It's not yet 5am in Jakarta, but a chorus of voices already echoes throughout the city. They seem to be singing a strange, tuneless song, out of key yet beautiful. This is the Muslim call to prayer, sounding five times per day in the majority-Muslim city. Live or recorded, these calls are issued from loudspeakers on the roof of almost every mosque, forming a quintessential part of the city soundscape.
Walking through Jakarta, you will find a mosque on almost every street, with their complete domination over all other religious buildings combined clearly reflecting the fact that the overwhelming majority of Indonesians, over 87 per cent, are Muslim.
In the early days of Islam in Java, mosques as perennial religious structures were seen as unnecessary, as communal prayer could be accommodated in any open space. So why are more and more permanent mosques being erected in Jakarta today?
The answer lies in the fact that mosques today have a far broader cultural meaning than just existing as a place for Muslims to pray.
According to Universitas Indonesia student Btari Nadine, mosques are a symbolic reminder of Indonesian culture and diversity, emphasising religious distinctions and differences.
“For me, it gives a sense of protection, and something forbidden,” she said.
During the Jakarta Riots of 1998, then one-year-old Nadine was sheltered by her Muslim nanny in a mosque close to her home for protection against violent mobs.
“My family is Chinese, so the masses were cruel to us. Even churches are not safe, or [as Catholics] we would have sheltered there; but the angry masses won’t ever touch the mosque, for it is holy for them.”
"Other religions are minorities, and most of the rioters were Moslem. Maybe they have different opinions on other religion's holy places."
Despite the protection afforded to her by this mosque early in her life, Nadine claims her Catholic upbringing causes her to feel that mosques are “foreign and somewhat forbidden”.
These clear distinctions between religions— an alienation of non-Muslim groups, emphasised by the "taboo" nature of the mosque even to native Indonesian Nadine— create defined in- and out-groups within Indonesian society, which in turn results in solidified bonds within each group.
Religious segregation also extends to everyday life; Nadine, as a Catholic, went to a school with few Muslims, lived in an area with a low Muslim population, and “never even had a Muslim friend until college.”
This cultural phenomenon is tangibly represented on Jalan Katedral, in the district of Sawah Besar, Central Jakarta. On one side of the street is a towering, white-domed structure, the path leading up to it crowded with pedestrians, children, and vendors flogging their wares. This is the Istiqlal Mosque, the third largest in the world, with a capacity of 120 thousand.
Across the road, significantly quieter and more sombre, is a neo-gothic style building, the likes of which a passerby might expect to see in European city, but certainly not in the heart of South East Asia. Its name, too, sounds out-of-place among a sea of Bahasa: this is St. Mary of the Assumption Cathedral.
The contrast between the colour, noise and chaos of Istiqlal Mosque with the silence and solemnity of the Cathedral is stark, and illustrates just how mosques themselves can work to encourage religious diversity.
As well as fostering Jakarta’s religious in- and out-group dynamic, Universitas Indonesia lecturer and devout Muslim Asty Rastiya believes that mosques play an important role in Jakarta’s cultural landscape by acting as a visual reminder for Muslims of the tenets of their faith.
“Mosques give me a positive energy, and remind me to be a better person,” she said.
Outside these religious elements, mosques are also establishing themselves as modern cultural institutions, by integrating business and educational functions. Many of Jakarta's newer mosques, including Istiqlal, have been built to include features such as seminar halls, libraries, offices, and meeting rooms.
“Mosques can be a place for various activities, such as for children and youth," Asty said.
"It [also] opens for non-Muslims to come and ask about Islam.”
She also acknowledges that the meaning and function of a mosque may differ, based on the community that surrounds it.
“Depending on the society around the mosque, its [cultural] role might range. It might be purely religious, but for others it might be more.”
Despite religious extremism and sectarian tension worsening in the lead-up to the 2019 presidential election, due to the increasing prominence of religious identity in political discourse, neither Asty nor Nadine are convinced that this has significantly impacted what the mosques represent to the broader public.
“I think it has always just been 'a holy place for Moslems', and I don’t think it’ll ever change into 'a holy place for Indonesians',” Nadine says. The exclusivity of the mosque, it seems, remains as strong as ever.
With over 800 thousand mosques— more than any other nation in the world— Indonesian culture has been defined by these structures as much as it has defined them.
Far more than just a place of worship, the meaning of the mosque for Muslims and non-Muslims continues to evolve alongside Indonesia’s political, cultural, economic and social landscape.