Islamic Microfinance in Indonesia: The Challenge of Institutional Diversity, Regulation, and Supervision

Forays into Islamic microfinance have been few, scattered, and of limited outreach. Some have been mandated by the state, but have been lacking popular demand, as in Iran; others have emerged in response to popular demand, but have had lack of regulatory support by the state, as in Syria. This has provided the background for a more systematic study of Islamic microfinance in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country, where several strands of Islamic microfinance, formal and semi-formal, have evolved since 1990 in parallel.