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Indonesia
This Week in AsiaLifestyle & Culture

Indonesia’s festive tradition? Arguing if Muslims can say ‘merry Christmas’ or not

  • Some clerics want the saying banned, while others see no harm in it – and many laypeople on social media are simply tired of arguing about it
  • Analysts say the perennial nature of the debate shows how deeply entrenched identity politics have become in Indonesian society

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Members of a choir get ready to sing Christmas songs in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Wednesday. Photo: Reuters
Resty Woro Yuniarin Jakarta
It’s the end of another year, which in Indonesia can only mean one thing: the return of the country’s perennial debate on whether Muslims should say “merry Christmas” to Christians.
Heated public discourse around the topic highlights how entrenched identity politics still are in Indonesian society, analysts said – more than two years after a divisive presidential election in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, which saw the heavy use of such identity-based appeals to voters.

This time around, the debate was sparked by a regional branch of the country’s supreme body of Islamic clerics. On December 9, the Indonesian Ulema Council’s (MUI) North Sumatra branch released a list of recommendations for Muslims in the region, which included a ban on wishing Christians a merry Christmas as it said this was “not in accordance with Islamic law”.

A man wearing a Santa Claus costume walks down a street in Jakarta ahead of Christmas celebrations held in Indonesia’s capital on Wednesday. Photo: Reuters
A man wearing a Santa Claus costume walks down a street in Jakarta ahead of Christmas celebrations held in Indonesia’s capital on Wednesday. Photo: Reuters

Many were quick to dispute the decision, including members of MUI’s central leadership. Cholil Nafis, the council’s head of da’wah (proselytising), said in a statement released on Sunday that Muslims are allowed to say Christmas greetings, as Indonesia is “a plural society”.

While the council did decree in a 1981 fatwa that celebrating Christmas is haram (forbidden) for Muslims, he said it had issued no such ruling on festive greetings. In fact, the MUI said in 2019 that it neither encouraged nor forbade the saying of “merry Christmas” – essentially leaving people to make up their own minds.

On Sunday, Indonesia’s deputy minister for religious affairs, Zainut Tauhid Sa’adi, said in a statement that he respected both opinions regarding Christmas greetings.

Clerics who ban such greetings “based their argumentations on [the belief] that saying ‘merry Christmas’ is part of [the Christian] religion”, while those who allow Muslims to say it believe that it is only a friendly gesture “to respect human relations”.

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