How All Religions Can Play a Part in Ramadan

Jakarta Globe, Dyah Ayu Pitaloka, August 4, 2013

Buddhist members of the Vihara Sanggar Suci temple in Malang, East Java,
have been opening their doors to serve up meals for Muslims to break their fast
during the month of Ramadan for the past 15 years. (JG Photo/Dyah Ayu Pitaloka)

Tineke paced back and forth as she looked at her watch. “It’s now 5 p.m., and the food has yet to come,” the middle-aged woman said, her restlessness shown by her frown and shortness of breath.

She was not the only one waiting anxiously for the food to arrive. Eight other women were also standing by and keeping themselves busy by arranging tables into rows, laying down tablecloths and stacking empty plates.

Tineke and the other women were preparing a mass iftar event for some 200 hungry Muslims who were eager to break their fast.

But while the women had volunteered and financed the event for Muslims who were not fortunate enough to buy a decent meal or who did not have time to prepare anything, they won’t be fasting this Ramadan.

(JG Photo/Dyah Ayu Pitaloka)

The women are Buddhists and members of the Vihara Sanggar Suci temple located in the subdistrict of Lawang in Malang, East Java. For the past 15 years, the temple has opened its doors and converted its garage into a gathering place where food is served for Muslims looking to break their fast during the holy month.

Winantea Listiahadi, the temple’s head clergyman and the drive’s initiator, is a humble, elderly man with grey hair who likes to wear simple clothes — a plain white T-shirt and a pair of old, worn, faded black trousers.

He recounted how he started the drive. It was 1998 and the Asian financial crisis was at its height. Businesses were forced to close, jobs were lost and people were going to bed hungry.

The crisis was so severe it paved the way for the resignation of former president Suharto, a powerful, iron-fisted leader who reigned for 32 years. But it also gave way to friction, ethnic violence and tensions. That year, 850 kilometers away in Jakarta, people of Chinese descent like Winantea were targeted, murdered and raped, their homes, stores and factories burned.

But Winantea couldn’t care less.

What he saw at the time were victims of the financial crisis, people who had little money to break their fast. And he felt compelled to do something about it.

Winantea said he first contacted members of Metta, a women’s group from the temple, to enlist their help.

“The following day we staged our first fast-breaking event,” he explained.

When the drive kicked off, Winantea and the group served 80 people. But word spread and the number grew to 300, with people coming from the city of Malang to the neighboring district of Jombang. As the number of visitors soared so did the Buddhist community’s drive to lend a hand or provide financial support.

“We started handing out packed meals, visiting them directly. But we realized that people were asking for two to three packs to keep for later so we opened our doors and invited them [to the temple]. That way more people could be served. If they want more they can have another go but after everyone else has had their share,” Winantea said.

The sun was slowly fading and the time to break the fast was just around the corner. A minivan pulled up by the side of the temple, to everyone’s relief. Inside were pots of mutton curry, the meal for the day, ordered from a distant restaurant.

The women wasted no time carrying the heavy pots filled with the stew inside. Tineke swiftly readied the serving bowls, filling them up with the curry as people began queuing up in one long line, snaking out to the nearby streets.

Winantea and the women from Metta ensure that the meals vary each day to keep visitors from getting bored.

They also make sure that the meals are halal, choosing to buy food from restaurants serving halal food rather than preparing their own meals to hand out to visitors.

The volunteers are even willing to help and reach out even if it’s not in line with their own beliefs.

“I am a vegetarian,” the Buddhist monk said.

“If I served them with pecel [vegetables with peanut sauce], they can buy it themselves. It wouldn’t be special for those with low income. This is my way of helping them. So I gladly sacrifice my vegetarianism.”

Winantea said previous items on the menu included rawon (beef stew with soy sauce), soto (soup) or satay .

“If you want more you can head to that table over there. There are also biscuits after you finish your meal,” Tineke shouted to the visitors who had lined up with empty plates in their hands.

Tineke swooped up a ladle full of mutton, pouring it into people’s plates as they moved their way up the long queue.

The call to prayer filled the air, a signal that the day’s fasting was over, preceded by a loud series of drumming from a nearby mosque. One by one the hundreds of people who were there began to down the hot tea served and to eat their first meal for the day.

In a matter of minutes the meals were finished, leaving stacks of dirty plates placed at one corner of the garage waiting to be cleaned. At another corner there sits a plastic bag filled with used plastic spoons and cups and colorful food wrappers.

“The food is great here,” said Karyadi, a man from a neighboring subdistrict who came with his wife and grandson.

“I have been coming here since the first day of fasting and will do so until the fasting month ends.”

(JG Photo/Dyah Ayu Pitaloka)

Indonesia is home to the world’s biggest Muslim population and was once a model of religious tolerance and democracy. But over the years, religious extremism and radicalism have grown in prominence.

Last year, the Setara Institute, an advocacy group, recorded 579 cases of religious violence.

Less than 100 kilometers north of Malang, on the island of Madura, an entire Shia community was attacked and driven away from their homes by radical Sunnis, the predominant Muslim group in Indonesia. In Jakarta, a terrorist cell plotted an attack against a Buddhist temple in retaliation for the killings of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.

While the temple’s food drive remains an example of how religious tolerance still has a place in Indonesia and can bridge a widening divide between religions, Winantea said the volunteers’ only intention was to do good without any other agenda or goals in mind.

“We never bothered to check whether they are indeed fasting or not, whether they can afford to buy meals for themselves or not. Everyone is welcome,” he explained.

“I don’t even know for how long we will keep doing this. It’s all about showing compassion. We just let it flow.”

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