Bridging identities through religious television contents: Javanese female descendants, Islamic viewing and Malay identity projection

ABSTRACT

This study explores the uses of Islamic television content in bridging the gap between Javanese and Malay identity among the Malay women of Javanese descent in Malaysia. Malaysian religious television programmes have constantly promoted the Islamic identifications of Malayness, enabling the Malay audience to reconstruct the culturally religious identity. While the reconstruction of Islamic identity through television viewing simply represents a lived experience for the majority of the Malay society, it has some cultural meanings for certain Malay sub-ethnic communities, such as the Javanese. This ethnographic study on a Malaysian Javanese community reveals that the interpretive engagement of this particular community in Islamic television viewing serves the purpose of negotiating Malay identity. The results of this study suggest that religious content can serve as an engaging platform to construct multi-ethnic identities beside popular and ethnic-related contents.

KEYWORDS:

• Television
• identity
• Islamic viewing
• Malay identity
• Javanese
• Malaysia

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our sincerest gratitude to the reviewer and editor for the insightful comments that assisted in the improvement of this article.

Notes on contributors

Lily El Ferawati Rofil is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Media Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Malaya. Her field of study is related to media and ethnic communities.

Md Azalanshah Md Syed, Ph.D., is a senior lecturer in the Department of Media Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Malaya. His research interests include television and film studies, women and media, and audience studies.

Azizah Hamzah, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Media Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Malaya. Her areas of expertise include media product marketing, media studies, publishing organization management, and media and gender studies.

ORCID

Lily El Ferawati Rofil http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2002-7975

Notes

1. This term ‘Malaynise’ here refers to the praxis of the Malaysian constitutional ethnic metanarrative in integrating the multi-ethnic society. The Malaysian Federal Constitution grants a special position for Malay and Islam to be privileged on top of other ethnic groups and religions. This stipulation compels the non-Malays and non-Muslims to embrace the Islamic and Malay moral virtue as the proper merit of identity projection (see Arakaki, 2004, p. 131).

2. The teachings, the deeds and the sayings of the Prophet.

3. Banjarese is another ethnic group of Indonesian origin that constitutes Malay society. The Banjarese and Javanese in Sabak Bernam live side by side but they are very distinct from one to another.

4. Baju Kurung is a set of the Malay traditional outfit, which loosely covers all parts of the female body except the head, hands, and feet. Baju Kurung is appropriate for Muslim women because it follows the Islamic convention about body covering.

Additional information

Funding

This work was done under the University of Malaya Research [grant number RG417–12HNE].