Muhammad Yuanda Zara
Studies on Muhammadiyah’s charitable works mostly discuss the charitable institutions Muhammadiyah founded, such as hospitals and orphanages, and neglect one-off fundraising activities. This study examines Muhammadiyah’s strategies in promoting ‘Muhammadiyah charity stamps’ to the Netherlands Indies people in 1941. This study shows that although stamps are only small postal items, Muhammadiyah paid great attention to promoting and selling these stamps. It ran a well-organised and national-scale campaign, mobilising its network of branches and groups throughout the Indies. Muhammadiyah used all available campaign media, such as magazines, newspapers, pamphlets, pictures, songs and meetings. To maximise promotion, Muhammadiyah emphasised that buying these charity stamps meant giving donations that Allah would reward, supporting Muhammadiyah’s movements, and helping the welfare of the indigenous people. These charity stamps helped Muhammadiyah raise enormous funds and strengthened its reputation at home and abroad as a social movement that cared for the less fortunate. This study elucidates the largest and most successful one-off charitable fundraising effort, but so far still forgotten in the historiography of Indonesian Islam, which was carried out by an indigenous Muslim socio-religious organisation during the colonial period, using previously overlooked primary documents dating from 1941–1942. © 2024 M.Y. Zara
Yogyakarta State University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
