On Monday night, 1 June 2026, media outlets reported on a massive fire that tore through a densely populated residential area in Kebon Kosong, Kemayoran, Central Jakarta, Indonesia. Official data from the DKI Jakarta Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD) and on-the-ground verification show about 354 households—roughly 620 people—were left homeless. Around 160 school-aged children were directly affected.

The neighbourhood is a well-known slum made up of some 250–304 semi-permanent wooden, plywood, and corrugated-metal units. Hundreds of these urban poor residents hold no land ownership certificates (SHM); they possess only administrative ID records (KTP and family cards) registered at the local kelurahan. It is no exaggeration to say hundreds suddenly became homeless overnight. They have lived for decades as informal occupants on state land managed by PPK Kemayoran, without legal title.

Far from prosperity, many migrated with their families and children to the capital, only to be trapped in an urban hell—surviving as poor informal workers in fire-prone slums. Viewed more broadly, they are victims of neoliberal urban development since the 1980s: the “globopolis” trend that corporatizes cities to serve oligarchic elites only to transform as an engine of economic growth. As Jakarta ballooned to 11 million people, it became a resource-sucking metropolis that concentrates millions of internal migrants. Shrinking urban land—taken for offices, malls, luxury housing, and factories—has driven land prices sky-high and spawned a “Millennial Generation Homeless” phenomenon, where young people cannot afford homes.

This fire is a systemic disaster, the result of a failed economic system and urban development strategy that elevates money and usury above the Quran’s guidance. Chaotic spatial planning, unequal rural–urban development, and unstoppable urbanization have compounded the problem.

As long as Muslim cities adopt neoliberal, secular-capitalist development models, millions in Jakarta, including countless children, will continue to suffer in this urban hell—doubly victimized by rural poverty and urban economic exploitation caused by ignoring Allah’s laws in city planning. Only by establishing the Khilafah based upon the method of Prophethood, the state of guardianship of its citizens, that implements the Islamic laws in their entirety, and ruled by a Khalifah who understands his Islamic obligation to provide a good standard of housing and living for his people and protect them from all forms of harm and exploitation, will the people of Indonesia and beyond in the Muslim lands be lifted from their miserable plight. Allah (swt) says:

[أَفَحُكْمَ الْجَاهِلِيَّةِ يَبْغُونَ وَمَنْ أَحْسَنُ مِنَ اللّهِ حُكْمًا لِّقَوْمٍ يُوقِنُونَ]

“Do they seek the judgment of jahiliyya? Who could be better than Allah in judgment for those who truly believe?” [Al-Ma’idah: 50].