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ABSTRACT
The Islamic conservative turn in Southeast Asia has been an important subject of inquiry for many observers of Islam in the region. More recent studies of the conservative turn in the region have noted the differences in the religious orientation, modes of activism, and agendas of the different actors in the country (e.g. work on Front Pembela Islam [FPI], Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia [HTI], Salafis, Traditionalists). This article shows different articulations of Islamisation in Indonesia infiltrating the media after the fall of Soeharto. It seeks to examine new mediums of Islamic propagation promoted by different Islamic actors who use film, radio, and social media, all of which have different social implications in Indonesia’s Muslim society. Discussions of media in this article are intertwined with popular culture studies, a field of important scholarly inquiry often overlooked in political and social studies. The development of Islam-based media—in which Islamic pop culture also thrives—is a form of bottom-up Islamisation in Indonesia, which reflects resistance from the various layers of Indonesia’s Muslim society towards the Western-led process of globalisation. As apparent in this article, the Islamisation trend in the Indonesian media plays a key role both in pluralising the various discourses of Islam and normalising religious conservatism.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. These two titles were also based on the novels written by Habiburrahman El Shirazy of FLP.
2. Based on autobiographic novel of the same title, written by Hanum Salsabiela Rais, the daughter of prominent modernist Muslim politician Amien Rais, and her husband Rangga Almahendra.
3. 99 Cahaya (99 Lights), as the title suggests, depicts the history of progressive Islamic civilisations in Iberian parts of Europe in mediaeval times.
4. An Islamic party formed during the Japanese occupation in the 1940s and focused on unifying Muslim groups against Dutch colonialism. It grew to become one of the most prominent parties in the early years of independence and proposed the ‘Jakarta Charter’—an attempt to include shari’a law in the Constitution (Bruinessen Citation2013: 31).
5. A term referring to Mecca and Medina, which are considered to be the birthplace of Islamic knowledge.
6. HIJUP is the name of the largest Muslim clothing e-commerce company in Indonesia, strongly affiliated with the Hijabers Community, as many of its vendors and consumers are members of Hijabers Community.
7. Syiar is the Arabic word for greatness, particularly the greatness of Islam—Syiar Islam.
8. A popular nickname for Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, the Chinese Christian former governor of Jakarta, who was convicted of blasphemy on 9 May 2017.
9. The seventh president of Indonesia and the first leader of the country with no link to Soeharto’s family and cronies. He was, at least initially, acclaimed as a liberal moderniser in the national and international media.