Jakarta: Muslim hard-liners chopped up a 100-year-old banyan tree in Jakarta to halt a rumour about its special powers from spreading among superstitious locals, prompting city authorities to report the attackers to police, officials said on Tuesday.
Islam is a strongly monotheistic religion and believing in any power other than God is considered a grave sin.
Hard-liners in Indonesia often criticise other Muslims for still practicing Hindu, Buddhist and animist rituals that predate Islam's arrival in the archipelago.
The sprawling tree's branches were hacked away on Sunday, leaving just its trunk, said Sarwo Handayani, head of the city's park agency.
Earlier, rumours had spread that cutting down the tree would bring bad luck because it was spared during a tree-felling drive to make way for a new bus lane in central Jakarta, Handayani said.
He said the rumours gained strength after unidentified people left offerings at the tree's base.
Handayani dismissed the rumours of supernatural involvement as nonsense, saying officials did not fell the tree because the bus lane could be routed around it.
"This was an outrageous act," he said of the damage to the tree, adding that he had reported it to police on Sunday as an act of vandalism.
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