East Javanese tobacco farmers visited the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) Surabaya branch on Friday to protest the fatwa body's plan to declare smoking forbidden according to Islamic teachings.
"We are protesting MUI's plan to issue a fatwa declaring smoking as haram," Tobacco Farmers Association chairman Amin Subarkah said, as quoted by Tempointeraktif.com.
Subarkah said it was unfair to make a smoking haram on the basis that it could be bad for some people. In fact, he said, forbidding smoking would only cause pain and suffering to tobacco farmers and their families.
"There are 1,367 tobacco factories in East Java, employing thousands of workers," Subarkah said.
According to the association, tobacco farmers in East Java supply 53 percent of the country's total tobacco consumption with a total investment value worth Rp 682 billion.
MUI Surabaya head Ulama Abdussomad Bukhori told the farmers to relax and to continue their work planting tobacco as the plan was still being debated by Islam scholars within the fatwa body.
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