Mohd Zainon shows the third floor of the Madrasah building which is still under construction. — Bernama photo
ALOR SETAR: Co-founder of the religious school, Madrasah Nurul Hidayah in Kuala Ketil, Mohd Zainon Ariffin, has denied allegations that the school propagates militant ideologies among its students.
He said the claim made in the video documentary on the school produced by The New York Times and several other media recently was untrue.
“My madrasah does not teach the students to become terrorists.
“Islam has never taught its followers to become violent or to be terrorists. In Islam, the term terrorist is not in its vocabulary. Islam bans violence,” he told Bernama when contacted by telephone, here yesterday.
The Madrasah Nurul Hidayah which is located in Kuala Ketil, more than 100 km south of here, had attracted foreign media attention because besides Mohd Zainon, 53, his younger brother the late Mohd Lotfi Ariffin, 46, also played an important role in the formation of the madrasah.
Mohd Lotfi, former information chief of the Kedah PAS Ulama Council who was involved in the group known as Ajnad al Sham, which also fought against Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, had died at a hospital in Turkey, last year due to serious injury following an air strike by Bashar al-Assad forces in Syria.
Mohd Zainon said his younger brother did not join the so-called IS militant group.
The founder of the madrasah said he felt cheated by journalists from the foreign media which produced the documentary and following the false report, he was facing various problems including being investigated by the police, besides the madrasah being monitored by the authorities.
A few days after the documentary was aired, Kedah police chief Datuk Zamri Yahya, in a media conference had said that police would take action and monitor any madrasah in Kedah suspected of being involved in militant activities.
According to Mohd Zainon, the foreign journalists took two days to shoot the documentary at his madrasah and said that the duration of the documentary to be aired was 48 minutes.
However, the final duration of the documentary aired was merely eight minutes, he said.
However, what was more regretful was that his speech which had called on the students of the madrasah to emulate the practices and religious studies of his late younger brother had been cropped by the foreign media.
In his speech, Zainon wanted his students to emulate the practices of the late Mohd Lotfi such as never missing to pray in a congregation, to perform the various supplementary prayers and to read the Quran.
“As students who respected him (Lotfi), they must emulate his attitude and discipline. This was my speech which should have been in the video.
“The video also portrayed as though this place (Madrasah Nurul Hidayah) churned out terrorists. The madrasah actually does not teach anyone to be cruel and violent,” he said.
Mohd Zainon said that to his knowledge, his late younger brother had never propagated militant ideologies or influenced his students to join the struggle in Syria, throughout his teaching days at the madrasah.
To date, none of the students from the madrasah had become militants and the school only offered religious studies for five years to about 180 students aged from 12 to 17 with a monthly fee of RM20, he said.
“Here, we don’t teach the students how to handle weapons,” he said.
If any outsider tried to influence students of the madrasah to join any militant movement, Zainon said he would explain to them to concentrate on their studies and to gain knowledge.
“It is better for them to be here to acquire knowledge,” he said.
However, he did not think that there were outsiders who tried to influence or recruit his students to join any militant movement.
Mohd Zainon said that students of the madrasah came from all over the country, including Sabah and Sarawak, and they were from poor families. — Bernama