Hindus, Muslims forget differences to share grief

The whitewashed house across the alley from Abdul Razak is empty now, chickens scattering past the door where Ahmad Suharto said goodbye to his wife and 3-year-old son as he left for work on Saturday night.

Suharto, a driver whose weekend beat was the nightclub strip in downtown Kuta, died when terrorists detonated their car bomb outside Paddys Bar and the Sari Club.

Razak, the spiritual leader of the Muslim enclave of Kampung Islam Kepaon Pemogan, roughly midway between Kuta and Denpasar, says Suharto's widow has gone home to Java, afraid for the future.

"My parents and my grandparents and my great-grandparents born in Bali," he says as he guides the Herald through the maze of tiny streets circling the mosque that dominates the enclave.

"I not from Java."

In a long narrow room bouncing with children, Razak introduces another of his flock in mourning, this time for Fathurrahman - another driver and the father of a 4-year-old boy - who also died in Kuta. A wedding picture of Fathurrahman and his wife hangs on the wall.

Through more back streets alive with the tiny hens and drumstick-thin cats of Bali, and across a broad canal stretching directly to Kuta, is the kampung's third new widow.

Harisantoso, father of two young boys and a little girl, is another who did not come home on Saturday.

His widow accepts condolences beneath a gallery of family happiness: the wedding, the couple together, husband and wife embraced by three beaming children.

In Bali, where Muslims are outnumbered nine to one by Hindus, grief has touched both faiths.

This Muslim kampung is a territory of about 2000 surrounded on all sides by a larger Hindu town.

When the deaths of the three Muslims became known, Hindus lined up with their Islamic neighbours to express sorrow and add to the community collections of rice, coffee and money for the families.

"We are neighbours," says Wayan Mochtar, one of Razak's flock.

"We are Muslim, but we have Hindus to the left, Hindus to the right, Hindus to the east, Hindus to the west. We are at peace."

Mochtar's great-great-grandmother was a Hindu. Although he uses the Muslim name of Mohammed, he also takes the Hindu name of Wayan "because I am Balinese".

Others from the Hindu community have joined Islam through marriage in a community in which each faith believes in the absolute truth of its own teachings but accepts the right of the other to its beliefs.

"We are very friendly," says Hindu Made Sukanta.

Razak has an office at the mosque, a large, silver onion-domed white building in classic Balinese style, at which children in traditional blue print shirts and sparkling white pants learn Arabic so they can read the Koran.

To discuss the place of Islam in Bali he takes the Herald to his home and serves the island's thick, sweet coffee in white cups and vivid pink covers that double as saucers.

Young girls in mauve, pink and green Muslim costume smile as we walk by and Razak talks of his own three young children and of his four brothers and two sisters.

Razak is happy to talk of his family, his village and his god, but smiles and politely declines to comment on his view of Muslim fundamentalism and the possibility that some of his faith may have set the bomb in Kuta.

Mochtar has less of a problem with the question, but is careful in his reply.

"I am thinking I am a Muslim, and all Muslims are my brothers.

"I cannot fight with my brothers. I do not support fundamentalism. I think fundamentalists have a wrong understanding of the Koran.

"I don't understand [fundamentalism] but we are all still brothers."


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New Zealand travellers in Bali, and their families around the world, can exchange news via our Bali Messages page. The page also contains lists of New Zealanders in Bali and their condition.

Foreign Affairs advice to New Zealanders

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* Foreign Affairs Hotline: 0800 432 111

Feature: Bali bomb blast

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