SHAH ALAM - Islamic religious authorities are urged to take immediate action to prevent the belief in incarnations from infiltrating into the Muslim community in Malaysia.
Incarnation is believed to have the meaning of the embodiment of a deity or a spirit in some earthly form which also means that the spirit of a deceased person will be transferred to another living person.
As quoted in Bernama, Penang Mufti Datuk Seri Dr Wan Salim Wan Mohd Noor said immediate action should be taken following the video of a freelance preacher regarding the content of his talk in which he mentioned about the spirit being transferred to the soul of a living person.
"The belief of incarnation in which the transfer of the spirit of a deceased person to another living person is nonsense and superstitious.
"The belief does not belong to any dalil in Islam and it belongs to the practice of the Hindus, Buddhists, the Maya in Latin America, some Shiites in Lebanon and Syria, also by certain extreme tadauf tariqats.
"In this regard, I ask the Islamic religious authorities including the Prime Minister's Department minister, Malaysian Islamic Development Department (JAKIM) and the state religious department to take this issue seriously and take immediate action to prevent it," he said in a statement.
This comes after the 10 minutes video went viral on social media platforms in which the preacher said his teacher used to say Allah SWT created a spirit that can move from one body to another.
In the perspective of Ahli Sunnah Wal Jamaah, Wan Salim said incarnation is a fallacy and it deviate from the path of Islam as it is against the Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet.
He said according to the Islamic teachings, the spirit is not able to move from one body to one body as one’s spirit is only assigned specifically to a body and cannot be shared by anyone after death.
"Muslims are reminded that belief in the supernatural or metaphysics must be based on the right dalil and the belief in the incarnation does not come from any verses of the Quran or the sunnah," he said.
He said, according to Islam, the spirit of a person begins in the womb of the mother and after parting with the body due to death, it moves to the realm of barzakh before being resurrected and reunited with his body on the Day of Judgment, then it will end in either heaven or hell.
He said those who tried to spread the fallacy to the Muslim community should be warned and if they continue to do so then they should be brought to the Syariah Court to be judged according to the existing law.
"The individual should not be allowed to deliver talks and lectures at mosques or surau in order to preserve the faith of Muslims from going astray as they influenced by the nonsense teachings," he added.