Christmas is around the corner and in the most populous Islamic country in the world there is a debate as to whether a Muslim is allowed to wish a Christian "Merry Christmas" or whether in doing so he contravenes the precepts of his own religion. The dispute has distant roots: in fact, in 1974, during a radio talk show broadcast by the Indonesian Public Radio Channel, a listener asked the influential scholar Haji Abdul Malik Karim Amrullah – also known by the name of Buya Hamka – the following question: “What is the appropriate response for a Muslim who is invited to participate in a Christmas celebration?”
Hamka took his time to answer, not believing that the frenetic rhythms of a radio broadcast were the ideal environment to dissect the matter. He then entrusted his reflections on the subject to an article published in the Islamic culture magazine Panji Masyarakat, in which, after a long excursus on the fundamental differences that separate Islam and Christianity around the figure of Christ, he came to the conclusion that wishing a Merry Christmas was allowed as an expression of religious tolerance, while taking part in Christian rituals was quite another matter.
In the following years, however, the Islamic authorities found themselves facing the problem of the growing number of students of the Muslim faith who turned to Christian schools to receive Western-style education and instruction. Since in these schools young Muslims were often required to recite or sing in Christmas performances - a custom which ended up spreading elements of the Christian religion among the population - the Indonesian Ulema Council, the most authoritative representative body of the Muslim clergy, issued in 1981 a fatwa with which the Muslim faithful were forbidden, with a wealth of Koranic connections, to participate in the celebrations of Christmas in public places and in particular in schools.
By many faithful this prescription was also extended to Christmas greetings, verbal or written, a topic not explicitly addressed in the text of the fatwa. Now that the position regarding Muslims' participation in the Christmas celebrations has been clarified, the dispute arises every year between those who deem it permissible to pronounce the fateful words of good wishes and those who instead consider them irreconcilable with their Islamic faith.
