The Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), the highest Islamic clerical body in the nation, gave its harshest indictment yet on Indonesians who insist on going on the annual mudik homecoming exodus this year — expected to take place in late May — despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mudik, which takes place during the Eid holiday and involves the exodus of some 30 million Indonesians from urban centers to rural areas each year, is technically not banned since the government said that people will disobey its prohibition anyway.
Despite health experts urging the government to ban the tradition this year to prevent a catastrophic national spread of COVID-19, going on mudik has practically been left as a matter of conscience.
But religious authorities are still doing their part to try to halt the exodus this year, with MUI notably repeatedly urging Indonesia’s Muslims to stay where they are this Eid holiday.
“Stay home, let your home be your light. No mudik, especially for those in the Greater Jakarta Area,” MUI’s Fatwa Secretary Asrorun Niam said during a press conference today, as quoted by Kumparan.
Jakarta accounts for nearly half of all Indonesia’s COVID-19 caseload with 2,186 of the national tally of 4,557 as of April 13.
“If you claim to be a religious person, you must follow the prophet’s advice of staying in one area when there’s an outbreak. This applies to mudik,” Asrorun added.
While MUI’s stance on mudik is as close as it gets to a religious edict, the clerical body has not officially declared the exodus haram (forbidden) this year, arguing that its prohibition is a matter to be decided by policy makers who better understand its economic and cultural implications.
Yet policy makers, including Vice President Ma’ruf Amin, who himself was the chairman of MUI before he assumed office last year, has left the prohibition of mudik to the clerical body, arguing that a religious approach would be more effective in convincing people not to travel during the pandemic.
Meanwhile, with the absence of an outright ban on mudik, there have been widespread reports of Indonesians leaving cities recently to be in their hometowns out of fear of future government lockdowns.
