The dispute, involving a New Zealand national on Gili Trawangan, has drawn fresh attention to whether related government guidelines on the use of such speakers should instead become a binding law.
On February 18, the woman disrupted a Koran recitation night session at a musalla – a small prayer room – near her villa on Gili Trawangan, about a two-hour ferry ride from Bali.
Often described as a party island, Gili Trawangan is part of Muslim-majority Lombok, also known as “the island of a thousand mosques”.
Residents said she had complained about the use of loudspeakers during the recitation. A commotion erupted after she unplugged a microphone, angering locals.
Muhammad Husni, the local village head, told news outlet Detik that the woman had also “scratched a resident and caused a religious figure in the musalla to fall” during the confrontation, which later went viral on social media.