Indonesia’s ‘mosque hunters’ count them up one at a time
Mamuju, Indonesia, Jan 15 (AFP/APP): As Friday prayers wrap up at Suada mosque, worshippers turn their attention outside where Fakhry Affan steers a drone high above, snapping pictures of the building tucked in a corner of Indonesia’s Sulawesi island.
Affan leads a government team of some 1,000 mosque hunters who have spent years visiting every corner of the 5,000 kilometre (3,100 mile) long archipelago to answer one question: how many mosques are there in the world’s biggest Muslim majority nation?
“Only God knows exactly how many mosques there are in Indonesia,” former vice president Jusuf Kalla quipped recently.
“Some say around one million and people will take it for granted.”
So far, Affan’s team has registered 554,152 mosques and the census — which kicked off in 2013 — is only about 75 percent done, Affan says.
Earlier government estimates pegged the total at more than 740,000 nationwide.
Nearly 90 percent of Indonesia’s 260 million people are Muslim and it is home to Jakarta’s Istiqlal mosque, Southeast Asia’s biggest with room for 200,000 worshippers.
So it’s an Herculean task for Affan and his team at the religious affairs ministry as it scours a country of some 17,000 islands, where new mosques are going up all the time.
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After getting key information about Mamuju city’s 3,000 capacity Suada mosque — including building permit and mosque committee details — Affan uploads his drone pictures to a bulging online database.
“We did it manually in the past, but now we’re going digital,” he told AFP.
The government is also planning to launch an Android-based app called Info Masjid (Mosque Info) so Muslims can use their smartphone to find the nearest place of worship.
Nur Salim Ismal, who attends the Suada mosque, hopes the move online will bring greater transparency.
“Mosques manage huge amounts of money from worshippers and it should be clear how it’s being used,” he said.
“We want to ensure that all imams and (mosque) committees are moderate because Islam in Indonesia is moderate,” he added.
Indonesia’s long-held reputation for tolerant pluralism has been tested in recent years.
Muslim hardliners are becoming increasingly vocal in public.
