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n a long white shirt, kopiah (cap) and with a green scarf over his shoulder, deputy governor candidate Sandiaga Uno climbed the narrow wooden stairs to the second floor of an old house belonging to a local cleric named Saman in Cengkareng, West Jakarta.

Followed by his entourage, he performed wudhu (ablutions) and joined the front row with dozens of people to recite the dzuhur (midday prayer). Shortly after the prayer ended, the businessman-turned-politician took the microphone and introduced himself to the congregation. With soft-spoken words, Sandiaga began his campaign by asking the audience to vote for number three in the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election, the ballot number assigned him and his running mate, governor candidate Anies Baswedan.

It was important for Muslims to remain calm in the face of people who were trying to undermine the religion, Sandiaga said in his speech on Tuesday.

“Don’t hate him or even be angry at him. Just don’t vote for him as your governor,” he said in an apparent jab against incumbent Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama.

Saman’s house was the second place Sandiaga visited after a nearby pesantren (Islamic boarding school), where he vowed to pay more attention to the teachers and students if he and Anies were elected to the capital’s top posts.

A recent survey by the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) showed that the majority of Jakarta’s residents did not care about race and religion when choosing a leader. Still, Muslims voters are to play a significant role in the capital’s election, which is slated to take place in February.

The capital’s Muslims, who make up 90 percent of the total population, are a game changer in the election, said Siti Zuhro, a political analyst from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI).

“There is no better moment than now to elicit votes from people in pesantren or Muslim clerics. They are still hurt by Ahok’s comment and their votes are there to grab,” she told The Jakarta Post.

That statement rang true for Ahok who needed to secure Muslim votes to keep him in the lead after the recent release of an edited video in which he criticized how some people have used the Quran against him has left him open to accusations of religious defamation that could put his gubernatorial bid in danger.

The outspoken governor pleaded to Muslim students on Santri Day before the campaign started on Oct. 21 that he needed their support and prayers. During his tenure, Ahok had also carried out several policies to show his great interest for Muslim communities, including sending mosque caretakers on umrah (minor haj) and becoming the first governor to build a mosque in the City Hall complex.

He also claimed on Monday that the religious defamation accusations against him had ended following his public apology and clarification to the National Police’s Criminal Investigation Department (Bareskrim) last week.

Meanwhile, young candidate Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono had also tried to sway Muslim voters by visiting the executive councils of the country’s largest and second largest Islamic organizations, Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, as well as several pesantren before the campaign began. His most recent move was to visit Sunda Kelapa Mosque in Central Jakarta on the first day of the campaign on Oct. 28, where he met with mosque management and food vendors around the mosque area, according to tribunnews.com.