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edicab driver, Nasrun, 50, still remembers the good old days when he and his fellow pedicab drivers bought cheap meals from the Manahan Javanese Christian Church (GKJ) in Surakarta, Central Java.

Nasrun said he had worked in front of the church for decades and that he had only bought the meals because they were cheap.

'€œIt was just for breaking the fast, nothing more. It was also okay to eat outside the building,'€ said Nasrun.

Fellow pedicab drivers, Riyanto and Sugito, also echoed Nasrun'€™s comments.

Muslims from all walks of life used to buy a variety of dishes provided by GKJ for only Rp 1,000 (less than 10 US cents) during the fasting month.

The last time the event '€” which was often praised as an effort to promote religious harmony '€” was held in 2009. It was banned by the city administration following a complaint from the Surakarta branch of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) and other Islamic groups.

The National Unity and Community Protection Agency (Kesbanglinmas) Surakarta head Suharso said the city facilitated a dialog between GKJ and the MUI Surakarta branch in 2009. Other organization also attended.

'€œWe stopped the situation developing into conflict. The meeting aimed to get all parties to agree. Breaking of the fast is part of [Islamic] worship and non-Muslims should not intervene,'€ he told The Jakarta Post.

For the last four years, the MUI has held a free breaking of the fast event in the house of a local community figure named Herdono, which is across the street from the church.

Despite a lack of a legal agreement, the GKJ obeyed the city'€™s order to stop their annual tradition, management head Doni Aditya said.

Initiated by the late Bambang Broto Sujali and his congregation in 1996, Doni said, the church had wanted to help ease the burden of the local community amid the financial turmoil of the decade by providing food packages during the fasting month.

He said the church had sold the rice package as it taught the community about the importance of even the smallest effort.

'€œWe started with Rp 1 million, donated by our parishioners,'€ said Doni.

The congregation took turns to cook, while the youngsters served customers. The activity took place in a multi-purpose hall. Muslim preachers (ustad) were invited to provide religious enlightenment 15 minutes prior to the event.

Ustad Dian Nafi, one of the preachers, said he fulfilled the invitation to satisfy his curiosity and to find out what Muslims were doing there.

'€œI asked many questions of those who broke their fast there. I can assure you that we did not enter the church,'€ he said.

Surakarta is home to a number of radical Islamic groups, making such an initiative by the church quite rare.

The Ngruki Islamic boarding school for example, which was co-founded by radical cleric Abu Abu Bakar Ba'€™asyir, is in Surakarta. Some of its graduates have been linked to bomb attacks across Indonesia.

Ba'€™asyir was the spiritual leader of the terrorist network Jamaah Islamiyah.