{"id":3263,"date":"2017-04-14T13:19:53","date_gmt":"2017-04-14T17:19:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/practicalmattersjournal.ecdsdev.org\/?p=3263"},"modified":"2020-02-27T16:53:44","modified_gmt":"2020-02-27T21:53:44","slug":"marketing-islam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pmcleanup.ecdsdev.org\/2017\/04\/14\/marketing-islam\/","title":{"rendered":"Marketing Islam: Entrepreneurial Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism in Indonesia"},"content":{"rendered":"
Download PDF:\u00a0Hoesterey, Marketing Islam<\/a><\/h5>\n
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Abstract<\/h3>\n

Indonesia — the world\u2019s most populous Muslim majority country and third most populous democracy \u2013 has experienced both a widespread Islamic revival and democratic transition over the last several decades. Just prior to the fall of Suharto\u2019s authoritarian New Order regime (1965-1998), Indonesia accepted a USD $40 billion financial bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). As part of the package, Indonesia underwent massive privatization of state-owned companies. At the same time, the Islamic revival in Indonesia promoted Islamic models of entrepreneurship and capital accumulation. Against this political and religious backdrop, celebrity preacher Aa Gym branded himself as the ideal mix of pious preacher and savvy entrepreneur, and promoted a decidedly Islamic vision of ethical entrepreneurship at once reminiscent of, yet not easily reducible to, the secular-liberal logics of neoliberalism. This photo essay juxtaposes theory and image, ethnography and entrepreneurship, Islamic ethics and the spirit of capitalism.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Max Weber\u2019s classic book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism<\/em>, considers the connections between piety and prosperity.[1]<\/a> With respect to religious belief and entrepreneurial practice, Weber argued that \u201cthe supposed conflict between other-worldliness, asceticism, and ecclesiastical piety on the one side, and participation in capitalistic acquisition on the other, might actually turn out to be an intimate relationship.\u201d[2]<\/a> At least for the Calvinists, Weber argued, the \u201cmodern economic order is… the result of the expression of virtue and proficiency in a calling.\u201d[3]<\/a> Whereas Weber was concerned specifically with Calvinist belief and entrepreneurial spirit, in a footnote he contrasts Islam\u2019s understanding of predetermination with Calvinist belief in predestination and declined to make any claims about the connection between piety and prosperity in Islam (a study Weber intended, but never fully carried out).[4]<\/a> In this photo essay, I extend Weber\u2019s analysis and reflect on the extent to which we might speak of an Islamic spirit of capitalism. Through both text and image, I will describe how Islamic models of capital accumulation are intimately connected with an ethics of entrepreneurship rooted in Qur\u2019anic text and the legacy of the Prophet Muhammad. In doing so, I argue that there is indeed an Islamic ethics of capitalism that cannot be reduced to the global spread of capitalism and neoliberal logics of the free market.[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Abdullah
Promotional image for celebrity preacher Abdullah Gymnastiar (Aa Gym). Image courtesy of Abdullah Gymnastiar.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To elucidate these connections between work and worship, capital and charity, this world and the hereafter, I will tell the story of the rise, fall, and re-branding of Indonesia\u2019s most popular Muslim televangelist, Kyai Haji Abdullah Gymnastiar. Known affectionately across the Indonesian archipelago as \u201cAa Gym\u201d (elder brother Gym), Gymnastiar achieved fame and fortune with his religious message of Manajemen Qolbu <\/em>(Heart Management). Manajemen Qolbu<\/em> (trademarked as \u201cMQ\u201d) blends Sufi ideas about the heart with the self-help slogans of Western popular psychology. [6]<\/a> With over twenty businesses related to his personal and corporate brand, Aa Gym also had the reputation as a shrewd entrepreneur. This mix of piety and prosperity served him well during Indonesia\u2019s post-authoritarian moment that witnessed a surge in what has been referred to in Indonesia as the \u201cIslamic economy,\u201d or ekonomi santri<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This photo essay juxtaposes text and image to discern how Aa Gym\u2019s rise to fame sheds light on broader themes that connect Islam, ethics, and fortune. As a visual anthropologist, I experiment here with the possibilities of visual storytelling and digital scholarship. Whereas the text situates this case study within theoretical discussions about neoliberalism, capital accumulation, and subject formation, the images themselves are both visual data and theoretical argument as visual footnotes from the field that aim to connect reader with research and researcher. David MacDougall refers to ethnographic films and photographs as a \u201cform of visual quotation\u201d and reminds us that \u201cimages and written texts not only tell us things differently, they tell us different things.\u201d[7]<\/a> Taken together, the images are intended as an ethnographic montage of the world of Islamic self-help in Indonesia \u2013 the disciples, preachers, and products to the brands, taglines, and promises. As Jay Ruby observes, the power of images is not that they \u201cspeak for\u201d or \u201cspeak about\u201d our interlocutors as much as they \u201cspeak alongside\u201d them.[8]<\/a> These images serve as an invitation for reader to join researcher into one \u2013 certainly not the only — visual archive of Islamic entrepreneurship. One important dimension of digital scholarship is the opportunity to provide more primary materials with which the reader can engage, reflect, and even critique the written ethnography. As with the case of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson\u2019s ground-breaking visual documentation in Bali, to share the visual archive is to also allow space for viewing against the grain, in which previously unseen images, at least by the ethnographer in the field, can be mined for their ethnographic richness and theoretical implications.[9]<\/a> The images included here are a combination of primary documents and photos taken over the course of two years of fieldwork (2005-2007) conducted in Aa Gym\u2019s Islamic school, TV studios, and Islamic training complex.<\/p>\n

\"Marketplace\"
The profit-sharing marketplace at Aa Gym\u2019s Islamic school sold Islamic books, clothing, and souvenirs ranging from calendars and bumper stickers to prayer beads and novelty clocks. Photo by author.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"keychains,
Islamic souvenirs. Photo by author.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Case
Much to my surprise, Aa Gym clocks sold especially well. Photo by author.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Girl
Aa Gym explained the importance of Qolbu Cola in terms of an Islamic response to the centuries of economic domination by European colonialism. Others explained Qolbu Cola in terms of personal branding and multi-level marketing. Photo by author.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Promotional
Promotional images of Aa Gym and his self-help slogans were ubiquitous around the Islamic school and training complex. Photo by author.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Display
Aa Gym owned a multi-level marketing firm that sold household products and women\u2019s cosmetics under the label \u201cMQ Blessings\u201d (MQ Baroqah). Photo by author.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Both image and text describe how Aa Gym frames the relationship between Islam and commerce, preacher and disciple, producer and consumer. I consider how the Islamic self-help industry influences religious experience and entrepreneurial practice by raising the questions: To what extent might the incorporation of popular psychology into middle-class training programs engender an autonomous, neoliberal subject? How commensurate are Islamic ethics of entrepreneurship with individualizing logics of neoliberalism? And how might this renewed emphasis on the enterprising self also recalibrate the prophetic tradition, opening the possibilities for new imaginations of the Prophet Muhammad as the ultimate entrepreneur? By bridging text and image, reader and researcher, written ethnography and visual archive, perhaps we can better understand both the resonances and points of departure between Islam, neoliberalism, and the spirit of capitalism.<\/p>\n

\"Cloth
Aa Gym dolls were very popular. The writing is a passage from his hit song \u201cTake Care of Your Heart\u201d: \u201cTake care of your heart, do not soil it; Take care of your heart, lantern for this life.\u201d Although beyond the scope of this article, Aa Gym\u2019s Islamic self-help psychology was deeply informed by Sufi understandings of the heart. Photo by author.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Over the last couple of decades, scholars have sought to understand how new trends in psychological expertise and religious practice are embedded in larger assemblages of global capitalism and the exporting of neoliberal logics. Aa Gym offers Management Qolbu<\/em> as an Islamic psycho-therapeutics for this world and the hereafter, and thus offers a unique ethnographic context through which to return to Weber\u2019s concern with the link between \u201cinner-worldly asceticism\u201d and capital accumulation.<\/p>\n

Taking cue from Nikolas Rose\u2019s work on the moral-political work of \u201cpsy-discourses\u201d (1989) and Michel Foucault\u2019s concept of \u201ctechnologies of self\u201d (1988), I examine Islamic idioms of entrepreneurship and capital accumulation as they are summoned, articulated, and mobilized amid the broader privatization of both economic and religious subjects.[10]<\/a> Specifically, I discuss how Aa Gym draws from Islamic idioms of psychology to encourage trainees to fashion two, complementary dimensions of subjectivity \u2013 the enterprising and virtuous self. Nikolas Rose brings a Foucauldian knowledge\/power approach to understanding how psychological expertise shapes subjectivity:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018psy\u2019 \u2013 the heterogeneous knowledges, forms of authority and practical techniques that constitute psychological expertise \u2013 has made it possible for human beings to conceive of themselves, speak about themselves, judge themselves and conduct themselves in new ways\u2026. Psy, here, is not simply a matter of ideas\u2026 it has a very significant role in contemporary forms of political power, making it possible to govern human beings in ways that are compatible with the principles of liberalism and democracy.[11]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Elsewhere, Rose has argued that psychological expertise is being used to justify, even to naturalize, neoliberal logics of the free market and a belief in an autonomous, self-enterprising subject.[12]<\/a><\/p>\n

In his excellent ethnography of a state-owned steel factory in Muslim-majority Indonesia, Daromir Rudnyckyj describes how celebrity human resources manager Ary Ginanjar summons the language of Islamic psychology (through the training program ESQ, or Emotional and Spiritual Quotient) to help factory managers increase the efficiency and productivity of workers during the company\u2019s shift towards privatization.[13]<\/a> In ESQ Training, Islamic virtues of punctuality, cleanliness, and honesty were offered as remedies for (supposedly) lazy laborers and corrupt managers. Rudnyckyj advances the useful concept of \u201cspiritual economies\u201d to characterize \u201cthe way in which economic reform and neoliberal structuring are conceived of and enacted as matters of religious piety and spiritual value.\u201d[14]<\/a> However, Rudnyckyj joins other scholars who are careful not to cede too much power to neoliberalism as a monolithic, agentive, and hegemonic force.[15]<\/a> In Rudnyckyj\u2019s reckoning, \u201cthe creation of a spiritual economy in Indonesia… is an unprecedented assemblage that is as much the Islamization of neoliberalism as it is the neoliberalization of Islam.\u201d[16]<\/a> Likewise, the ethnographic episodes and images considered here reveal\u00a0the ways in which global psychological expertise and management theory is made Islamic. Taking this a step further, I would also add that I am not sure neoliberalism is even the best way of conceptualizing the emergence of what proponents refer to as the Islamic economy. Whereas such a conceptual approach makes sense in the context of a state-owned steel factory in the midst of privatization, the case of Aa Gym and the longer history of Islamic entrepreneurship in Indonesia tell a larger story. As I will argue, Islamic self-help programs do indeed resonate with neoliberal ideals of the enterprising self, yet their specific teachings about fate, free will, and the hereafter constitute an indigenous form of Islamic entrepreneurship that is not reducible to the global spread of neoliberalism.<\/p>\n

\"Rows
Mio motorcycle on display at Aa Gym sermon for Yamaha event. Aa Gym\u2019s admirers consistently told me that they listened to Aa Gym because he \u201ctouched their hearts.\u201d Corporate marketers know very well the market value of the ability to touch hearts. Prior to conducting ethnography, I would never have imagined that I would conduct research at a Yamaha corporate event. Yet this single image offers clues to a global assemblage linking faith and fortune. Methodologically, the study of piety and prosperity must seek out religion in the marketplace as much as looking for the market in religious texts and beliefs. Photo by author.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Aa Gym carefully crafted his personal brand as a pious family man and doting husband, which made him especially popular among Indonesian women. So, when Yamaha executives wanted to express their appreciation to their female customers in Indonesia for making the Mio<\/em> motorcycle one of the most successful in Indonesia among women, they hired Aa Gym to preach to stadium crowds of customers in eight major market cities. The customer campaign tagline \u2013 \u201cTouching your Heart\u201d — resonated with Aa Gym\u2019s personal brand of Manajemen Qolbu<\/em>.<\/p>\n

With nearly 200 million Muslims, Indonesia is the most populous Muslim-majority country \u2013 and third largest democracy — in the world. Like elsewhere in the world, Indonesian Muslims experienced a religious revival during the 1980s and 1990s. Aa Gym rose to fame in the wake of the state\u2019s easing of media restrictions in the aftermath of Suharto\u2019s authoritarian New Order regime. Suharto was Muslim, yet weary of the potential for political Islam to encroach on his power and fortune. During most of Suharto\u2019s rule, Indonesia only had one television channel, the state-run TVRI. All religious programs were censored and required to promote the nationalist state ideology of Pancasila<\/em>.[17]<\/a> During the late 1980s and early 1990s, however, Suharto embraced what he termed \u201ccultural Islam\u201d and endorsed the founding of an Islamic newspaper, bank, and Association for Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals, ICMI.[18]<\/a> Indonesians pride themselves on their moderate understandings of Islam, and Aa Gym wanted to challenge Western Islamophobia by branding his version of Islam as soft and moderate \u2013 an Islam of the heart, not the caliphate.<\/p>\n

With the widespread proliferation and privatization of media during post-New Order Indonesia, television producers and advertisers enthusiastically embraced Islamic programs. In the process, Islam accrued a certain market value, and celebrity preachers became household names across Indonesia. Aa Gym, easily the most popular television preacher of the early 2000s, branded himself as both pious and prosperous — devoted family man and shrewd entrepreneur. He trademarked Manajemen Qolbu<\/em> as MQ and sold products ranging from MQ corporate training to Qolbu Cola and MQ Shampoo. Millions of viewers tuned in for his Sunday television show, over one hundred radio stations broadcast his morning program, and thousands of spiritual tourists and corporate trainees flocked to his Islamic school each week. Aa Gym\u2019s reputation as a savvy entrepreneur resonated with the aspirations of middle class Muslims seeking both piety and prosperity.[19]<\/a> Aa Gym was included among the \u201c50 Most Important Muslims\u201d worldwide and with a 91% approval rating at the pinnacle of his popularity. He embodied the ideals of modern Muslim masculinity in Indonesia, and millions of his followers, mostly women, spent much of their time, and money, consuming Aa Gym\u2019s TV shows, DVD videos, and household goods.<\/p>\n

\"Women
Women Qur\u2019anic study group purchasing Aa Gym sermons and religious paraphernalia. Aspirational piety and Islamic consumption is not simply about purchasing religious commodities. Equally important, faithful devotees consume the brand narratives and personal lives of celebrity preachers and icons of piety. Photo by author.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0Aa Gym marketed himself as the ideal family man, preaching the need for husbands to control their anger. On national television, he even serenaded his wife Ninih, in English, with the Everly Brothers song, \u201cLet it be Me.\u201d Aa Gym\u2019s simple, humorous, and pragmatic sermons focused on how to cultivate a happy and harmonious family. In the picture below, Aa Gym and his wife Ninih Mutmainnah, in front of a huge portrait of their smiling family, shared their religio-therapeutic formulas for family bliss with several women\u2019s Qur\u2019anic study groups visiting through Aa Gym\u2019s \u201cspiritual tourism\u201d retreat weekends. Indeed, I spent much of my weekends, standing in line with these women as they waited to get their picture taken with Aa Gym and Ninih. After that, a tour guide escorted them around the corner to MQ Photo where they could print their photo, for a price of course.<\/p>\n

\"Aa
Aa Gym and his wife Ninih sharing their formulas for a happy family. The performative style of these exchanges self-consciously drew from melodramatic television serials known as sinetron. Aa Gym\u2019s television company also produced a fictional account of Aa Gym\u2019s family, titled \u201cThe Smiling Family,\u201d thereby blurring the lines between fact and fiction, personal piety and virtual virtue. Photo by author.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On the public stage, Aa Gym served as the moral exemplar of Muslim masculinity \u2013 shrew entrepreneur and devoted family man. Manajemen Qolbu<\/em> provided a religious therapeutics for the desires and anxieties of middle-class women trying to manage the affective economies of marriage and family.[20]<\/a> The inter-subjective preacher-disciple relationship was marked by the affective tone of a \u201cheart to heart\u201d in which Aa Gym (as master of his own heart) created the hybrid persona of a preacher-psychologist who promised to soothe modern anxieties about emotional labor and family turmoil.<\/p>\n

A huge following of middle-class women adored Aa Gym. Preaching to stadium crowds (of mostly women), Aa Gym would always begin singing his trademark song – \u201cTake Care of Your Heart\u201d \u2013 and then extend the microphone to the crowd, motioning to thousands of women who sang the chorus. This inter-subjective preacher-disciple relationship was marked by the affective tone of a \u201cheart to heart\u201d (curahan hati<\/em>) in which Aa Gym (as master of his own heart) created the hybrid public persona of a preacher-psychologist who promised to soothe modern anxieties about emotional labor and family turmoil. Aa Gym built his own brand of Muslim masculinity, and his religious authority hinged on his image as moral exemplar. This public image and preacher-disciple relationship would eventually come back to haunt him.<\/p>\n

\"Aa
Aa Gym told his life story through images such as the time he co-piloted an F5E-Tiger fighter jet. He was one of several new preachers who became celebrities by embodying a certain hip and modern form of piety. Image courtesy of Abdullah Gymnastiar.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In sermons and training seminars, Aa Gym narrated his life story as evidence of the efficacy of Manajemen Qolbu<\/em>. Beyond the home and office, Aa Gym also portrayed himself as an adventurer and rugged outdoorsman who sought hi-velocity thrills by skydiving, horse-riding, and even riding as co-pilot in a F5E-Tiger fighter jet. He gallantly performed courage and tenacity that, according to him, were crucial for entrepreneurial success. While on the road, he typically introduced himself with a seven-minute video autobiography (what he refers to as his Qolbugrafi<\/em>), \u201cAa Gym: Just As He Is.\u201d With a catchy soundtrack, the video biography is a montage of Aa Gym at work and play \u2013 in the boardroom, skydiving with Indonesian special forces, scuba diving, playing paintball during an outbound corporate training seminar, spending time with family, and hanging out with rickshaw drivers on the roadside. Then words flash on the screen: \u201cThere is no success without bravery.\u201d Aa Gym consciously nurtured this personal brand. Indeed, Indonesia\u2019s leading marketing guru, Hermawan Kartajaya, affectionately referred to him as a \u201cspiritual marketer.\u201d In this poster that hangs on the bookstore wall in his Islamic school, Aa Gym provides advice on how to market oneself:<\/p>\n

\"Poster
Poster, \u201cSuccessfully Marketing Yourself with the 3-As: Aku (I) am safe and reliable for you; I please\/satisfy you; I am helpful to you.\u201d Photo by author.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My interest in the role of marketing bridges conversations in Islamic studies about new media and religious authority with anthropological inquiries into \u201cmarket Islam\u201d and branding as social practice.[21]<\/a> Expanding on French scholar Patrick Haenni\u2019s concept of \u201cL\u2019Islam de March\u00e9<\/em>,\u201d Daromir Rudnyckyj advances the useful concept of \u201cmarket Islam\u201d as a lens through which to understand religious practice in the broader social context of privatization and neoliberal economic policy in Indonesia.[22]<\/a> As previously noted, Rudnyckyj provides invaluable insights into the religio-economic ways in which privatizing companies invest in Islamic training to discipline workers and cultivate higher productivity. I would like to broaden the scope of market Islam in order to investigate the ideas and practices that go into marketing products and public icons as Islamic. In this respect, I am more concerned with the marketing of<\/em> Islamic entrepreneurship than the broad structures of economic globalization in which Islamic self-cultivation occurs.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>With an eclectic mix of Qur\u2019an and global pop psychology, a new generation of popular preachers garnered new forms of religious authority and ushered in new forms of religious practice. In Indonesia\u2019s marketplace of modernity, Aa Gym developed a range of Islamic training courses under MQ\u2019s theological umbrella and corporate brand. Clients ranged from middle management at state-owned companies to soon-to-be-retiring employees in search of new sources of income. Much like the Arabic-Indonesian-English hybrid Manajemen Qolbu<\/em>, MQ Entrepreneur Training based its curriculum on a combination of Quranic passages, stories and sayings of the Prophet Muhamad, and a heavy dose of New Age and corporate management seminars.<\/p>\n

\"Fire-walking
Fire-walking training with Anthony Robbins and Tung Desem Waringin. No promotional event was too big for Waringin. Years later, he fell out of favor when, as part of a promotional stunt, he dropped cash from a plane to the masses below. Showing off one\u2019s opulence contrasts with Islamic ideals of humility and such charity was perceived by most as insincere. Photo courtesy of Tung Desem Waringin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Aa Gym was always looking for new inspiration and material. He asked his top three MQ trainers to attend this Fire-walking Training seminar featuring American legendary self-help guru Anthony Robbins, author of Awaken the Giant Within<\/em> and self-help guru to Hollywood Stars. On the Monday after Anthony Robbins\u2019 Fire-walking Training (live via hi-definition TV), Aa Gym invited these MQ trainers to share their experiences at their weekly sermon and motivational session for approximately 500 employees. One by one, these trainers described what they learned about Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) and what it felt like to walk on fire. The goal of NLP, they told the audience, was to create that \u201cmagical moment<\/em>\u201d that would provide the positive thinking necessary to surmount future challenges. As Sena Lesmana described:<\/p>\n

\n

Sure, I was scared that I would get burned. But, you see, that\u2019s just it. You use NLP<\/em> to overcome your fear. You tell yourself that you will not be burned. Before I walked on the fire, I said bismillah<\/em> and then when I finished I yelled out, Alhamdulillah<\/em>! See, you can do whatever you set your mind to doing.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

By uttering these words in Arabic, Sena framed his intent and accomplishment in a language of Islamic ethics, transforming fire-walking into an Islamic technology of self. Building on his \u201cmagical moment,\u201d Sena subsequently paid USD $1,500 to become a licensed trainer of the \u201cIndonesian Firewalker Trainers Association,\u201d and later incorporated Fire-walking Training into MQ Entrepreneur Training.<\/p>\n

\"A
Sena explains NLP to a group of fire-walking trainees at the Islamic school. Photo by author.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Entrepreneur
Entrepreneur Revolution with Tung Desem Waringin and H. Abdurrahman Yuri. Photo courtesy of H. Abdurrahman Yuri.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MQ Entrepreneur Training frames capital accumulation as both economic and ethical pursuit. On February 27 2006, Indonesian get-rich-quick guru Tung Desem Waringin and \u201cMQ Master Trainer\u201d Abdurrahman Yuri co-presented a seminar at Daarut Tauhiid: \u201cEntrepreneur Revolution.\u201d Pak Waringin\u2019s presentation was almost entirely based on American financial self-help guru Robert Kiyosaki\u2019s book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach their Kids about Money that the Poor and Middle Class Do Not<\/em>.[23]<\/a> Kiyosaki presents a \u201cCashflow Quadrant\u201d model to reveal the secrets of capital accumulation. In the quadrant, one could be a salaried employee, a self-employed worker, a business owner, or an investor. Only by becoming an investor, Kiyosaki says, can one earn passive income, \u201chave their money work for them,\u201d and finally reach financial freedom.<\/p>\n

Following this seminar, MQ Entrepreneur trainers added the \u201cCashflow Quadrant\u201d board game to their curriculum. By playing the game, participants are supposed to realize that anyone<\/em> can become rich and \u201cget out of the rat race.\u201d The game\u2019s rules are designed such that even a janitor (my job when I played) is eventually able to get on the \u201cfast track\u201d of capital accumulation and make their dreams come true. Based on the game\u2019s glorification of the American dream (myth) of meritocracy, one might<\/em> conclude that MQ Entrepreneur Training fosters a neo-liberal subject who controls her own destiny in terms of capital accumulation. Such a conclusion, however, would assume that the game\u2019s logics are somehow uniformly internalized by docile trainees. It would also assume a necessary causal link between techniques of self-engineering and religious subjectivity. If only ethnography were so neat and tidy.<\/p>\n

\"People
MQ Entrepreneur Trainees playing board game \u201cCashflow Quadrant.\u201d Photo by author.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My observations of trainees actually playing this game, as well as the debriefing sessions that followed, suggest a different explanation, one that honors how trainers and trainees play with multiple models of entrepreneurial ethics and capital accumulation. Islamic training brings us into the realm of the ludic, where trainees play with the resonances between the entrepreneurial ethics of Islam and the individualism of Western self-help. One of the interesting rules of the game is that if a player lands on a \u201ccharity\u201d space, they can donate ten percent of their income for an extra roll of the dice (Kiyosaki\u2019s gentle nudge towards tithing, perhaps). Charitable giving would enable them to collect their next paycheck even faster, \u201cget out of the rat race,\u201d and get a step closer to entering the game\u2019s \u201cfast track,\u201d where they can purchase their dreams (ranging from a ski house to a beach house). During the debriefing session following the game, the charity dimension was framed in terms of Islamic teachings about charity (zakat, infaq, waqaf<\/em>). Trainees were asked to discuss occasions when, after giving charity, they actually found themselves on the receiving end of fortune.<\/p>\n

One trainee referred to the popular seminar \u201cthe Power of Giving\u201d (led by television preacher Yusuf Mansur) in which people were asked to donate whatever they felt they could. In the following days and weeks, as Mansur\u2019s story goes, they would experience for themselves Allah\u2019s promise that they could increase their own fortune by giving to others. As one trainee put it, \u201cI am as certain as certain can be that without Allah\u2019s hand, people will not attain riches\u2026 the more you donate [to charity], the more you will get in return.\u201d Another woman chimed in: \u201cIt\u2019s true. Once, I was thinking about how I wanted to build a home for orphans \u2013 just an intention (niat<\/em>), not yet the actual building. The next week my husband got a large raise at work.\u201d Yet another trainee cautioned, \u201cThis is all great, but we should also remember that fortune is not always about money. In the words of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, something as simple as a smile can become charity.\u201d The trainer concluded the debriefing session by saying that giving charity is an integral part of obtaining fortune, in its many forms, in this life and the hereafter. In other words, capital accumulation is not simply about one\u2019s worldly dreams of a ski house in Aspen; it is about preparing one\u2019s home in the hereafter. Trainers and trainees re-inscribed the game — with its logics of self-enterprise and glorification of individual initiative — with Islamic idioms of fortune and ethics, charity and obligation, piety and prosperity.<\/p>\n

\u201cMQ Master Trainer\u201d Abdurrahman Yuri (who goes by Adeda) led the next session titled \u201cThe Concept of Business Ethics Based on Manajemen Qolbu.\u201d He differentiated between three eras of business: the secular era, the mixed era, and the era of integration \u2013 where business and religion are one. In this third era, Adeda proclaimed, piety is an important factor in determining one\u2019s financial success. He discussed the secrets of capital accumulation by summoning Islamic texts that connect piety (taqwa<\/em>) with fortune (rezeki<\/em>). Adeda began quote from the Qur\u2019an, Al-Thalaq (2-3): \u201cAnd whosoever fears God, He will appoint for him a way out, and He will provide for him from whence he never reckoned.\u201d<\/p>\n

MQ Entrepreneur Training posits three different kinds of fortune. Most central to the present discussion is the kind of fortune that depends on self-initiative, or ikhtiar<\/em>. Trainees are encouraged to \u201cmaximize their self-initiative\u201d (menyempurnakan ikhtiar<\/em>) in order to \u201cmeet up with their fortune\u201d (menjemput rezeki<\/em>). Adeda quoted the Qur\u2019an passage Ar-Rad (11): \u201cGod does not change the fate of a people, until they change their own fate\u201d (i.e. God helps those who help themselves). Muslim trainers summoned this verse time and time again in a variety of contexts and training programs across Indonesia. The verse was an important source of Islamic textual authority that also resonated with neoliberal ideals of the self-enterprising entrepreneur.<\/p>\n

\"Close
Dzikir (Mindfulness of God); Fikir (Think); Ikhtiar (Self-initiative). This plaque hangs over the door of MQ Entrepreneur Training. Photo by author.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0This concept of self-initiative, however, does not easily conform to the idea of an unencumbered individual whose efforts alone can guarantee success. Nor can it be reduced simply to God\u2019s will. Rather, fortune is thought to be allocated by God and our task as humans is to exert self-initiative to secure that fortune \u2013 not just by chasing after riches, but by leading pious lives as devout Muslims. Aa Gym promotes self-initiative as part of a tripartite formula for success in this life and the hereafter: Dzikir, Fikir, Ikhtiar<\/em>. Dzikir<\/em>, mindfulness of Allah; Fikir<\/em>, our cognitive capacity; and Ikhtiar<\/em>, self-initiative. Faith in self-initiative alone — without mindfulness of God \u2013 carries us further from God and ensures neither earthly riches nor heavenly redemption.<\/p>\n

Trainees are admonished that entrepreneurship is an ethical pursuit linking self-cultivation with both capital accumulation and charitable giving. Riches can become blessings (berkah<\/em>) only when earned ethically. Thus, when played by trainees in MQ Training, the \u201cCashflow Quadrant\u201d is not merely a secular board game on how to get rich. Trainers transform the game into a technology of self that mediates Islamic teachings on faith and fortune. In this reckoning, capital accumulation requires both worldly work and heavenly devotion. This marks a crucial distinction between the discursive practices of MQ Training and the neoliberal logics of Western financial gurus and self-help psychologies.<\/p>\n

MQ Entrepreneur Training emphasizes particular Islamic teachings that resonate<\/em> with neoliberal tenets of individualism and capital accumulation. Thinking in terms of \u201cresonance\u201d allows us to acknowledge similarities between multiple models of subjectivity, without losing sight of their points of departure. The resonance between transnational psychology and Islamic training helps to explain how imported theories of psyche and success can provide the legitimacy for novel forms of Islamic authority (trainer, self-help preachers) without merely reproducing a self-enterprising neoliberal subject.<\/p>\n

The commodification of Islamic self-help training also recalibrated preacher-disciple relationships. Aa Gym was not simply the founder of MQ, he was its exemplar. In the process, Aa Gym\u2019s religious authority was intimately linked with his brand equity. Aa Gym\u2019s brand traded on an exemplary sort of moral authority, yet even this was embedded in an ethical relationship between preacher and disciple, producer and consumer. So, when news broke that Aa Gym had secretly married a second wife, it became a national scandal. His female followers felt betrayed and lamented that Aa Gym\u2019s public image as loyal husband and loving family fan was just for show. Over the course of nearly 200 interviews, women framed the conversation in terms of the Islamic ideal of sincerity, or keikhlasan<\/em>. Thousands of Aa Gym\u2019s female followers took to social media, shredding his image in front of gossip television cameras, urging women to boycott his television shows, books, and household products. Within a couple weeks, Aa Gym lost his television contracts and his self-help empire began to crumble.<\/p>\n

\n

\"An
In the immediate aftermath of the scandal, Aa Gym\u2019s Islamic school became a ghost town. This area of the Islamic school complex had been a bustling market of approximately twenty food stalls, part of a profit-sharing arrangement Aa Gym had with local food vendors. The sign in the background promotes a program to love one\u2019s teachers. Photo by author.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0Taken aback by his dramatic fall from public grace, Aa Gym proclaimed the permissibility of polygyny in Islam, yet he also quietly reflected on and atoned for his marketing strategy of promoting himself as moral exemplar. He turned to Islamic psychology to try to understand his downfall as God\u2019s punishment for showing off his piety, or riya<\/em>. In other words, no matter how large one\u2019s fortune (and Aa Gym\u2019s was substantial), God can always take it all away. Had he put himself before God? Was near-bankruptcy now his fate? Now a decade later, Aa Gym continues to publicly atone for his shortcomings, many of his female followers no longer harbor resentment, and he has even returned to television. He now has over two million Twitter followers, spiritual tourists have returned once again, and he has re-gained his fortune. Nonetheless, he privately worries about once again falling for the shiny lure of stardom.<\/p>\n

Thus, the rise and fall of Aa Gym illuminates not just the ethical formation of enterprising selves, but also the ways in which the preacher-disciple relationship itself is commodified and, in the process, religious authority becomes linked with brand equity. Even in a world of virtual virtue, pop preachers are still expected to practice what they preach. Just as the Protestant ethic apparently has no monopoly on the \u201cspirit of capitalism,\u201d the psy-discourses of neoliberalism do not simply reproduce pre-packaged models of self-enterprising religious subjects.<\/p>\n

\n

Notes<\/h4>\n

[1]<\/a> Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism<\/em> (New York: Scribner, 1958).<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Weber, The Protestant Ethic<\/em>, 42.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Weber, The Protestant Ethic<\/em>, 53-54.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Weber, The Protestant Ethic<\/em>, 218.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism<\/em> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Aihwa Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty<\/em> (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006).<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> In this essay, I am more interested in the entrepreneurial aspects of Manajemen Qolbu <\/em>than its lineage in Sufi thought. Elsewhere I have discussed the latter in detail. See James Bourk Hoesterey, Rebranding Islam: Piety, Prosperity, and a Self-help Guru<\/em> (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016), 49-55.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> David MacDougall, Transcultural Cinema<\/em> (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Jay Ruby, \u201cSpeaking For, Speaking About, Speaking With, and Speaking Alongside: An Anthropological and Documentary Dilemma,\u201d Visual Anthropology Review<\/em> 7 (2): 50-67.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead, Balinese Character, a Photographic Analysis<\/em> (New York: The New York Academy of Sciences, 1942).<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Nikolas S. Rose, Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self<\/em>. (London and New York: \u00a0Free Association Books, 1999); Michel Foucault. \u201cTechnologies of the Self,\u201d In Technologies of the Self: A Seminar With Michel Foucault<\/em>, ed. by Luther Martin et. al. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 16-49.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Rose, Governing the Soul<\/em>, vii.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> Nikolas S. Rose and Peter Miller, Governing the Present: Administering Economic, Social, and Personal Life<\/em> (Cambridge: Polity, 2008).<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> Daromir Rudnyckyj, Spiritual Economies: Globalization and the Afterlife of Development<\/em> (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010).<\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> Rudnyckyj, Spiritual Economies<\/em>, 105.<\/p>\n

[15]<\/a> Carla Freeman, \u201cThe \u2018Reputation\u2019 of Neoliberalism,\u201d American Ethnologist <\/em>34 (2007): 252-267; Andrew Kipnis, \u201cNeoliberalism Reified: Suzhi Discourses and Tropes of Neoliberalism in the People\u2019s Republic of China,\u201d Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute<\/em> 13, 2 (2007): 383-400.<\/p>\n

[16]<\/a> Daromir Rudnyckyj, \u201cSpiritual Economies: Islam and Neoliberalism in Contemporary Indonesia,\u201d Cultural Anthropology <\/em>24, 1 (2009): 131.<\/p>\n

[17]<\/a> M.W.H. van der Pool, \u201cAn Islamic Sitcom: Keluarga Senyum<\/em>.\u201d (Masters thesis, Vrije University, 2005).<\/p>\n

[18]<\/a> Kenneth M. George, \u201cDesigns on Indonesia\u2019s Muslim Communities,\u201d The Journal of Asian Studies<\/em> 57, 3 (1998): 693-713.; Robert W. Hefner, Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia<\/em> (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).<\/p>\n

[19]<\/a> Greg Fealy and Sally White, eds., Expressing Islam: Religious Life and Politics in Indonesia<\/em> (Singapore: ISEAS, 2008).<\/p>\n

[20]<\/a> Jones, Carla Jones, \u201cBetter Women: The Cultural Politics of Gendered Expertise in Indonesia,\u201d American Anthropologist<\/em> 112, 2 (2010): 270-282.<\/p>\n

[21]<\/a> Mara Einstein, Brands of Faith: Marketing Religion in a Commercial Age<\/em> (New York: Routledge, 2008); Robert J. Foster, \u201cThe Work of the New Economy: Consumers, Brands, and Value Creation.\u201d Cultural Anthropology<\/em> 22, 4 (2007): 707-31; Brent Luvaas, \u201cMaterial Interventions: Indonesian DIY Fashion and the Regime of the Global Brand,\u201d Cultural Anthropology <\/em>28, 1 (2013): 127-143; Mazzarella, William. \u201c \u2018Very Bombay\u2019: Contending with the Global in an Indian Advertising Agency,\u201d Cultural Anthropology<\/em> 18, 1 (2003): 33-71; Sasha Newell, \u201cBrands as Masks: Public Secrecy and the Counterfeit in Cote d\u2019Ivoire.\u201d Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute<\/em> 19, 1 (2013): 138-154.<\/p>\n

[22]<\/a> Patrick Haenni, L\u2019Islam de March\u00e9: L\u2019Autre R\u00e9volution Conservatrice <\/em>[Market Islam: The Other Conservative Revolution] (Paris: Le Seuil\/ La R\u00e9publique des Id\u00e9es, 2005). Daromir Rudnyckyj, \u201cMarket Islam in Indonesia,\u201d Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute<\/em> 15, 1 (2009): 182-200.<\/p>\n

[23]<\/a> Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money that the Poor and Middle Class Do Not<\/em> (New York: Warner Books, 2000).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Download PDF:\u00a0Hoesterey, Marketing Islam Abstract Indonesia — the world\u2019s most populous Muslim majority country and third most populous democracy \u2013 has experienced both a widespread Islamic revival and democratic transition over the last several decades. Just prior to the fall<\/p>\n

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