Safeguarding the Direction and Values of NU in the Harvest Maslaha Initiative

Headline

It is not the right time to raise JKN (National Health Insurance) premiums when the economic conditions of the community are still facing pressure.

It is not the right time to raise JKN premiums when the economic conditions of the community are still facing pressure.

The launch of NU Harvest Maslaha and Sharia Global Services marks a new phase in Nahdlatul Ulama (NU)’s involvement in the economic arena, just as NU enters its centenary. This step comes at a time that is not neutral: the world’s Islamic economy is experiencing extraordinary expansion.

The State of the Global Islamic Economy (SGIE) Report 2024/2025 notes that global Muslim consumer spending reached US$2.43 trillion in 2023 and is projected to increase to US$3.36 trillion in 2028, with an annual growth rate of around 5.5%. Sharia financial assets have even exceeded US$4.93 trillion and are expected to continue to surge in the coming years.

These figures explain why the Islamic economy is now seen as a major opportunity at the global level. However, that is precisely where the problem lies. When the Islamic economy is viewed merely as a market niche worth trillions of US dollars, it is at risk of losing its critical character.

Therefore, NU Harvest Maslaha and Sharia Global Services should not only be directed as an organizational response to market opportunities; both must be positioned as an epistemological statement of how NU understands Islamic economics, and for whom that economy works.

SGIE shows that the halal food sector is still the mainstay of the global Islamic economy, with a value of US$1.43 trillion in 2023 and a projected value of almost US$1.94 trillion in 2028. Muslim-friendly travel, modest fashion, halal cosmetics, halal pharmaceuticals, and media are also growing steadily with a CAGR of between 5% and 12%. Indonesia itself ranks third in the Global Islamic Economy Indicator (GIEI), after Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, and is also one of the world’s leading centers for halal economic investment.

However, SGIE also reveals another side that is rarely discussed: this growth is driven by market regionalization, changes in consumer behavior, and geopolitical shifts, including boycotts of multinational brands that are considered unethical. Global social media sentiment analysis shows that 15.6% of conversations explicitly encourage the consumption of more ethical and local alternatives, especially in the food, beverage, fashion, and cosmetics sectors.

On the one hand, this opens up great opportunities for local actors, including NU. On the other hand, it confirms that the Islamic economy now operates within the logic of a highly political global market, not a sterile moral space. If NU enters without a strong epistemological framework, it will only become an additional marginal player in the existing economic competition.

MASLAHAT, ETHICS AND MARKET RHETORIC

NU Harvest Maslaha brings the norm of ‘maslahat’ (public interest) as its main spirit. Sharia Global Services promotes professionalism, global networks, and modern governance. Both sound promising. However, is maslahat measured solely based on the capitalization of assets worth trillions of US dollars?

The problem is that in the tradition of pesantren (Islamic boarding school) which is the basis of NU’s ontology and epistemology, maslahat never stands neutral. It is always related to the protection of the weak, the correction of inequality, and the limitation of economic power. In contrast, in the discourse of the global Islamic economy as presented by SGIE, maslahat is often translated into market value, ethical branding, and market trust.

That is where epistemological criticism needs to be emphasized. SGIE explicitly positions the Islamic economy as part of a multipolar and deglobalizing economy, with countries and corporations competing to strengthen halal supply chains, harmonize certification, and promote digital innovation. All of this is important, but it is instrumental. Without a dialectic of values, maslahat risks being eroded into mere competitive advantage.

NU must not stop at the logic of ‘the community as a market’. If NU Harvest Maslaha only harvests opportunities from the NU community base without correcting the unequal economic structure, both at the agrarian, halal industrial, and financial levels, maslahat will stop as a moral jargon that loses its transformative power.

In this context, Sharia Global Services is present as a representation of NU’s professional face in the global economy: modern governance, international networks, and investment orientation. The SGIE Report notes that Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates are the two countries with the highest value of halal economic investment transactions in 2023, at around US$1.6 billion and US$1.53 billion, respectively. This explains why NU needs a professional instrument to enter this arena.

However, professionalism is not a neutral value. It brings a set of assumptions about efficiency, scale, and growth that are often rooted in market and capitalist logic. In many experiences of the modern Islamic economy, failure does not occur due to a lack of professionalism, but due to excessive submission to this logic. Islamic banks imitate the structure and orientation of conventional banks, the halal industry replicates extractive supply chains, while Islamic philanthropy is trapped in charitable practices that do not address the root of inequality.

Therefore, Sharia Global Services should not only be assessed on how quickly it penetrates the global market or how large its investment value is. A more fundamental measure is whether it is able to translate the pesantren ethics of justice, limitation of accumulation, and bias towards the weak into the design of economic institutions. This is precisely the area that market reports like SGIE do not touch, and this is where NU should take a different position.

THE MISSING DIALECTIC

SGIE shows that the global Islamic economy is driven by a young demographic, with more than 540 million young Muslims by 2030. In this regard, pesantren is the social space closest to this demographic. Ironically, pesantren is rarely a center for the production of contemporary Islamic economic ideas. It is more often used as an object, a consumer base, a workforce, or a source of legitimacy.