T

he recent joke made by the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) leader Rizieq Shihab deriding a traditional Sundanese greeting while addressing an audience in West Java has continued to trigger mixed reactions.

Sundanese cultural observer Mas Nanu Muda said that Rizieq'€™s denigration of the greeting, sampurasarun, pronouncing it '€˜campur racun'€™ (Laced with poison) as a joke, should be pardoned.

'€œHe should be forgiven for not understanding the expression,'€ said Nanu in a sampurasun ruwatan ritual held on the Penjara Banceuy site in Bandung, West Java on Monday.

Nanu and his colleague Mbah Jum purposely held the ruwatan, or prayer ceremony, to counter the derision of the sampurasun traditional greeting by those who did not know its meaning he said.

'€œSampurasun is part of the Sundanese people'€™s moral values. Before doing anything, we ask for forgiveness from others,'€ said Nanu, a dance tutor at the Indonesian Cultural and Arts Institute.

Earlier, West Java Siliwangi Youth Force (AMS) leader Noeriy Ispandji Firman said the Sundanese people disliked conflict, but would fight if they felt provoked. Ispandji added that in Sundanese culture, the sampurasun greeting had a polite meaning and was a part of prayer.

'€œBut, now it has been mocked by a renowned figure. It'€™s inappropriate, especially as it was expressed on the Sundanese soil of Purwakarta,'€ he said.

In a seeming coincidence, President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo opened his speech with a sampurasun greeting when inaugurating the 2015 Nusantara Fruit and Flower Festival at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture in Bogor ,West Java, on Saturday.

Earlier, West Java Governor Ahmad Heryawan, a politician from the Prosperous Justice Party also started his address at the festival with a sampurasun.

The West Java Police have received a report from AMS and will investigate the alleged violation of Law No. 11/2008 on information and electronic transactions committed by the FPI leader.

West Java Police Special Crimes and Intelligence Directorate chief Wirdhan Denny said the police had received the report lodged by AMS on Nov. 24, in which they allege Rizieq violated the aforementioned law by insulting a particular ethnic group in a video that was uploaded to Youtube on Nov. 15.

The case is believed to have come to light following Purwakarta Regent Dedi Mulyadi'€™s circular guaranteeing freedom of faith in his jurisdiction. The circular was supposedly in response to the launch of the National Anti Shia Alliance (ANAS) in Purwakarta a few weeks ago.

Despite the issuance of the circular, the organizers still held a ceremony inaugurating the ANAS leadership board in Purwakarta regency.

Rizieq has denied the claims that he mocked Sundanese, accusing the regent of trying to replace the Islamic greeting with the ethnic greeting.

'€œSampurasun, in the Sundanese tradition, has a very good meaning, and it can be used as a respectful greeting, as long as it does not replace the Islamic greeting of assalaamualaikum,'€ he said as quoted by tribunnews.com.

He said that sampurasun should not become a means of contention between local customs and Islamic Sharia as each of them had its own unique usage and respective time and place.

According to Rizieq, Dedi had begun to omit the Islamic greeting and had been replacing it with the Sundanese traditional greeting, which he claimed was an effort to separate the Sundanese tradition and Islam.

Dedi also responded to another of Rizieq'€™s comments made in one of his sermons in Purwakarta, in which he claimed Dedi had committed syirik, or polytheism, by marrying the supernatural figure Nyi Roro Kidul, a mythical figure who is believed to rule the Southern Ocean.

In response to the claims, Dedi just shook his head, laughed and jokingly asked Rizieq to prove the matter.