Introducing Jakarta's 'polygamy club', Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

Introducing Jakarta's 'polygamy club'

Doctor Gina Puspita greets our crew with a warm, genuine smile on the balcony outside the headquarters of Indonesia's "polygamy club."

As a strict Muslim she's not allowed to touch a man, so she presses her hands together as if to pray and gently bows towards the male members of our party.

We're on the outskirts of the country's capital, Jakarta, to interview Puspita, president of this controversial club that's been operating for the past 12 months. It comes under the control of its parent organization, Global Ikhwan, a company that supports its polygamous members around the world economically and socially.

Puspita wears purple-framed glasses and a cream headscarf pulled together at the chin with a diamante pin. On her black jacket she wears a pearl brooch that was made by some ladies who work in one of the businesses associated with Global Ikwhan.

46-year-old Puspita doesn't fit the normal profile of a polygamous wife. Born and raised in Jakarta, she went to university in Toulouse, France and has a PHD in aeronautical construction engineering and has worked for Airbus. She lived in France for 11 years and says she hung out with her European, western-minded friends.

She says entering a polygamous marriage had never crossed her mind. But this highly-educated, multi-lingual woman changed her views when she heard a lecture at her university by Islamic spiritual leader Abuya Ashari. It was then her views began to change. "Polygamy is coming from God," she says.

"What Abuya Ashari taught us is that we have to know about God first, love Him first, then whatever you choose, either monogamy or polygamy, it will bring goodness for people and for ourselves."

Abuya, a 72-year-old preacher based in Malaysia, began lecturing on Islam and polygamy in 1968. He set up the company Global Ikhwan in 1997 and it has thousands of members around the world with clubs similar to the one in Jakarta in Europe, the Middle East and North America.

http://newageislam.com/introducing-jakarta-s--polygamy-club-/islamic-world-news/d/2505

Inside the Madrasas, Islam,Terrorism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam,Terrorism and Jihad

Inside the Madrasas

By William Dalrymple

Many of the Taliban leaders, including Mullah Omar, were trained at this institution. If its teachings have been blamed for inspiring the brutal, ultra-conservative incarnation of Islamic law that that regime presided over, there is no sign that the Haqqania is ashamed of its former pupils: instead, the madrasa's director, Maulana Sami ul-Haq, still proudly boasts that whenever the Taliban put out a call for fighters, he would simply close down the madrasa and send his students off to fight. In many ways, then, Akora Khattack represents everything that US policymakers most fear and dislike in this region, a bastion of religious, intellectual, and sometimes—in the form of the Taliban—military resistance to Pax Americana and all it represents.

A dust storm was blowing as we crossed the Indus just below the massive ramparts of the fortress of Attock, once the great bulwark protecting India against incursions from Afghanistan. The road was lined with poplars. In the distance towered the jagged dragons' backs of the blue Margalla Hills; a graveyard lay to one side, its green grave flags fluttering in the breeze. A few kilometers beyond the river stood a ramshackle line of buildings, all built in a crude modern concrete version of Mughal architecture. Washing was hanging up to dry from the roofs and verandas of the dormitory blocks, and in the main courtyard students were bustling around. All were male, all wore turbans, and all were heavily bearded.

http://newageislam.com/inside-the-madrasas/islam,terrorism-and-jihad/d/550