General Dudung in Spotlight for Saying God Is Not Arab

jpnn.com, JAKARTA - Army Chief of Staff General Dudung Abdurachman is back in the public spotlight following a statement he makes about the way he prays.

Speaking in a Deddy Corbuzier's podcast on Tuesday (30/11), Dudung said that he always prayed in Indonesian language because God was not an Arab.

"When I pray after salat, my prayer is simple. I use Bahasa Indonesia because our God is not an Arab," said Dudung, as broadcast on YouTube.

Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) deputy secretary general for law and human rights, Ikhsan Abdullah, has responded to Dudung's statement.

Ikhsan said that in principle, Dudung was not wrong because Muslims should not force themselves to pray in Arabic. People should pray in the language they understood, he added.

"We should pray [in the language] that we understand. So, we don't need to force prayers to use Arabic," Ikhsan said, Friday (12/3).

The director of Indonesia Halal Watch (IHW) said that people could also use their mother tongue to pray.

"If you can't speak Indonesian, Javanese or Sundanese or something else is also not a problem," said Ikhsan.