Definitely, this is not a picture of butts exhibition. [caption id="attachment_33840" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Down on knees, together, in a basement of Bandung Supermal. Photo by Vicky Laurentina."][/caption] Once upon a time in States, a store was shocked coz a bunch of their customer which looked like Arabic suddenly did an odd ritual at the corner of the place’s storage. That year “9/11″ event has just been happened, and ever since that shitty day, all “weird” behavior of Muslims was made into stories excessively. When police came to check those Arabics, they found out that instead of going to mess up, those customers were just going to pray Maghrib. Those Americans were shocked coz they never saw a person did “shalat”. *** I think, Indonesia is a unique country coz most of its citizens still admit that they pray, though sometimes they skip from church, temple, or mosque. There’s a good reason why Friday becomes a leeway among working days in Indonesia. The hectic 9-5 rush hours suddenly must be diminished in midday, to spare time for men for doing Friday praying. It doesn’t matter if the male employee really goes for Friday praying, or he just runs away for corrupting extra lunch time. And oddly, how hard feminists make pressure for women’s emancipation in Indonesia, women still don’t complain if their job burden raise higher at Friday, just because their male colleagues go away for Friday praying. I was at this mall last Friday, when I went to the parking basement and saw this view. Looking at the costumes they wore, I found out that some of them were waiters, buyer assistants, managers, and even customers. The mall was crowded of people each days, but I saw they break of being mallrats at mid Friday, only for sitting together in “mushalla” by listening to preach and pray for two rounds of scene. All people need a praying place at their work. Including malls. Malls can’t build mosque at their complex, coz their secularism budget don’t accomodate it. So they make compensation by making a small space in parking basement to become a mushalla. The mushalla may be enough for daily prays, but it doesn’t suit to contain the mall visitors who wanna do Friday praying. So they close some of basement area at Friday until midday, so they can use the area for massal Friday praying. When the Friday praying is over, they re-use the area for parking. This is a strategy to keep the visitors who’s already hung out in the mall since morning, instead let them leave the mall at afternoon for Friday praying and then they’re lazy to return. Once a foreigner asked me, why male muslims must do Friday praying together, instead doing it alone in each of their homes. I answered, as you’re praying with somebody else, you’ll find out that actually you have a brother who must pray like you, as a reply coz God has created both of you. Praying together keeps you from being snob, coz you’ll realize, that probably, you don’t pray better than anybody else as you thought before. Mall may be a product of capitalist. But, religion stuff doesn’t need to be separated from the capitalism thing. More comments about this post are available here
