Lombok: Beyond the Islamic tourism drive, it can be an island for everyone

By: Brigid D

The Indonesian island is pushing itself as a ‘Muslim-friendly’ tourism destination, but Lombok has something to offer people of all backgrounds and beliefs

Lombok is at the centre of an Islamic tourism drive in Indonesia, which has the world’s biggest Muslim population and is hoping to boost the number of visitors from wealthy Middle Eastern countries. Photograph: Sonny Tumbelaka/AFP/Getty Images

It’s August 2013 and I am in Lombok. Eid has ended and the traffic has stalled. Forget that we are in a rural road that is cut into the side of a hill overlooking the ocean – this snarl is as bad as anything I experienced in downtown Jakarta or the clogged roads around Bali’s Seminyak and Ubud. Only the aesthetic differs: there are no western tourists walking around wearing bikinis; instead most of the women climbing off motorbikes and carrying their picnics to the hill wear headscarves.

While the Hindu island of Bali has an ‘anything goes’ vibe, Lombok has a different character. The scenery is more mountainous and arid, and the vibe more serious – even austere. A largely Muslim island, tourists visit for the peace and quiet, the great beaches and diving and proximity to the popular Gili islands. Hotels and resorts that are opening are less spring break or schoolies, more sedate places of rest and relaxation.


Lombok is at the centre of an Islamic tourism drive in Indonesia, which, according to a story published in the Guardian on Wednesday, “has the world’s biggest Muslim population and is hoping to boost the number of visitors from wealthy Middle Eastern countries.”

“While aiming to continue to attract Western tourists who flock to its pristine beaches, the island is also seeking to promote its Islamic heritage, from numerous places of worship to shrines dedicated to ancient Muslim preachers,” the article continues.

Islamic tourists love that they can hear the call to prayer from their hotel rooms and visit mosques, while western tourists appreciate that Lombok is a little less hectic and “bogan” than nearby Bali.

However, the report went on to say: “despite the optimism of officials, there are concerns that the push for Islamic tourism could put off other visitors who want to sunbathe in skimpy outfits and relax on the beach with a drink.”

Gili Trawangan, off the north-west coast of Lombok, Indonesia is a major drawcard for western tourists. Photograph: Kimberley Coole/Getty Images/Lonely Planet Images 

The Lombok government says sharia tourism can be promoted alongside western tourism but ‘authorities are considering clearly demarcating areas more suited to Muslim guests, where Western tourists should cover up.

“We will make zones so that travel agents and guides have clear options depending on their guests’ wishes,” said local tourism chief M Nasir, adding that visitors were already told they should not wear skimpy clothing when they head into cities or visit religious sites.

The strength of a place - particularly one that wants to attract a robust tourist trade – is to be many things to many different people; to be open and inclusive enough to be a place that people from Java and people from Australia can visit, and where a wonderful time can be had by all.

During my travels in central Java, particularly in and around the university city of Yogyakarta, I was impressed by how Muslims and Christians lived in the same streets, socialised, worked together and were even buried in the same village cemeteries.

So why not holiday in the same place?

The real divide, the real shock in Lombok, is not the differences in religion but the almost cartoonish contrast between wealth and poverty.

Back in 2013, after two hours fighting through the Eid traffic, we pulled into a driveway that lead to a resort facing the sea. It was a place of knee-weakening gorgeousness. There was water everywhere: gratis glistening bottles imported from Italy in the fridge, plunge pools in the gardens, deep baths in the rooms where the reflections of the water would ripple along the ceiling in hypnotic waves.

Outside the villas on the resort grounds were swimming pools everywhere where one could drift off, palm trees overhead, gamelan music drifting from the spa, cocktails supped in the heavy, frangipani-scented air. The swimming pools were designed with the shoreline in mind. You didn’t know where the pool ended and the ocean began and all around you was the optical illusion that gently nudged you further into a dream-like state.

The only faintly jarring aspect were the sellers of things along the shorelines: beads, swathes of cloth, ceramic bowls. They approached the threshold with outstretched arms, like characters in a sci-fi film trying to leave one world and enter another.

Mike Davis, in his book Evil Paradises, talks of “phantasmagoric but real places — alternate realities being constructed as ‘utopias’ in a capitalist era unfettered by unions and state regulation. These developments — in cities, deserts, and in the middle of the sea — are worlds where consumption and inequality surpass our worst nightmares.” That is the story of expat compounds in developing cities, and it is the story of tourist resorts in developing economies.

Michel Houellebecq’s controversial novel Platform is set in a tourism industry where the developing country supplies the labour (both sexual and construction) and the west provides the capital. For Houellebecq, the western tourists in a Muslim country provided the driving narrative tension.

The wealth disparity thrummed in the foreground – but it was the clash of different values that was the tinder to firewood. In his book, nightclubs, bikinis and sex don’t mix with mosques and the pre-dawn call to prayer.

Houellebecq wrote Platform before the 2002 Bali bombings – but he chillingly predicted them in Platform’s conclusion.

There is potential in Lombok for a different way: an island that takes the inclusiveness that I saw in Central Java and develops tourism for everyone, especially Indonesia’s burgeoning middle class.

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