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s Muslims across the country were preparing to celebrate Idul Adha (Islamic Day of Sacrifice), millions of haj travelers in Saudi Arabia were hit by a sandstorm and heavy rains on Sunday night while they were staying on Mount Arafat.

More than 200,000 Indonesian pilgrims were performing maghrib (sunset) prayer led by Religious Affairs Minister Lukman Hakim when the incident took place. The storm, which lasted about an hour, blew down a tent functioning as the kitchen for the Indonesian pilgrims.

“I apologize, there are pilgrims that haven’t had any meals. The storm and rain disrupted the cooking process. This is a test. Rest well and hopefully we can perform wukuf [the peak of the haj ritual] tomorrow,” he said, as quoted by the ministry’s website, kemenag.go.id.

Lukman, who also led the Indonesian pilgrims two years ago, said the quality of the tents this year was much better. He said two years ago there was also a storm, not quite as strong, but which still blew down many tents.

The storm that evening was so hard that it tore down the kiswah, the cloth covering the Kaaba, Islam’s holiest shrine located inside the Great Mosque of Mecca.

More than two million pilgrims from around the world flocked to Mount Arafat on Sunday to perform the wukuf.

Idul Adha, also known as the Festival of Sacrifice, which commemorates the Prophet Ibrahim’s willingness to obey God’s command to sacrifice his son, began on Tuesday, when pilgrims started stone-throwing rituals in a symbolic renunciation of the devil.  

Indonesia has one of the largest groups of pilgrims, totaling over 205,000. As of Saturday, the government said the death toll among Indonesian pilgrims had reached 93.

Of the casualties, 28 people died in Madinah, 62 in Mecca and three at Saudi Arabian airports, as stated in an official statement issued by the Health Ministry.

In Indonesia, Idul Adha will fall on Wednesday. Muslims all over the country have started to buy livestock to slaughter and cook as gifts for relatives and neighbors.

In Jakarta, livestock trading is still rampant on the sidewalks in many parts of the city despite a ban having been issued by the Jakarta administration.

Livestock traders selling qurban (sacrificial animals) were seen along Jl. KS Tubun, Central Jakarta, which is close to Tanah Abang Market.

Taufik, one of the vendors, has been selling cows and goats in a makeshift bamboo stall on Jl. KS Tubun since the era of former governor Fauzi Bowo in the late 2000s.

He remembers how every governor since Fauzi Bowo has attempted to clear merchants from Tanah Abang — the historical market center for qurban trade — and almost every year, merchants simply continue their business.

But he said former governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama was the strictest on evicting qurban merchants. Merchants retaliated against Ahok by taking to the streets two years ago, carrying machetes and threatening public order officials, until the administration succumbed and gave them permission to continue operating in the area.

Taufik added that the city administration tended to throw out sellers, not for violating sidewalk regulations, but for violating animal health regulations. Consequently, all sellers keep livestock health documents on standby.

“Basically, no one reads these anymore,” he joked, while holding up a copy of the ban issued by Governor Anies Baswedan, given to him by the Tanah Abang district office.

The latest gubernatorial instruction, which came into force on Aug. 7, is actually a reinforcement of Ahok’s 2015 gubernatorial instruction that bans the selling of qurban on sidewalks, emergency lanes and city-owned places.

Amik, another merchant who has been in the business for 15 years, said he was bound by tradition to remain on Jl. KS Tubun because his family, as far back as his grandfather, had been selling qurban on that street. He even remembers that, in his grandfather’s time, a single goat would fetch Rp 150,000 (US$10) whereas now, the same goat costs Rp 3 million.

As an ethnic Betawi, Amik accused governors for failing to understand that tradition binds many Betawi — the natives of Jakarta — to trade in seemingly random parts of the city that were actually their native
neighborhoods.

“The administration cannot challenge us, they should listen to us,” he said. (sau/nor)