Indonesia’s New Haj Ministry: A Change in Name Without Progress?

On 26 August 2025, the Indonesian government established a new ministry that oversees both the obligatory annual haj pilgrimage for Muslims and umrah (a voluntary minor pilgrimage). This ministry is an upgrade and expansion of the former Badan Penyelenggara Haji (Haj Pilgrimage Management Agency) set up a year ago. The move had received unanimous support from the legislative assembly (DPR), and is meant to solve longstanding problems with haj management.

President Prabowo Subianto, who approved the new ministry and earlier this week appointed Mochamad Irfan Yusuf and Dahnil Anzar Simanjuntak as its minister and deputy minister respectively, seems to believe that forming a ministry to oversee the massive annual Indonesian haj operation is the way forward. Both appointees are cadres of Prabowo’s Gerakan Indonesia Raya (Gerindra) party. Irfan is a Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) activist and more significantly, one of the grandsons of NU founder Kyai Hasyim Asy’ari, while Dahnil is a Muhammadiyah activist. With these appointments, the president thus acknowledges the two largest Muslim organisations in the country.

The centralisation and consolidation of services to Indonesia’s haj and umrah pilgrims under one ministry have their merits, such as preventing scams and excessive charging by private operators, but only if there is clarity of purpose and the processes are not done in haste.

For context, the annual haj ritual is held during the month of Dzulhijah (the twelfth month of the Islamic lunar calendar): Muslim pilgrims from around the world gather in Islam’s holiest sites Mecca and Medina, in Saudi Arabia. The ritual must be completed within the first two weeks of Dzulhijah, by visiting specific sacred sites (Arafah, Mina, Mudzalifah). The Saudi Arabian government thus restricts the number of pilgrims each country can send there, through quotas, to manage the crowd and prevent stampedes.

Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, receives the largest quota. In the recent haj season, for instance, it sent 221,000 pilgrims of the 1.6 million total. This however does not necessarily reduce the waiting time for Indonesian pilgrims, given overwhelming demand. Depending on which province one resides in, an Indonesian Muslim’s wait to go on haj may be between 11 and 47 years. In contrast, the umrah has no quotas and can be done throughout the year, except during the haj season. 

For the ministry to succeed, it must clarify its goals and how it seeks to accomplish them.

Prabowo has long proposed that a state institution manages the haj pilgrimage, since he first ran for president in 2014. The main complaints against haj management in Indonesia are the lack of coordination, corruption and nepotism in haj allocations, and poor delivery of services to pilgrims.

At this point, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) is investigating the Ministry of Religious Affairs for allegedly misusing additional haj quotas provided by the Saudi Arabian government to Indonesia this year. The KPK has banned former minister of religious affairs Yaqut Cholil Qoumas and two other officials from travelling overseas since 11 August. According to the 2019 Law on Hajj, 92 per cent of the 20,000 additional quotas should have been allocated for regular haj pilgrims, while the remaining eight per cent were for pilgrims under the special haj (“Haj Plus”) scheme. The latter offers a shorter waiting time as they are run by private operators, offering so-called ‘VIP packages’ usually taken up by businessmen and political and religious elites. Instead of applying the 92:8 allocation ratio, the ministry did a 50:50 split. This led to public disappointment as people who were supposed to leave Indonesia for haj could not go this year because their slots were apparently taken by these ‘VIPs’.

Moreover, Indonesian haj operators in Mecca and Medina remain substandard. In the most recent haj season, many pilgrims complained about chaos and confusion when travelling between Muzdalifah and Mina. For instance, aged pilgrims requiring mobility aids reportedly had to get off buses and walk about four kilometres (from Muzdalifah to Mina) due to a severe traffic jam, with reports of poor transportation management circulating. Adies Kadir, a legislator, has criticised the inadequate presence of Indonesia haj officials, who were supposed to be providing ground support to the pilgrims.

While Prabowo’s desire to improve or clean up the haj and umrah services is worthy of praise, the jury is out on whether creating a haj and umrah ministry can solve these complex problems. For the ministry to succeed, it must clarify its goals and how it seeks to accomplish them. There are concerns that the creation of this new ministry was in haste or undertaken lightly: the DPR began revising the 2019 Law on Haj two years ago but the proposal for the ministry’s establishment was made clear only during a meeting between the parliamentary working committee overseeing the revision and the government representative on 22 August 2025. In that meeting, Bambang Eko Suhariyanto, the deputy of the State Secretary Minister, reportedly suggested that all phrases with the term “badan [body]” simply be amended to “menteri” (minister). The DPR’s Eighth Commission chairman Marwan Dasopang, a committee member, responded that “body” needed to be changed to “ministry”. The participants eventually agreed to elevate the body to a ministry; this was approved four days later at a plenary meeting.

Perhaps the new haj ministry can improve the quality of haj and umrah services for Indonesia’s Muslims by the next season. Growing the bureaucracy seems to be Prabowo’s solution, notwithstanding that his is already the largest cabinet in Indonesia’s modern history. Future Indonesian pilgrims can only hope that this upgrade and the new minister can ease their pilgrimage journey.

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