Islamic development in Kolojonggo has been a process in which a group of villagers who are reflective upon their religious duties and who try to practise Islam has expanded. The increasing number of villagers who have received higher education since the 1970s was one of the factors which made it possible for this group to expand at an accelerating pace. With this quantitative expansion, the rural population has started to be differentiated rapidly in terms of religious outlook. If the germ of religious differentiation existed but was not clearly expressed in daily life before this time, it is now manifested explicitly in many aspects of social life. This naturally leads to a situation in which distinctive behavioural patterns of villagers are interpreted in terms of their commitment to Islam.

The accelerating Islamic development has brought about several related changes in village life. Armed with reformist ideology, some villagers have tried to look at and reinterpret things around them with a different perspective from others. With these efforts, the practices which have been taken for granted and considered to be natural are no longer treated as they once were. Two of the issues that the reformist villagers have challenged in this process have been those of tradition and of their relations with Christians. Therefore, the focus of the following chapters will be put on how village Muslims have dealt with tradition which reformist ideology does not clearly approve of and on what their attitude has been toward Christian neighbours. Before these two topics are dealt with, the efforts of the reformist villagers to Islamise everyday life will be presented in Chapter IV in order to understand the nature of the local-level Islam practised in Kolojonggo.