was forced to apologize on May 17 after coming under fire from local authorities and Christians for indirectly accusing religious minorities of apostasy.
The row began several days earlier when the North Sumatra branch of the Ulema Council claimed that a district in the province had a very alarming rate of apostasy cases.
Muhammad Hatta, who heads the council’s local religious propagation desk, said over the weekend that he was informed about a large number of Muslims abandoning their faith in Langkat district.
Despite a lack of concrete data confirming this, he claimed that “it was very alarming.”
According to him, there were attempts to convert local Muslims to other faiths through marriage and other methods.
“Sometimes a couple professing Islam and another religion get married the Islamic way but after the Muslim is forced to adhere to his or her partner’s religion,” Indonesian language news portal detick.com quoted him as saying.
He pointed to a case in which a 30-year-old Muslim woman was allegedly forced to convert to Christianity after marrying a Protestant man in the district.
However, his claims were fiercely denied...
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