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Hadi Azmi

Global Ikhwan group, the company at the centre of a child sex case which has shocked Malaysia, on Thursday denied allegations of abuse of hundreds of minors, saying it did not manage the shelters where the alleged attacks took place and accusing Malaysian police of defamatory action on its business.
Malaysian police on Wednesday said they rescued 402 boys and girls, aged between one and 17, from the homes in Selangor and Negeri Sembilan they believed to be owned by the group where the victims were subjected to sexual and physical abuse at the hands of their caretakers.
In a statement on Thursday, Global Ikhwan Services and Business Holdings (GISBH) said it believed that certain parties with an “agenda to bring down the image” of its business were behind the accusation.
“We deny all accusations because the said shelters are clearly not under the management of GISBH,” the group said. “It is not our policy to plan and implement things against Islamic sharia and national laws.”
The controversial company, labelled a cult by authorities, is believed to have close links to Al Arqam, a group banned by the Malaysian government in 1994 for practising and propagating Islamic beliefs which deviate from the state endorsed orthodoxy.
GISBH has made headlines in recent years over its promotion of polygamy and the Obedient Wives Club, an international Islamic religious organisation that encouraged wives to act like “first-class prostitutes” to keep husbands from straying.

Founded in 2010, GISBH has 25 subsidiaries, including logistics and maritime, with businesses in 20 countries worldwide.
It has halal Malaysian restaurants in Sydney, Singapore, Dubai, Bangkok, London, and Cairo, as well as other businesses in France, Russia, and Guangzhou, China, and an Ikhwan-branded food business.
The company’s corporate profile video boasts that it has 5,356 employees, 1,698 of whom are adults and the rest are “youths”. Its network covers 1,656 families, 465 of which are polygamous, the video says.
Inspector General of Police Razarudin Husain told This Week in Asia on Thursday that authorities “believe the children are the offspring of GISBH members”.
On Wednesday, Razarudin detailed the grim allegations of how the children, aged between one and 17, were “sodomised by the guardians”.
“The modus operandi of GISBH is that the victims are taught to sodomise, and then the victims are sodomised by the guardians and forced to sodomise other child residents,” Razarudin told reporters during a press conference.
The victims, 201 boys and 201 girls, were taken to the Police Training Academy in Kuala Lumpur for health screening, which the police chief said would take up to 14 days.
He said victims who were sick were denied medical attention until their conditions became critical.
“The caretaker of the shelter also used a heated object to injure the victims as a punishment for an offence committed,” he said.
Police arrested 171 carers, among them imams and dorm wardens.
The company has come under intense scrutiny in recent weeks.
State mufti of the Perlis state in Malaysia, Asri Zainul Abidin, meanwhile revealed in a lecture on August 16 that the National Fatwa Council was looking into GISBH’s conduct, calling it a cult that prevented people from leaving.
The council is a body under the aegis of the king and state rulers through its role as the head of Islam in the country.
Citing former members, Asri alleged that the group split those members from their spouses and children and that members’ lives were dictated by leaders who decided whom they should marry and when they could see their wives.
“[They cannot care for their] children fearing their loyalty to their parents, [superseded] their loyalty to their congregational leaders,” Asri said, calling the practice “terrible”.

GISBH traced its roots to 1968 as Al Alqam, under leader Ashaari Mohamad, known by the members as Abuya or Father. The group was banned in 1994 by the Malaysian government, which tightly administers Islam, setting the orthodoxy for practising and outlawing beliefs which deviate from that.
Media reports in the mid-1990s said the group aspired to overthrow the Malaysian and Indonesian governments to establish a utopian theocracy with Ashaari as its leader.
At its peak, Al Arqam claimed to have some 100,000 supporters worldwide, with 10,000 living in communes around Malaysia, complete with their own schools, clinics, shops, restaurants, and other amenities.
The group also published various reading materials for children and adults and taped recordings of Ashaari’s speeches, which disseminated his ideas to the masses.
But the ban led to Ashaari’s detention under Malaysia’s feared Internal Security Act, which saw him removed from the group’s hub in the rural village of Sungai Penchala, outside of Kuala Lumpur, to the small town of Rawang and then again to Labuan island, off the coast of Sabah in Borneo.
He died in 2010 of a lung infection. The group’s stewardship passed to his wife Khadijah Aam, and later to Ashaari’s close friend Nasiruddin Mohd Ali – the current executive chairman of GISBH – following Khadijah’s death in 2015.


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Malaysian police on Wednesday said they rescued 402 boys and girls, aged between one and 17, after they received reports of abuse involving the group that operated the shelters. Photo: Shutterstock

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Global Ikhwan Services and Business Holdings says parties with an ‘agenda to bring down the image’ of its business are behind the claims


Global Ikhwan Services and Business Holdings says parties with an ‘agenda to bring down the image’ of its business are behind the claims.


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Malaysian firm linked to Islamic sect denies allegations of child sex abuse

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Global Ikhwan Services and Business Holdings says parties with an ‘agenda to bring down the image’ of its business are behind the claims

Global Ikhwan Services and Business Holdings says parties with an ‘agenda to bring down the image’ of its business are behind the claims