Pilgrimage and tourism

Pilgrimage and tourism

I'm writing to comment on Dadi Darmadi's article titled
Spiritual materialism in the haj pilgrimage (The Jakarta Post,
Dec. 23) in which he eloquently described the Indonesian
pilgrims' behavior abroad. He also likened them to tourists,
which is obviously has a lot of truth in it.

Generally speaking, Indonesians who have the means to go
abroad, whether as tourists (including the above pilgrims) or
students are bargain hunters and fanatic shoppers. Look, for
instance at such Indonesian tourists in Singapore or Bangkok, and
one will most likely see them on shopping sprees in the various
malls.

The same can be seen in Australia or New Zealand. Indonesian
students (the other side of the same coin, of course) every
Saturday and Sunday go out, taking with them addresses or
locations of "garage sales", strolling around shopping for used
goods such as electronics, clothing, books, etc. for their
collection.

Indonesian pilgrims' strenuous habit of spending their money
-- after prayer times -- particularly in Mecca's well-known Pasar
Seng shopping area, which ridiculously dominates the marketplace,
at the very least, shows the real face of Indonesia abroad --
that Indonesians' standard of living, is better than those of,
say, African or South Asian countries.

Also, whether we are aware of it or not, it could be seen that
they are actually taking the Koran's order to heart, which says
"And when the prayer is ended, disperse in the land and seek
Allah's bounty" (QS 62:10).

Dadi Darmadi was right when he says that religious pilgrimages
blend with tourism and consumerism. However, this is not
apparently understood by the Indonesian tourism ministry when it
comes to the annual Buddhist Waisak festival, which takes place
at the Borobudur and Mendut temples in Central Java.

In order to help the government obtain more and more foreign
exchange from tourism, they should have stepped up promotion to
the Buddhists of the world by tapping into the rapidly growing
economy of China, which has over 2,000,000 tourists who spend
their holidays abroad. Out of that amount, strangely enough, only
around 80,000 spent their holidays in Indonesia last year as
compared to 550,000 Japanese tourists.

M. RUSDI, Jakarta