Hi. I have a master's degree in religious studies and I lived in Indonesia for a bit less than a year.

I can tell you that for Indonesia; yes. In fact in non-Muslim area's such as Flores they still do. Additionally, even in Muslim area's pork is available and some Muslims even eat it occasionally.

The adherence to certain Islamic prescriptions such as the ban on pork and specifically alcohol have been variable to say the least, throughout most of the Islamic world. An excellent book about this is What Is Islam? by Shahab Ahmed, which takes drinking alcohol as a case study for how Islam and Islamic identity is construed. When someone says he is Muslim, owns and reads a Qur'an, loves God; but drinks wine - what are we to make of this? The problem is that that seeming contradiction characterized most of the Islamic world. Drinking wine has always been a staple of historical Islamic societies. His main finding is that commitment to Islam and self-identification as Muslim didn't (and to some degree still doesn't) necessarily overlap with strictly following certain prescriptions. And then he asks; then what is Islam?

In Indonesia specifically for example, drinking alcohol and bringing offerings to local spirits were relatively common and still persist among Muslims. (This is explored quite well for Java in the book Mystic Synthesis by M.C. Ricklefs, which, although I have my issues with his theoretical engagements with religion as a concept, is still very informative on the subject).

This co-existence of Islam and (seemingly) non-Islamic practices, such as eating pork, drinking alcohol, or offering to spirits has always been something of a puzzle to external, often colonial, often Christian observers, who always concluded that Indonesian Muslims didn't really understand their own religion or were just too lazy to actually practice it, ending up with a fragmented or syncretic religiosity. Contemporary scholarship still somewhat echoes this idea. Long story short, Christians and atheists in formerly Christian societies lack the concepts to approach how Islam is lived and experienced in Indonesia (some good authors on the Christian origin and agenda of the concept of religion are Talal Asad and Tomoko Masuzawa). The Indonesian concept of "religion" is in some respects very different from the western concept of religion, which leads to such configurations that appear fragmented or syncretic to outside observers. In the case of Java specifically there's an excellent PhD thesis on the subject called Rethinking Javanese Religion. I also wrote my own master thesis on this, specifically how Javanese Muslims and Christians who bring offerings to a sea spirit relate this to their religion.

Today, Wahhabist influences are percolating throughout Indonesia and adherence to dietary prescriptions and certain types of clothing are becoming more popular. Fifty, even twenty years ago hardly any women wore hijabs. Now many do. This isn't enforced or anything; it's a shift in trend, a cohort effect almost. Old women do not wear hijabs, whereas young women do. It's the fashion of the times; it's old-fashioned to not wear a hijab. Engagement with local spirits is also less and less seen as permissible. This is the result of a modernizing streak in Islam that started in Saudi-Arabia in the 18th century.

In Indonesia specifically, a strong distinction is sometimes made between "Islam tradisional" (sometimes called Islam Nusantara (archipelago Islam)) and Islam modern (sometimes called Islam Arab by its opponents). Contrary to what you might expect, the "traditional Islam" is far more open, accomodating, and flexible, whereas the modern Islam is far more strict, rigid, and hard - although a proponent of modern Islam would say that traditional Islam is lax, polluted, and morally bankrupt, whereas modern Islam is pure and clear, and in fact not modern at all but a return to Islam as it was intended.

Eventually it all comes down to that widespread strict adherence to any and all Islamic prescriptions is a relatively modern phenomenon. This is true not just for Indonesia but throughout the Islamic world.

EDIT: I must add here, however, that one prescription is not the same as another. I do think that the ban on pork has historically been more followed than the ban on alcohol. At least, works revolving around Muslims not following Islamic prescriptions in Java revolve mostly around alcohol, spirit offerings, praying five times a day (or at all), and engagement with pre-Islamic Hindu-Buddhist religion -- not pork. I don't know why this is and I don't know if it's ever been researched. After all, the dynamics of Muslims not following their religion isn't something that has historically been interesting to religious studies people. The question why Javanese Muslims (sometimes) engage with spirits is more interesting than the question why they generally don't eat pork, because the first question confounds us, whereas there's an easy answer to the second question: because they're Muslim. The more I think about it, the more I think this is really something that ought to be researched.

My hypothesis would be that the ban on pork was easier to implement on pre-Islamic life for some reason, perhaps because

• people didn't eat that much pork to begin with (chicken is cheaper)

• the concept of dietary restrictions or something similar was already present and therefore easily translated onto the Javanese context

• or some entirely different reason

But damn, this is really a good question actually.

Here is a link to a pretty in depth comment I made in a earlier thread. In the earlier passage I mainly focused on how pigs were an ideal animal for early domestication, possibly being one of the first, how pig farming played into the development of early settlements, and the subsequent socioeconomic conditions that emerged to create pork taboos in certain parts of the ancient world.