Haj instructors reject city's selection process

JAKARTA (JP): About 2,000 haj instructors staged a rally yesterday, demanding that the municipality revoke its decision to numerically select Jakarta pilgrims.

The group, mostly women in Moslem clothing, rejected offers to engage in talks with the head of the religious affairs office, choosing to stand in front of the building on Jl. D.I. Panjaitan in East Jakarta.

"We have been faced with a lot of problems in the past few months," a woman, with a microphone in her hand, said.

"Forest fires, a prolonged dry season, monetary crisis and now you people intend to make it difficult for people to carry out their religious obligations."

She ended her speech by shouting Allahu Akbar (Allah is great) which prompted the crowd to repeated her words.

The protesters, who represented the city's five mayoralties, called their group the Communication Forum of Instructors and Consultants for Haj Pilgrims.

According to Suryani Qoidir, a spokesman for the forum, the new city regulations mean that pilgrims are grouped based on computer data.

"It's an absolutely unfair decision which we can't understand," she said.

"Even spouses can be separated even though they enroll at the same bank. I just don't understand."

The woman next to her said: "Don't do this to us, please ... unless you want to see elderly and confused pilgrims left alone among the sea of people there."

In a written statement, the group said if the administration refused to meet their demands they would go to Mecca on their own terms as long as they could go together.

By being in a familiar group, the members would not be confused and the pilgrimage would go ahead smoothly, they said.

"This the first time that the grouping of pilgrims has been based on enrollment entry numbers from the banks and applied exclusively to Jakarta pilgrims," Luthfie, the group's spokesman, said.

Luthfie said the group had relayed their objections to the new system to Jakarta's vice governors but no answer had been forthcoming.

"No, we don't want to boycott the pilgrimage but please work on some principals, such as handling the haj tents in Medina and the health management in Mecca, rather than changing the grouping system which has already been operating for many, many years," he said.

Enforcers

The head of the city's religious affairs office, Bidawi Zubir, said that his office was merely enforcing the regulation issued recently by the Directorate General of the Guidance of the Islamic Community and Haj Affairs, part of the Ministry of Religious Affairs.

"We hope that we can do something to help them, but we are just the enforcers."

"We do what we've been told to do," he told the protesters.

But Zubir promised to raise the issue with officials in the ministry.

According to the office secretary, Damiri Mahdin, there are 250 bank branches in Jakarta that have been assigned to list the pilgrims.

"This is applied in Jakarta because the number from here is greater than in other areas of Indonesia," he said.

The group expressed dissatisfaction with the office's response and pledged to find a solution to the problem. (04/bsr)