Ramadhan keeps mosques busy throughout the night

By Mehru Jaffer

JAKARTA (JP): Throughout Ramadhan, the ninth month of the Muslim year, mosques bustle with numerous activities that continue round the clock and revolve around fasting, a ritual that is one of the five pillars of Islam. At this time of the year the busiest part of the day at mosques and in many homes is always nighttime.

In most of Jakarta's 2,000 mosques daytime means congregating to pray, imparting nonstop lessons for children on the essence of Islam and organizing special sermons for older people. But come maghrib (sunset prayer) and after the prayer, intense spirituality practiced during the day gives way to gay festivity for a while as the faithful sip their first drink in 14 hours and share with each other their main meal of the day.

At the grand Istiqlal Mosque, Muslims from all walks of life start streaming in just before dusk when they are distributed drinks and food packages donated anonymously. Once the prayers are over and the stomach full, children play on the long walkways, as mothers share profane talk and the men light up kretek (clove cigarettes).

Peddlers surrounding the mosque do brisk business as they pop open one bottle of soft drink after another, sometimes all night long. Cigarettes and snacks are also sold like hotcakes.

Soon after eating, some stretch out on the cool marble floors of the mosque itself and sleep until the call of prayer wakes them up again at dawn for another day of fasting. Others, like Nunung Indrawati, return home. Nunung walks all the way back to her kampong in Bekasi with her four children, neighbors and friends each evening after every free meal at the mosque. On the way, the older children are encouraged to earn a little extra money by begging at every traffic light. The money is collected to eventually buy clothes and food for the Idul Fitri celebrations, the festival that ends the month-long ritual of fasting.

A walk around the sprawling premises of the mosque shows people everywhere throughout the day involved in a host of activities that are as varied as the crowd itself. Along the connecting walkways on all five levels of the mosque there are people either at pray, asleep, reading or just sitting. The scene on the floor of the one-hectare large central hall is similar and most of the 660 taps on the ground floor spout endless streams of water for all those indulging themselves in adulations before each prayer.

Escorting The Jakarta Post through the labyrinthian meditation walkways encircling the gigantic terrace, security guard Heri Pertama paused before a mesmerizing view of the minaret and dome of the Istiqlal that seem to stand hand-in-hand with the twin towers of the neo-gothic Jakarta Cathedral across the road.

Pertama hopes that this picture postcard view of the country's greatest mosque shading the nearly 100-year-old church is never disturbed.

Teddy, a driver who visited the mosque that night, has a similar hope. He recalled a story he heard as a child from his soldier-father who was one of the personal guards to founding president Sukarno. He remembers being told that president Sukarno was in favor of building the country's national mosque in the vicinity of the city's most important church as a symbol of tolerance and respect of all Indonesians for non-Islamic religions as well.

Imam Sumadi said that the number of young people visiting the national mosque during the glorious month of Ramadhan, when the Koran was first revealed more than 1,400 years ago, increases tremendously.

"Nearly 2,500 people from the city and outside come to the Istiqlal to break their fast here with us," he said. There has been an increase in this number by 30 percent this year as the economic crisis deprives more and more people of jobs.

Unfortunately the percentage of donations to the mosque have failed to keep pace with the increasing number of jobless and poverty stricken people around the country, he said.

The list of those who go to the Istiqlal to break their fast is long and colorful. It includes names of presidents and politicians, preachers and painters. President B.J. Habibie visited the Istiqlal last week in connection with the commemoration of the revelation of the Koran, and joined the public to pray during this period of atonement.

While the Istiqlal has a capacity to accommodate almost 100,000 people and makes the most elaborate arrangements for its visitors, some of the smaller mosques in town are used only for prayers. Others host small groups of like-minded people who pray, eat and talk together.

Rizal, a member of Al Azhar's Youth Islamic Study Club, said that about 150 people are fed at dusk at the Al-Azhar mosque in South Jakarta. The meals may include inexpensive fruit like bananas, tea and chicken and rice.

"We are surrounded by a well-to-do neighborhood. People here have enough to eat at home. Its only street children, small-scale shopkeepers and some beggars who come here for food," Rizal, a first year university student, said.

However, some students like himself often also stay back when delayed by tasks on campus, to feast along with the poor of the city during Ramadhan, a time to purify the heart of all pride and prejudice.

"Besides the food served, here it's as good as that cooked at home," Rizal smiles as he patiently waits for iftar, the meal that will break his fast of the day.

Relaxing at the Youth Islamic Study Club at the Al-Azhar, Rizal said that during Ramadhan charitable and social service activities among students increases. After lessons in understanding Islam in depth, students branch out to different parts of the city to teach and feed children at orphanages.

"I have been to the Cawang area to distribute money, food and education," he said.

Rizal has little clue as to what the end of Ramadhan will mean for the future of the country when many students are expected to return to the streets to press for reform. He would like to see many things change here as well, not through active participation in politics but through dedicated social work.

The blue tiled great mosque in the exclusive Pondok Indah neighborhood plays host to about 300 visitors each evening like the main mosques at both Kebayoran Lama and Pasar Minggu, while authorities at Mesjid Raya Ciputat said that often there are as many as 700 guests to feed after maghrib prayers, including those like a child barely five years old.

Remembering the little girl relish the rice and fish served to her on a piece of newspaper, one can only pray that the citizens of the largest Muslim country in the world will not restrict themselves in submitting to the will of Allah only during Ramadhan. That the noble gestures of peace, unity, kindness and tolerance will continue to spill over into many months, nay years, to come.