Muslimness Discourse, Religious Authority, and Cyber-Media Activism in Contemporary Indonesia

This paper focuses on the phenomena of Indonesian Muslim’s cyber-media activism dealing with Muslimness persuasive message and piety, discourse, and the shifting of religious authority. The expression of Islam in the Indonesian public sphere, in the last decade, is interesting to be observed. It is not only because of getting world special attention dealing with the issue of religious violence, extremism, and terrorism but also having a number of increasing cultural Islam, particularly expressing Muslimness identity in the public sphere and articulating piety in the sense of Indonesia’s democracy. The hardening of religious identity in current Indonesia’s political circumstance is inseparable with the historical trajectory of Muslimness persuasive message through cyber-media activism as its pre-condition. Drawing on Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this paper analyzes also religious discourse and the shifting of religious authority as an impact of those movements. In supporting data, I utilize both bibliographical and empirical investigation.