Religious Response To Globalization The Rise Of Indonesian Islamist Movement On Social Media

Religious Response to Globalization: The Rise of Indonesian Islamist Movement on Social Media Khalimatu Nisa 18/435016/PMU/09527

Over the last few years, the phenomenon of religious purification, mainly in Islam – which produced some kind of Islamist movements, is globalized. This also happens in Indonesia, which causes a number of mental habits to emerge such as exclusivism, phobia of something, conspiracy, movements of defending something and nostalgia for something that imagined pure and fundamental. No doubt, fundamentalisms are shaping politics around the world. Along with the rapid advances in technology in the last few decades, the issue of fundamentalism is now emerging and can be clearly seen in its tracks on social media. It is interesting because there seems to be a relationship between religion and globalization. This paper wants to see how the issue of fundamentalism can use new media as a phenomenon of globalization. What is their response to globalization on the one hand and how they use it to support their movements on the other side? This article will highlight the Islamic activism of Muslim influencers on Instagram in disseminating their fundamental ideas. Spirit of Fundamentalism in the Globalized World Historically, the term “fundamentalism” has older history rather than “globalization” which is a relative neologism. Fundamentalism can simply understood as a mean to bring the notion to come back to the things or values which are believed or understood as the basic or foundation. However, fundamentalism is closely related to the phenomenon of globalization. According to Peter Beyer, religious movements that have been labelled fundamentalisms over the past few decades are the sort of critical events that, for many, signaled the need to speak about broader social world in new terms; “globalization” has become the term of choice in this regard. (1994: 269)

According to Kepel (1994) as quoted by Beyer, fundamentalism is not limited to the sort of national, state-centered political-political movement, but includes any "strong" religion, any religious movement that is as strong as "strong communal" boundaries against the perceived "other", the "secular" world. (1994: 283) Still referring to Beyer, fundamentalism refers to a particular kind of religious and usually also political movement. Fundamentalism generally understood as reactions against the homogenizing and generally “secularizing” forces of (economic) globalization, different but analogous to other anti-(or alternative) globalization movements. (1994:269) From this point it appears that the fundamentalist movement sees globalization as a process of homogenization that they want to oppose. To understand this concept of homogeneity we can refer to Huntington (1997:36) who clearly distinguished the world by "Western-one" and "non-Western many" dichotomy. It means that Huntington assumed that in the post-Cold War, there was a distinction among people which were not ideological, political, or economic, but cultural. In that period, the terms "West" and "East" started to emerge. The "West" refers to states like Britain, France, Spain, Austria, Prussia, Germany and the United States and others within Western civilization. The "East" is considered the rest of the "West". According to Huntington why were they called as "one" and "many" is because the western countries have a similarity on their dominant civilization so they are considered as one. On the other hand, the non-western countries have more multicultural and "multicivilizational" to call them as "many". The clash of civilizations that made the West dominant was a concern for fundamentalists. They are concerned about how the spread of Western-style values such as secularism and neo-liberalism can become universal values that apply worldwide. This judgement, which has become the fundamentalist framework, is exactly what Amartya Sen (2002:A4) criticized that to see Western imperialism globalization as merely a suggestion of a

serious and costly error, in the same way that any European resistance to Eastern influence would have been at the beginning of the last millennium. He argues that there are issues related to globalization that do connect with imperialism (the history of conquest, colonialism and alien rule today, in many ways) and a post-colonial understanding of the world has its merits. But for him it would be a great mistake to see globalization primarily as a feature of imperialism. It is much bigger and much greater than that, it is about global interdependences. However, as Huntington’s thesis, the stress on and even anxiety about difference are experienced by the “civilizations” that mostly have a presumed “religious” basis (Confucian, Western Christian, Eastern Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, and so on): what opposes economic neo-liberalism (McWorld) is based in religion (jihad). On the other hand, this fundamentalist or ”strong” religion, according to Beyer, is not necessarily a way of being “unmodern”, of rejecting the modern globalized world and its strong secularity. Instead as is the case with the vast majority of “communal” or even sectarian religious movements that in this view would fall under the title of fundamentalism, they are ways of participating in this world quite on a par with any other more clearly no-religious ones. Here, fundamentalism respond to globalization in two ways. First it refuse the secularism perspective which is spread by globalization but on the other hand it also adopt the idea of connectedness among countries bring by globalization movement. The fundamentalists are utilizing the phenomenon of globalization, primarily on technological and communication developments aspects to spread their ideas. In Indonesia, the development of media use among fundamentalists can be traced since the reform era until now they have penetrated on Instagram and have a significant influence on the younger generation. Islamist Movement on Social Media: Indonesian Context The reformation era that took place in Indonesia after the end of Suharto's regime became an important entry point for the emergence of fundamentalism to grow. The change in

the political system from centralistic to decentralized opened new spaces of participation for all elements of society. This change was able to encourage the emergence of various parties, non-governmental organizations, mass organizations, and so on. A number of fundamentalist groups also took this opportunity to show their existence. Some of them are parties and mass organizations based on fundamental Islam which was later referred as Islamist groups for example Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (Prosperous Justice Party) and Front Pembela Islam (Islamic Defenders Front). According to David G. Green (2003:x), Islamism is the exact opposite of Western liberal-democracy. It is a brand of totalitarianism rooted in a sacred text—the very idea rejected in the seventeenth century after long years of bloodshed Islamism, supports the idea of making understanding of religion (Islam) in the form of a country's order, namely an Islamic state. Islamic groups idolized Islam at the time of the prophet Muhammad in Medina and they sought to restore the practice of Islam in the present to return to the practice of Islam at the time of the prophet, fourteen centuries ago. The main agenda of Islamism is to establish an Islamic state order and mobilize Muslims in order to build a totalitarian order called Islamic nizam. On the other hand, Bassam (2012:30) differentiate clearly between Islam and Islamism. According to him, Islamism is about political order, not faith. Nonetheless, Islamism is not mere politics but religionized politics. He that Islamism as a powerful instance of the global phenomenon of religious fundamentalism. The notion of “religionized politics” means the promotion of a political order that is believed to emanate from the will of Allah and is not based on popular sovereignty. In addition to the emergence of a number of parties and mass organizations, after the reformation, the Islamist movement also started to penetrate the world of media, especially online media. The beginning of the emergence of Islamic media in Indonesia in the early 20th

century was marked by the inclusion of Islamic reformation ideas from Egypt. The need for Islamic media emerged, among others, to facilitate and disseminate the discussion of current thinking. (Irawanto, 2006: 300) Interestingly, at the beginning of the emergence of Islamoriented online media in Indonesia, Islamist media actually more dominated. Islamist groups appear to be more observant about the prospects of online media that are very strategic for the spread of their ideology. Not surprisingly that from the beginning, a number of Islamist media were not designed as business entities, but merely an extension of the "idealism" from the management. After the print-media phase (era media cetak), at the beginning of the second millennium, many of Islamist medias used website as the platforms, including those that were quite well-known and straightforward in articulating their fundamental ideology: www.arrahmah.com, www.nahimungkar.org, and www.voa-islam.com. A decade later, when social media became increasingly popular, many Islamist accounts appeared and actively campaigned their ideas. Later, with the popularity of Instagram, a number of Islamist figures emerged and actively disseminated fundamentalist ideas by self-branding. If the previous Islamist websites did not target significant age of groups, Islamist accounts on social media mainly aimed to attract followers of young people or millennials. The majority of the owners of this account are former campus fundamentalist-activists. One important phenomenon not to be forgotten after reformation era was the widespread of the Islamic fundamentalism idea on various campuses in Indonesia. This phenomenon, according to Azra, et al (2015:428) was the effect of globalization where Wahabi ideas spread to various parts of the world. The development of technology due to globalization has facilitated the mobility of people and facilitated massive availability of information, so that an understanding and ideology can develop quickly and widely.

The Rise Indonesia’s Islamist Moslem Influencer in Instagram Instagram became one of the most popular social media platforms. According to survey results by WeAreSocial.net and Hootsuite in January 2018 quoted from katadata.co.id, Instagram is a social media platform with the number of users in the seventh rank in the world. In January 2018, the total number of Instagram users in the world reached 800 million in total. Indonesia is in the third rank of the largest number of instagram active users after the United States and Brazil with 53 million users. Instagram is popular because it allows users to share and enjoy interesting visual contents. The increase of Instagram users makes some kind of creativities began to appear to make the content as attractive as possible. The more interesting, creative, or even controversial the content presented, it will gain more followers. The number of followers is finally encouraging the emergence of influencers in Instagram. Influencers are instagram users who have an established credibility and audience, who can persuade others by vitue of their thrustworthiness and authenticity. Unlike the artists on the screen, the influencers on Instagram have more affinity with their followers. This is because they display daily activities that can not be touched in TV. Not infrequently, these influencers also directly interact through the comments with their followers or live streaming. With hundreds of thousands or even millions of loyal followers, big companies began to use the influencers to promote their products. The endorsement business driven by influencers becomes a lucrative business field. In addition to business, political and Islamic discourse was also played by these influencers. Anies Baswedan and Ridwan Kamil are examples of young politicians with millions of followers who can use Instagram as a vehicle for image formation as well as self-campaign.

Instagram can be space for influencers to spread Islamic discourse that they believe. There are a number of Moslem influencers who concentrate on carrying Islamic discourse in its content with the number of followers from thousand hundreds to millions. Some of them are the ustadz / ustadzah who have been popular on the screen before such as Oki Setiana Dewi, Yusuf Mansur, Abdul Somad, Felix Siauw, and Khalid Basalamah with millions number of followers to new faces popularized by instagram and relatively younger as the couple Muzammil and Sonia Aristanti, Hawariyyun, Taqy Malik, Syakir Daulay, Hanan Ataki and Fuadbakh who all had followers over five hundred thousand. This article will focus on two accounts @felixsiauw and @hawaariyyun. The @felixsiauw account is managed by Felix Siauw which at January 2019 has been followed by 2.9 million followers. Felix Siauw himself can be said as a quite senior preacher in the field of Islamic da'wah. He has carried out the preaching full-time since 2012. Felix Siauw studied Islam from his colleagues affiliated with Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI) at Bogor Agricultural Institute, West Java. Felix Siauw is very concerned about preaching to the younger generation by publishing a number of visual books such as "Yuk Berhijab", "Udah Putusin Aja", and "Art of Da'wah" as well as posting photos or da'wah videos via Instagram and other social media accounts. As a cadre of HTI, Felix Siauw did not hesitate to promote the ideology of HTI, such as the establishment of the trans-national Islamic Caliphate, rejection of democracy, nationalism, capitalism and secularism. Compared to @felixsiauw, @hawaariyyun is a relatively new account. Managed by a young man named Hawaariyyun, this account has attracted 600 thousand followers since 2017. From his activities, it can be seen that Hawaariyyun is a disciple of Felix Siauw who often carries out a number of joint activities, like joining the #YukNgaji community, #HijrahFest, to being in a team making Islamic cartoons called Nussa Official. In contrast to Felix Siauw, who has been famous as a preacher, Hawaariyyun is better known as a creative content creator. He

has the characteristic of uploading one minute short videos in each post. In the video he usually discuss a popular issue with the typical millennial style. Unlike Felix Siauw who tends to convey his fundamental thoughts subtly, Hawaariyyun does not hesitate to show his argument against something frontally. He also did not hesitate to speak directly against other creators or influencers who have different opinion with him and were considered as liberal or secular. As explained earlier that the global and domestic context of Indonesia is now very possible for the emergence of fundamentalists, through these two accounts we can see how both of them take advantage of these opportunities to spread their ideologies massively and structurally. There are some points that should be underlined from @felixsiauw and @hawaariyyun accounts regarding how they used this momentum to expand the reach of their da'wah. First, these two accounts targeted clear groups. Observing from the content they produce, these two accounts target millennial generation as the object of their da'wah. In a interview video uploaded by Hawariyyun, Felix Siauw clearly said that he was very happy that there was an account that appeared (@hawaariyyun) and then discussed about Islam, especially conducted by young people. According to the Koran, Felix said that God promised to provide extra guidance or hidayah ekstra for young people. Both of these accounts see the magnitude of youth's interest in the media as an interesting niche to explore as a field of preaching. In addition to having a clear target for da'wah, the second interesting thing is that they connect with each other. From their activities recorded on the Instagram, it appears that in disseminating Islamic ideas they are not alone, but joining in a network and supporting each other. The function of this network besides being a support system for each other also organizing them in responding to a problem. Based on observations, the @felixsiauw and @hawaariyyun Instagram accounts are in a relationship circle with a number of other similar accounts namely @shifrunn, @hanan_attaki, @yukngajiid community, @pemudahijrah

community, @ustadzsalimafillah, @hussainassadi, @fuadbakh, and many more. In response to a number of cases, some accounts seem to reinforce each other's arguments. On December 28, 2018, @hawaariyyun uploaded a video containing the response to the video blog (vlog) of a couple of youtuber named Gita Savitri Devi and Paul Partohap. In the video Gita said that she did not feel the need to be shown the mistakes or flaws of other religions to believe in Islam because she thinks it was a foolish act. Gita argues that every religion has its own theology so finding fault of one another will only lead to an endless debate. Agreeing to Gita's statement, Paul said that "all religions are good." Hawaariyyun, through his short video, criticized Gita and Paul arguments by saying that when an ulama pointed out the errors of other religions it was evidence that Islam was the most correct religion. Not long after, the @shifrunn account also uploaded a similar video saying that if people consider every religion as good, why still choose Islam that has complex and tiring rituals and not choose another religion that is more simple in worship? These two videos then flooded by comments and prompted @hawaariyyun and @shifrunn followers to bully Gita and Paul. This kind of “voicing the same argument toward something” also occurs in the context of rejecting antipolygamy ideas promoted by the Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI), supporting judo athletes who refuse to compete in the Asian Para Games without headscarves, supporting Uighur Muslims, Aksi Bela Tauhid, 212 reunion, and many more. The third interesting point to be highlighted from these two Islamist influencer accounts is related to issues they concern. Based on observations of their posts in the past six months there appeared to be a number of concentrations of issues they were focusing on. In the political context, although for now they do not openly campaign for the establishment of the caliphate, these two accounts still call for a change in the system of government by using the Islamic system. Towards the political year, Felix Siauw called for choosing leaders based on their religion. @felixsiauw and @hawaariyyun also have a high concentration on the lifestyle of

young people. They often criticize western culture which is considered liberal and secular. They repeatedly called for an invitation to hijrah and anti-pacaran. To these young people they want to emphasize the importance of maintaining faith. On the other hand, discussions about women also often became their favorite topic where they often called for invitations to wear hijab for women and strongly opposed feminist thinking especially those who criticized the practice of polygamy. Both of these accounts are quite responsive in responding to issues that are widely discussed on social media lately. For example the issue of the Islam Nusantara that they reject firmly and declare the prohibition of saying merry Christmas. Compared to @hawaariyyun, @felixsiauw account was more political. For example, he uploaded several videos of his support for the tauhid sentence which was questioned by certain organizations and also supported the 212 reunion. Those two phenomenon (“aksi 212” and “aksi bela tauhid”) by some observers were often regarded as a sign of rising populism in Indonesia. Unlike in the West, populism in Indonesia is not characterized by nationalism, anti-foreign or anti-Islamic rhetoric but rather the rise of Islamic radicalism. David Hall called this phenomenon of populism as “The Great Moving Right Show”, referring to the emergence of Thatcherism in Britain as a new political power. According to Hall, the "right" political power that has been able to create its popular appeal cannot be underestimated. Another example of populism that effectively changes political maps also occurs in the United States. John Fea in his essay on evangelical fear explained how Trump could surpraisingly win the election through the support of evangelical groups who became populist right groups in the US. Reflecting on these two articles, in the Indonesian context, the emergence of fundamentalist social media accounts here can be seen as a mark of how Islamic populism is now developing in Indonesia.

Conclusion Based on the explanation above it can be seen that the rise of fundamentalism in Indonesia affected by several factors. Domestic political context which open a wide space for democracy and political participation encourage the rise of many political interests including fundamentalism. Fundamentalism which appears in the form of Islamist movements in Indonesia response to globalization in two ways: they take the advantage of the development of technology and information brought by globalization to attack the “global value” itself, for example: secularism, liberalism, and nationalism. They also use populist strategies to spread their ideology which can be seen clearly in the instagram account of @felixsiauw and @hawaariyyun. References: Azra, Azyumardi, et all. 2015. Sejarah Kebudayaan Islam Indonesia: Institusi dan Gerakan Jilid III. Jakarta: Direktorat Sejarah dan Nilai Budaya Direktorat Jenderal Kebudayaan, Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan. Beyer, Peter. 1994. Religion out of Place? The Globalizatuon of Fundamentalism on The Routledge International Handbook of Globalization Studies. Bryan S. Turner (ed). Fea, John. 2018. Evangelical Fear Elected Trump. Taken from www.theatlantic.com. Hall, Stuart. 1979. The Great Moving Right Show. Marxism Today. Huntington, Samuel P. 1997. The Clash of Civilizations and The Remaking of World Order. New York: Touchstone. Irawanto, Budi. 2006. Transformasi Pers Islam di Era Reformasi, dalam Jurnal Ilmu Sosial dan Politik Volume 9, No. 3, Maret 2006, halaman 300. Sen, Amartya. 2002. How to Judge Globalism. The American Prospect: Pro-Quest. Tibi, Bassam. “Islamism and the Political Order.” Islamism and Islam, Yale University Press, New Haven; London, 2012, pp. 31–53. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1npxq0.6.