Riwayat Perpecahan Muhammadiyah dengan Ahmadiyah

Why has the Muhammadiyah, throughout the years, adopted a moderate attitude towards the Lahore branch of the Ahmadiyya, despite its own condemnation of the Ahmadiyya in 1929 and despite the urgent call of the Muslim World League of April 1974 to all Muslim governments to ban all activities of Mîrzâ Ghulâm Ahmad’s followers and to declare the Ahmadiyya a non-Muslim minority group.

Information regarding this international condemnation and its official documentation were widely spread in Indonesia at the end of 1981 by the Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah Indonesia, the Indonesian Council of the Propagation of Islam, an organization of strict modernist Muslims directed for many years by Mohammed Natsir (1908-1993).

In answering this question, first some doctrinal background information on the Ahmadiyya will be given to sketch the characteristic features in which it contrasts sharply with mainstream Sunni Islam.

In the second section, the coming of the Ahmadiyya to Yogyakarta will be related. Attention will be paid to the situation of the Muhammadiyah when the first Ahmadiyya missionaries of the Lahore branch arrived in Yogyakarta.

In the third section, the initial cordial relationship between the Muhammadiyah and the Ahmadiyya and the possible reason or reasons for it will be discussed.

The fourth section will be dedicated to the first critical comments in Muhammadiyah circles on the Ahmadiyya, ending in the condemnation of the Ahmadiyya by the Muhammadiyah’s Majlis Tarjih, in 1929, which meant a definitive rupture between the two organizations.

The Lahore branch of the Ahmadiyya will be the main focus of attention, because it was its persuasion the Muhammadiyah was confronted with in its formative period in Central Java.

By way of conclusion, in the fifth section, some words will be devoted to the development of the Ahmadiyya Lahore branch in Central Java after the definitive rupture of 1929.

In addition, the reasons will be discussed why the Ahmadiyya Lahore branch never became important in Central Java, as well as the reasons why the Muhammadiyah adopted a rather tolerant attitude towards this organization after the rupture.