Ambivalence, Discontent, and Divides in Southeast Asia's Islamic Digital Realms: An Introduction

Abstract

This introductory article to the special issue Ambivalence, Discontent, and Divides in Southeast Asia's Islamic Digital Realms discusses the latest transformations in the field of Islam in Southeast Asia with a particular focus on digital media. It introduces the three key themes – ambivalence, discontent, divides – through which the special issue approaches contemporary socioreligious phenomena in Islamic Southeast Asia as they find their expressions online, often in close relation with offline dynamics. This approach allows this special issue to uncover the possibilities and predicaments afforded by engagement with digital and social media across Islamic Southeast Asia, understanding the latter as the locus of complex contestations, unanticipated affect, and poignant uncertainty. This introduction points to such un‐ or underexplored phenomena that considerably add to our understanding of religious and sociopolitical developments in contemporary Southeast Asia. The articles are introduced by highlighting how they contribute to our understanding of a broad mosaic of Islamic digital realms and how the latter have become sites of ambivalence, discontent, and divides. From Sufis to Salafis, masculinities to queer identities, and serious theologies to ludic critique, the case studies of this special issue devote special attention to the ambiguity, uneasiness, and division that marks Muslim engagement with digital domains across Southeast Asia.

Smartphones and the education of religious youth in Indonesia: Highway to hell or path of righteousness?

“…In their conceptions about digital infrastructures and their potentialities about moral development, teachers can be described as ambivalent, recognizing both the positive and negative moral potential of smartphone use on the individuals who constitute the nation’s future generation. Regarding ambivalence among Indonesian Muslim Internet users, Slama and Hoesterey write the following: ‘ambivalence is not simply the result of ethical anxieties, but (…) is generative of new religious sentiments and practices’ (2021: 12). Based on this observation, it will be important to continue to investigate how these strategies adopted by Christian and Muslim educators in Indonesia may impact the way in which youth decide to engage with digital media, and the extent to which religious and spiritual development figures into those forms of engagement.…”

“…The Internet can disrupt established structures authority, leading to a ‘pluralization of voices of religious authority’ (Slama and Hoesterey, 2021: 15), and these impacts are quite important to consider. In referring to the role of media use on the development of religious youth, ‘self-socialization’ has been used to describe the increasing autonomy that youth may have in exploring different forms of religiosity and religious identity through different platforms (Kühle, 2012).…”

Probing Tagore in 21st-century Bangladesh: Shifting Faces of Metaphysical Reality and the Role of New Media

“…In India, the dissemination of disinformation and propaganda via digital media platforms has become a serious problem, underlining the necessity for media awareness and critical thinking (Muhammed T & Mathew, 2022). In Southeast Asia's Islamic digital domains, ambivalence, dissatisfaction, and divisions have been investigated by Slama and Hoesterey (2021) and a complicated interaction between digital media and religion has been revealed. The influence of digital media on the growing disparities in newspaper and television news consumption has also been studied and the way how the introduction of digital media has altered patterns of news consumption with ramifications for socioeconomic inequality has been investigated (Neo, 2018).…”