Muslim children during a Christmas Santa Parade in Indonesia last year (Picture: Getty)

A religious council has issued a fatwa telling Muslims not to wear Christmas clothing.

The Indonesian Ulema Council said that people should respect Christians’ right to celebrate, including by wearing Santa hats, but should not join in because it is ‘haram’ i.e. not permitted in Islam.

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Published in full (in Indonesian) here, the fatwa, or religious ruling, issued on December 14 says that the government should ‘prevent, monitor, and punish’ businesses who force Muslims to wear clothing which they feel goes against their religion.

The ruling prompted a ‘raid on Santa hats’ at a shopping mall in the second largest city, Surabaya, when police escorted members of the hardline Islam Defenders Front to check if any shops had required staff to wear Christmas clothing.


The council is made up of senior clerics in Indonesia (Picture: MUI)

According to the Jakarta Post, some businesses do require all workers to wear Santa hats in the holiday season, and many Muslims and Christians alike join in with the holiday celebrations.



But police have been criticised for helping to enforce the fatwa when it isn’t legally binding, as well as for appearing to support a hardline group.

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While not part of the government, the council of senior clerics which issued the ruling is respected in Indonesia.

Their fatwa has prompted debate across the country about whether businesses should have the right to ask their employees to wear Santa hats.

Andrie Prasetyo posted: ‘If this is about religious intolerance, why don’t we think about the Muslim employees who actually don’t want to wear it – because they believe it is not allowed by their faith – but their employers tell them to do it?’

‘We do not ban Christians from celebrating Christmas,’ he said.

The council said Christmas clothing is not Islamic (Picture: Getty)

Although the fatwa advised people ‘not to confuse Islam with the faith and worship of other religious beliefs’, it stressed that people should respect Christians’ right to celebrate their holidays.

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Indonesia, which has the world’s largest Muslim population, is proud of its history of pluralism with many religious traditions existing together.

But many Muslims have said that they shouldn’t be judged if they want to wear Santa hats, pointing out that they are a symbol of consumerism more than anything mentioned in the Bible.

In a comment piece for the Jakarta Post, academic Azis Anwar Fachrudin said: ‘The Santa outfit is not a religious attribute; it is a capitalist attribute.

‘It is difficult to make sense of the reasoning behind the fatwa.’