Jakarta: After his Islamic boarding school sparked protests for allowing women to preach and pray alongside men, a Muslim preacher has been detained on suspicion of blasphemy and hate speech, police announced Wednesday.

The Al-Zaytun boarding school in West Java, the most populous province of Muslim-majority Indonesia, has come under fire from conservative groups who claim it practises a form of Islam that is incompatible with the Qur'an.

After being questioned, 77-year-old school principal Panji Gumilang was taken into custody early on Wednesday, national police spokesman Ahmad Ramadhan told reporters. He claimed that "investigators took legal action... and he is being held in the detention facility of the criminal investigation agency for 20 days."

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According to the charges, Gumilang faces five years in prison for blasphemy, six years for disseminating hate speech, and ten years for disseminating false information and purposefully upsetting the peace in public.

When social media footage from late April showed women praying in the same row as men, the school sparked outrage in conservative circles and protests outside of its grounds.

In traditional Islamic prayer, women are typically expected to follow men in their prayers. The school also allowed women to deliver sermons during Friday prayers, a role that is typically reserved for men in conventional Islamic teaching. This practise of the school also caused controversy.

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The school, which has been open since 1999, has about 5,000 pupils.

It is also alleged to have connections to Darul Islam, an organisation that fought for an Islamic state in Indonesia in the 1950s and 1960s and managed to survive a military defeat during that time.
Since late June, large crowds have gathered in front of the school several times to demand its closure.

Blasphemy laws have existed in Indonesia since 1965, but they were hardly ever enforced prior to the fall of dictator Suharto's totalitarian regime in 1998. Since then, Indonesia, which supports a tolerant form of the religion, has witnessed an increase in the popularity of conservative forms of Islam.

Rights advocates contend that the blasphemy law restricts free speech and puts religious freedom under more stress.

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Indonesia recognises six official religions, but the growing application of the blasphemy law is escalating concerns that its moderate brand of Islam is in danger from radicals who are becoming more powerful.

The capital's first Christian leader of Chinese descent, the former governor of Jakarta, was given a two-year prison term for blasphemy in 2017.