The An­ju­man Sun­nat-ul-Ja­maat As­so­ci­a­tion (AS­JA) is dis­tanc­ing it­self from po­lit­i­cal com­ments made by some Imams, say­ing those views should be clear­ly pre­sent­ed as per­son­al opin­ions, not of­fi­cial po­si­tions.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, it said on­ly its act­ing pres­i­dent gen­er­al, Imam Ahamad Ho­sein, and gen­er­al sec­re­tary, Ha­ji Rahi­mool Ho­sein, are au­tho­rised to speak on AS­JA’s be­half. It warned that any ex­ter­nal body us­ing its name or lo­go with­out per­mis­sion will “prompt the ini­ti­a­tion of our in­ter­nal dis­ci­pli­nary process­es.”

“The in­tegri­ty of our or­gan­i­sa­tion is of para­mount im­por­tance, and any de­vi­a­tion from our es­tab­lished pol­i­cy of neu­tral­i­ty un­der­mines the re­spect and trust we have cul­ti­vat­ed over decades,” AS­JA said.

Since its for­ma­tion in 1935, AS­JA said it has “main­tained a stead­fast pol­i­cy of neu­tral­i­ty with re­spect to elec­toral pol­i­tics, and we have nev­er pub­licly aligned our­selves with any po­lit­i­cal par­ty.”
It added that its non-par­ti­san stance is part of a broad­er ef­fort to be “an un­bi­ased plat­form that re­spects the di­verse per­spec­tives of our mem­ber­ship.”

AS­JA ac­knowl­edged the right of its mem­bers to vote for any po­lit­i­cal par­ty, say­ing, “We are ful­ly aware that our mem­bers may ex­er­cise their de­mo­c­ra­t­ic rights by sup­port­ing the po­lit­i­cal par­ties of their choice; this is a per­son­al de­ci­sion that is deeply root­ed in in­di­vid­ual con­science and in­formed by the guid­ing prin­ci­ples of our Is­lam­ic faith.”

While re­main­ing neu­tral in elec­toral mat­ters, AS­JA said it is not silent on pol­i­cy de­ci­sions that af­fect the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty. It said it will con­tin­ue to speak out on such is­sues when nec­es­sary.

AS­JA al­so said it re­mains com­mit­ted to fos­ter­ing pub­lic di­a­logue that is guid­ed by eth­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions and Is­lam­ic val­ues.