Millah Abraham, also known as Gerakan Fajar Nusantara by its abbreviation Gafatar, is a religious movement with roots in Islam based in Indonesia.[1][2] Founded by Ahmad Mushaddeq,[3] it claims over 50,000 members. It has been persecuted by the Indonesian government, with its founder Mushaddeq sent to prison.[4]
Millah Abraham is led by Ahmad Mushaddeq, who in the 1990s began to believe that he was receiving messages from God, and that he was a successor to Muhammad.[4][1] His beliefs became known as Milah Abraham, which accumulated approximately 50,000 followers in Indonesia and Malaysia.[1] Mushaddeq's followers also began a back-to-the-land movement emphasizing organic farming and agrarian self-sufficiency, known as Gafatar.[1]
As of 2016 there were more than 7,000 members of Gafatar.[5] Gafatar encouraged its followers to sell their possessions and move to more rural farmland in Borneo, in order to avoid persecution by Indonesian authorities.[1]
In January 2016, the Ministry of Home Affairs of Indonesia banned activities of Gafatar and a mob destroyed the Gafatar compound in West Kalimantan.[6][1] Indonesian authorities detained approximately 7,000 practitioners and began relocation and re-educating them.[1] More than 25 members were charged with blasphemy,[1] and 11 have spent time in prison.[4] While the Constitution of Indonesia guarantees freedom of religion, in practice freedom is extended to only six official religions: Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism. A police spokesman, told the New York Times that the teachings of Milah Abraham's contradicted those of Indonesia's established religions and so violate the law.[4]
Millah Abraham teaches that the major Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam, have been corrupted by humans, necessitating a sequence of new prophets. It claims to be the latest installation of the Abrahamic religions.[1][4] Mushaddeq teaches that『just as Judaism had given way to Christianity, and Christianity to Islam, it was Islam’s turn』to give way to Gafatar, which will "in turn be superseded by a new iteration of Abrahamic faith centuries from now."[4]
