Understanding mosque sustainability through governance actors' interpretations : a multi-case interpretive study in selected urban contexts in Indonesia

Abstract

The study investigates the understanding and practices of sustainability among governance actors in six mosques and Islamic institutions in Jakarta and Yogyakarta. The focus is on financial mechanisms to achieve sustainability, namely Zakat, Infaq, Sadaqah, and Waqf (ZISWAF). Existing research has focused on financial and managerial issues, but practitioners' own understandings have been largely unexamined. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, observation, and document analysis with a constructivist-interpretivist, multi-case qualitative approach referring to the 4P Lens (Prosperity, People, Planet, and Prophetic), SECI model, and Maqasid al-Shariah as a normative reference. The key finding is that mosque sustainability is understood as relational legitimacy: a mosque's ability to remain relevant to its congregation across generations and leadership changes, underpinned by a typology of financial resilience of endowment-anchored, commercially diversified and subsidy-dependent funding models. Governance actors prioritised mosque-jamaah relations over performance indicators. They adopted four strategies: business-based, community partnership-based, traditional adaptation and hybrid adaptation. Drawing on this, four propositions arise: (1) sustainability is rooted in relational legitimacy rather than operational measurements; (2) the Prophetic Dimension is an ethical meta-dimension that guides the other 4P pillars; (3) poor environmental practice is a failure of institutional mediation rather than a failure of conviction; and (4) resilience in governance transition is important but under-measured. The study proposes to reframe the Prophetic Dimension as the kernel of the 4P Lens and to introduce Persistence to create a tentative 5P framework. ZISWAF is a unique infrastructure of Islamic sustainability finance. As a practical tool in promoting ESG disclosure practices in mosques and Islamic nonprofits, the study also develops an ESG-Maqasid scorecard calibrated with Indonesia's OJK sustainable finance regulations and the Islamic social finance literature on the global SDG financing gap. The results are specific to the metropolitan context and highlight the problem of class inequality, programme exclusivity and marginalisation of women in formal governance.