<![CDATA[This article examines the 1913 labour conflict at the Young & Gill machine factory in Surabaya to reconsider the role of Islam insubaltern politics in the colonial city. The conflict did not originate from ideological mobilisation or organisational command but from a moral judgment formed at the intersection of everyday religious practice and colonial industrial time discipline. A modest request to observe the Maulid Nabi—articulated without economic or political demands—was interpreted as a challenge to labour authority, leading to the dismissal of a trusted intermediary and a prolonged strike that neither Sarekat Islam nor colonial institutions could contain. Through a subaltern reading of colonial newspapers, administrative correspondence, and legal records, the article argues that Islam functioned as a living moral language through which workers evaluated justice, legitimacy, and the limits of authority in everyday life. This perspective challenges organisation-centred and ideology driven historiographies and highlights the importance of lived religious practice in the formation of popular politics in colonial urban settings.]]>
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