Anticipating Life

Abstract

The politics of developing a class of indigenous entrepreneurs, particularly through support to small enterprises, has long been a project of a loose group of urban Muslim intellectuals in Indonesia. Such actors have sought to put Islam into everyday practice by proposing, amongst other things, the creation of a syariah-based economy whose main purpose is to serve the people (ekonomi Islam/ekonomi rakyat). For many advocates of such approach, the key to a viable and sustainable Islamic economy involves the cultivation, on a massive scale, of scores of Muslim entrepreneurs amongst the populace at large, especially the poor. In this context, Islamic welfare organisations aim to lift the poor out of poverty by means of cultivating new attitudes to work and wealth. The chapter shows that the poverty alleviation interventions undertaken by zakat management bodies in Indonesia are mainly geared towards making time pass through opening a route to a future anticipated as an improved and enhanced version of the present. The effort expended towards making such a future arrive is directly correlated with systematically cultivating a people proper to it, a future people of pious entrepreneurs to duly populate an upcoming prosperous and pious earth.