Sacred Streets and Islamic Devotion in Urban Indonesia Identity Politics and Religious Authority Contestation

In the bustling cities of Indonesia, a quiet but profound struggle is taking place over who gets to decide what a public street is for. For decades, sociologists have observed a global shift where religion, once pushed into the private corners of homes and churches, has returned to the center of public life. This return is not just about people believing more; it is about them physically occupying the spaces where everyone else walks, shops, and drives. In Indonesia, home to the world's largest Muslim population, this has led to a new kind of conflict. It is a clash between two very different ways of seeing the world: one view, held by religious leaders and government officials, sees the city as a carefully organized map where sacred activities belong in specific, clean, and quiet places like mosques. The other view, held by grassroots groups, sees the street itself as a canvas that can be transformed into a holy place simply by filling it with disciplined, praying people. Understanding this friction helps us see how modern societies negotiate the boundary between order and passion, and how the authority to define "right" and "wrong" is being rewritten in real time.

This story came to a head in the province of Banten, Indonesia, during the holy month of Ramadan in 2022. A movement called "Tadarus on the Road" swept through the streets, where thousands of Muslims lined up on public sidewalks to recite the Quran together. To the participants, this was an act of syiar, or public propagation, a way to make their faith visible and to claim the urban space as a "Quranic ground." However, the local branch of the Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI), the country's highest council of Islamic scholars, issued a formal ruling, or fatwa, against the practice. The council argued that reading the holy book on dirty, noisy streets exposed it to disrespect and ritual impurity, making the act discouraged or even forbidden. They believed that the sanctity of the scripture required a clean, controlled environment, separate from the chaos of traffic and exhaust.

Instead of stopping the movement, the ruling sparked a fire. The people on the streets did not comply; they pushed back. They argued that the council was out of touch and even accused them of being anti-Islamic. The conflict escalated into a battle for legitimacy, where the traditional religious authority of the scholars was challenged by the sheer numbers and visible presence of the people on the ground. Researchers from the State Islamic University of Sultan Maulana Hasanuddin Banten set out to understand exactly how this happened. They conducted a deep dive into the Banten case, interviewing eight key figures ranging from elderly scholars to young activists, and they also looked at similar street practices in other cities like Gorontalo and Batam to see how they compared. Their goal was to map the mechanics of this clash: how a group of people could use their bodies and their voices to override a formal legal ruling from the highest religious authority.

What the researchers found was that the street recitations were not random or spontaneous. They were highly organized events. Groups of women and men, often from local religious study circles, would arrange themselves in neat, uniform rows along the sidewalks. They wore matching clothes and recited in unison. This was not just worship; it was a performance designed to turn a secular sidewalk into a sacred territory. The researchers describe this as a "somatic" process, meaning that the human body itself becomes the tool for changing the meaning of a place. When hundreds of disciplined bodies sit together on the asphalt, they are not just asking for permission to use the space; they are effectively declaring that the space belongs to them for that moment. The visual impact of these rows of people, captured in photos and videos that spread rapidly on social media, created a new kind of power. It was a power based on visibility and numbers, rather than on traditional credentials or legal texts.

The study identified two opposing ways of thinking about space that were at war with each other. On one side was what the researchers call "Institutional Spatial Purism." This is the logic of the religious council and the city planners. It views the city as a set of distinct zones: the sacred belongs in the mosque, and the profane belongs on the street. In this view, the street is a place for traffic and commerce, and bringing holy books there is a mistake that degrades the sacred object. On the other side was "Performative Spatial Populism." This is the logic of the street movement. It argues that space is not fixed; it is made holy by the people who occupy it. If a large group of faithful people gathers to pray, the ground beneath them becomes sacred, regardless of what the map says. This logic relies on the body and the crowd, not on a written rulebook.

The researchers discovered that when these two logics collided, the traditional authority of the religious council was weakened, not strengthened. This happened through a cycle they call the "Authority Displacement Loop." First, the movement performed a public act that gained massive attention. Second, the religious council issued a ruling to stop it. Third, the movement rejected the ruling, framing the council as the enemy of the people. Fourth, social media amplified this rejection, making the movement look more legitimate than the council. Finally, the council's ability to control future behavior was diminished because the public had seen that the ruling could be defied. The council's words, which used to be the final say, were now just one voice in a noisy crowd. The study suggests that in this new environment, religious authority is increasingly won by those who can fill the streets and capture the public imagination, rather than by those who hold the traditional titles.

However, the story is not the same everywhere. The researchers compared the conflict in Banten to a similar practice in the city of Gorontalo, where street preaching has been happening since 1989 without causing a major rift. In Gorontalo, the practice was seen as a way to bring neighbors together and resolve local tensions, and there was no competing religious authority trying to stop it. This contrast showed that the conflict in Banten was not caused by the act of praying on the street itself, but by the presence of a fractured religious landscape where different groups were fighting for control. When there is no battle for authority, the street can be a place of unity. When there is a battle, the street becomes a battlefield.

Ultimately, this research reveals that the return of religion to public life in Indonesia is happening in a way that is different from what many experts expected. It is not a quiet, reasoned debate in a public square. It is a physical occupation of space, driven by the power of the crowd and the speed of digital media. The findings show that in a competitive democracy, the ability to define what is holy is no longer held solely by the scholars in their offices. It is also held by the people who can gather, dress alike, and sit together on the sidewalk, turning a piece of concrete into a statement of faith that the authorities cannot easily ignore. The street has become a place where the very definition of religious truth is being rewritten, one row of bodies at a time.