NOTES FROM NEXT DOOR: JUMAT BERKAH, MALANG, EAST JAVA

Saturday, July 27, 2024

JUMAT BERKAH, MALANG, EAST JAVA

Becak drivers

STREET CHARITY - THANK ALLAH IT’S FRIDAY

Duncan Graham

Following the 7 October Hamas outrage Australia has been suffering an outburst of race and religious hate. Lawyer Jillian Segal has been made a “special envoy” to counter antisemitism. A similar appointment is expected to confront Islamophobia and challenge the alleged linkage of Muslims with extremism and terror.

Indonesia has more citizens following Islam than any other nation. Its numbers surpass the belief's birthplace in Saudi Arabia eight-fold.

Our neighbour is awash with faith. And hope, for bankers are claiming the Republic is racing towards being an economic world power. That doesn’t mean equality.

Just under ten per cent of the 275 million population live below the poverty level of around three Oz dollars a day. They get by rarely with government aid, regularly through the religious community.

Seldom heard in the West’s media rants against Islam is its well-embedded principle of charity - particularly the Friday food routine.

There's no fanfare. The givers give and the takers take. Flaunting goodness is not good in Islam.

Unless there's an election campaign where look-at--me candidates get coverage by handing out oversized cheques, donor virtues pass unnoticed.

Seen through a camera lens one food rush in Malang (the second largest city in East Java) looks like a TV news clip from the Gaza Strip when an aid convoy arrives.

Pull back to a wider view and the shot is wrong: The surging crowd is small, only 80 people. They're hungry but not famished. A few are disabled.

The surroundings aren't shattered. The noise isn't from bomb bursts but badly-muffled motorbikes - one stickered PALESTINE. It belongs to Tommy Sasmito who calls himself a "public figure" because he's a reporter for a tease-and-sleaze tabloid.

No one protests his advocacy. The nearest supporter of Israel is in Perth, 2,700 km to the south. Here in Indonesia Judaism is banned, so few hear any other side. No-one mentions Gaza - they just keep eating.

The break-fasters carry sheets of vinyl to spread on the pavement where they dine. Their boxed meal includes vegies, a slice of tempe (fried soybean cake) and a dollop of boiled rice.

At this giveaway site - one of many - the donors are uniformed students on a three-week field study programme from an Islamic University in Yogyakarta, 360 km to the west. They use the courtyard of the Government Treasury to organise their care sessions and get some money to buy the essentials.

The free-feed ritual is a mix of the Javanese culture of gotong royong (community self-help) and the duties of Islam. On Sundays, some churches run food banks, though usually only for congregants’ families.

The system is praised by politicians because it relieves Jakarta from providing welfare programmes and pensions except for the desperate.

Kamaruddin Amin at the Ministry of Religion reportedy said "there should be no poor people in Indonesia, if we all pay zakat.”

This philanthropy is supposed to be compulsory under Islamic law. Kamaruddin said $37 billion was needed nationally but less than eight per cent has been given. So the locals fill in.

Traditionally caring for the frail and old has fallen to their offspring or the wider family if someone is childless. Villagers feed the elderly who care for littlies and do menial tasks while waiting for a call from Allah.

So the state dumps the needs of the poor on those who practise their religion Fortunately for the disadvantaged, that’s a lot.

A few streets away Tety, who’s been on the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, is supervising 150 handouts at the gate of her family’s kost. It's an elite boarding house exclusively for 25 young women studying medicine at nearby Brawijaya University.

Why feed the poor?

“Today is Jumat Berkah (blessed Friday),” she said. “It’s special and holy. We don’t care about the person’s faith or their economic circumstances. Our responsibility is to help humanity through the blessing of food. There are no demands on the hungry to reciprocate. No questions.”

She appears to be right. Occasionally a terima kasih can be heard from the eaters, though no preaching from the servers or even a religious greeting.

In another part of the hilltown there's a line of mainly middle-aged men who claim they're jobless, and elderly women who identify as widows or divorcees.

They queue outside a dilapidated warung alongside a welding workshop. The word means a roadside stall though this one has rough tables and benches.

From sunup till 10 am all eats and coffee are on the house courtesy of owner Anik Sumartini. It’s a loaves and fishes scene.

Behind the counter feeding the hundreds is a cheerful clutch of women in Muslim headscarves, but Lisa Salhuteru is bareheaded.

She's a Protestant driven by the same motives as her kitchen colleagues filling pots and washing pans following her holy book’s statement that silver-tongues minus charity are “tinkling cymbals”.

A couple of kilometres to the east the split road from the train station to the gateway to the city is a prestige thoroughfare well-gardened.

On a grass verge corner gather drivers of becak, the three-wheel cycles used to transport weary pedestrians. The group starts with a dozen blokes who sleep in their trikes, but grows with empty-cupboard housewives. Eventually a car pulls up with a boot-load of food boxes.

Rusnan, 66, says he was once in the film business, even going overseas with crews. Now he’s having a bad spell but won’t elaborate other than a shoulder shrug and “inshallah” (it’s the will of Allah). Fatalism is widespread.

The guys say on other days they scrounge waste bins for anything saleable, wave motorists into parking spots for 25 cents a car and direct traffic hoping for a tip. The women often beg door-to-door.

They've heard the Australian government cares for its citizens and want details.

Caution calls; bragging about Oz pensions and access to welfare would bemuse if added that some camp rough and use food banks to get by.

Without the context of taxation and the cost of living the questioners wonder why we whinge when we live in what they think is a paradise. Maybe they’re right.

Disclosure: The author believes he’s irreligious.

(Pictures of Jumat Berkah here; //https://indonesianow.blogspot.com/)