ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to examine the understudied transition in the Islamic economy of the colonial age from the personalised dynamics of the village or local kingdom to a more abstracted community of the Indonesian umma. It analyses one specific case study: Muhammadiyah membership dues in the Indonesian region of Aceh. The chapter argues that the difficulties experienced by Muhammadiyah in trying to gain dues-paying members in Aceh illustrate that local, often personalised contingencies ultimately conditioned the pursuit of ‘progress’ and the transition to a novel form of Islamic economy. Muhammadiyah, by contrast, appeared to incarnate a transition to a rationalised ‘bourgeois’ capitalist economy where the dictates of a de-personalised market economy took precedence over clients and patrons. Muhammadiyah exhorted pious shop-owners, traders and civil service bureaucrats to both pay membership fees and make zakat donations to serve not just their immediate neighbours in the village, but the much more abstract needs of the wider Indonesian umma.
