OnIslam.net

CAIRO – In a new campaign against smoking in the world’s most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia's second-largest Muslim organization has banned smoking in its health and educational facilities.

“This is also meant to protect the young generation from cigarette smoke exposure and to create a healthy living environment,” Syafiq said.

Muhammadiyah operates some 500 health institutions such as hospitals and clinics.

As for education, its runs about 15,000 schools from the level of kindergarten to high school and nearly 200 higher education institutions.

It also operates 350 orphanages across the country.

Syafiq said the non-smoking zones in Muhammadiyah premises would be applicable to all, members or not.

Understanding the people’s nature of breaking rules, Muhammadiyah officials vowed to go on their efforts to enforce the regulation.

“But we want people to smoke in the right place,” Syafiq, who is a professor at the Sunan Ampel Islamic State Institute (IAIN) in Surabaya, said.

“Not in public facility areas.”

The Muslim organization has already banned smoking individually in its educational facilities long-time ago.

“It won’t be a problem for us. At our university, we banned smoking some time ago,” Zainuddin Maliki, rector of Muhammadiyah University in Surabaya, said.

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Despite welcoming the move, the country’s largest Islamic organization, Nahdlatul Ulama, has ruled out a similar smoking ban.

“The thing with NU is, our senior clerics, most of them are heavy smokers,” NU deputy chairman Slamet Effendy Yusuf told the Jakarta Globe.

“We couldn’t even stop some of our students in Islamic boarding schools from smoking. But we are going to try,” he said.

NU has defined smoking as makruh, or a habit that is best avoided but does not constitute a sin.

Unlike Muhammadiyah, it has never issued a fatwa against smoking.

The Muhammadiyah move is not the first in Indonesia against smoking.

Earlier in January 2009, about 700 scholars of Indonesia Ulemas Council (MUI) banned smoking in public places and for children and pregnant women.

But they stopped short of issuing an all-out ban on smoking.

Indonesia is the world's third biggest cigarette consumers after China and India.

At around $1 a pack, cigarettes in Indonesia are among the cheapest in the world. More than 60 million Indonesians are active-smokers.

An estimated 200,000 Indonesians die each year from tobacco-related illnesses.

Though there is no direct mention of banning smoking in the Qur’an, a habit that was not spread during the early days of Islam, most scholars deem it haram (prohibited).

They rely on a hadith by Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) saying that Muslims must abstain from anything harmful.

Smoking-related diseases kill six million people each year and drain $500 billion from global economy each year, according to the latest edition of "Tobacco Atlas" issued by the WCTOH.

Tobacco use will kill 1 billion people worldwide in the 21st century if current smoking trends continue, WHO warns.