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Becoming Better Muslims: Religious Authority and Ethical Improvement in Aceh, Indonesia by David Kloos (review)

David Kloos’s book Becoming Better Muslims offers a refreshing new perspective to a topic and region that has already received a great deal of scholarly attention: Islam, politics, and agency in Aceh, the western-most province of Indonesia. Whereas most authors in recent years have tended to focus on classical topics of political Islam, such as Islam and nation building or Islamic law,1 Kloos instead chooses to stress “religious agency,” which includes religious practices as well as ethical improvement and its entanglement with Islamic authorities and the state. He therefore aims to shed light on the intertwinement between the personal space for action—thereby referring to an individual’s pious practices and agency—and norms established by state and religious institutions. Specifically, Kloos asks how “ordinary” Acehnese Muslims experience their daily lives and what religious routines they practice in their attempt to become good or better Muslims. The theoretical approaches that inform Kloos’s study are concepts of agency and practice in combination with ethics and morality.