For seeking answers on Islam, Muslim gets charged with blasphemy
(MMO) – None, however, were able to answer him, so Wan Sulaiman earned the attention of the Perak Islamic Religious Department (JAIP).
“I bear witness that there is no god but Allah,” is the first part of the shahadah, a declaration of faith for Muslims, which has its origins in a verse in the Quran.
“I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God,” is the second part, but unlike the first, it does not appear in any of the holy scriptures.
So, where did it come from?
This was the question on the mind of Wan Sulaiman Wan Ismail, 53, when he sought clarification in 2013 from religious teachers on the origin of a practice considered as one of the key pillars of Islam.
The former businessman from Perak said he raised that question to several religious teachers, including scholars in the Ipoh mufti office, the Perak religious authorities and even state mosque imams. Many of these clerics, he said, were familiar with him as he met with them regularly for the past 15 years.
None, however, were able to answer him, so Wan Sulaiman stopped asking a year later.
But for seeking answers, Wan Sulaiman earned the attention of the Perak Islamic Religious Department (JAIP). He was summoned several times in 2014 by the authority, whose officers he claimed tried to dissuade him from posing his questions and to convince him to abandon several Quranic practices he has adopted.
The matter came to a head on January 21 this year when state religious enforcers raided his home in Ipoh and confiscated his handwritten personal notes, in addition to screening his personal computer and mobile phone.
On the same day, Wan Sulaiman was charged in the Ipoh Shariah High Court under Section 15 of the Perak Shariah Criminal Enactment 1992, with “mocking, ridiculing or insulting Quranic or hadith texts”.
