Indonesia

Muhammad Zuhri

Muhammad Zuhri was born in Kudus, a city in the island of Java, Indonesia, at December 1939. He moved with his family to Pati, where he graduated from School for Teachers and became an elementary school teacher from 1957 to 1964. He also joined Muhammadiyah, the largest Islamic organization in Indonesia, during that period. After resigning from his job as a teacher, he started to exploit his talent as a painter and moved to Semarang and then to Jakarta, where he met a witch who tried but failed to kill him. This encounter gave him his first mystical experience, and finally a supplication from an ancient Sufi Master helped him defeating the witch. The journey in Sufism took him to several Sufi Masters, one of whom was Kiai Hamid from Pasuruan, a Wali (High Ranking Sufi Master), who inaugurated him as a Sufi.

Muhammad Zuhri was married in 1961, and has two sons and three daughters (a fourth daughter was killed in a car accident). Now he lives happily with his family in Sekarjalak village, near the city of Pati. His daily activity in his small house is to serve guests from various cities and villages who look for advice and spiritual help to solve their personal, family, or social problems. He also likes to explain his concept of Sufism to those who want to understand. He formed a small halaqah (a group to learn Sufism) in his village, with the name of Pesantren Budaya Barzakh (Barzakh Cultural Study Group). In 1986, he formed Jamaah Muslim Pembauran (Unified Moslem Congregation) with his friends in Pati. Then in 1990, he also co-founded the Indonesian Moslem Intellectual Organization (ICMI) during a National Symposium in Malang. Once a month, he visits Jakarta and Bandung to meet his distant pupils in those cities, who later formed Barzakh Foundation in 1994. Most of his disciples are young intellectuals, who regard him as their father.

Muhammad Zuhri is also known to have spiritual power to cure people, called the Sufi Healing method. For the last 20 years, people has came to him from everywhere looking for alternative ways to be cured from their illness. Since 1996, he has opened a worldwide service to help people with HIV or AIDS, working together with Barzakh Foundation in managing the patients.

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