Bohra Jamat of Jakarta / Indonesia

The Bohra community in Jakarta and Indonesia exists in the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation — a country of over 230 million Muslims across thousands of islands. Bohra families arrived in Indonesia through Indian Ocean trade networks that have connected Gujarat with the Indonesian archipelago for centuries; the famous Arab and Gujarati merchants who brought Islam to Southeast Asia included Ismaili-inclined traders whose legacy persists in some Indonesian Muslim communities. The Jakarta jamat is a small but established community of Bohra professionals and businesspeople who maintain their distinctive practices — the rida, the topi, the thaal, the waaz — while living in a country that takes its Islamic identity seriously in a different, Sunni-majority key. The experience of being a minority Muslim tradition within a Muslim-majority country gives the Indonesian Bohra community a distinctive character.