On the Road of Hijrah: Contesting Identity through Urban Mobilities in Contemporary Indonesian Muslims

Abstract

This article analyses how the hijrah movement, a contemporary religious movement that reinterprets the meaning and practices of being pious, has gained widespread sympathy among Indonesian urban Muslims. Although numerous studies have endeavoured to scrutinize the phenomenon of hijrah in communities or movements, most focus on social media, and only a few examine their daily mobilities in urban life. By focusing on the Kajian Musawarah, one of Indonesia’s most prominent hijrah communities and employing interdependent mobilities, the article reveals those activists and followers of such community contest new Islamic identities through their intersections with various forms of urban mobilities. Within physical, imaginative, virtual, and communicative travel, the Kajian Musawarah amplifies the symbolic value of hijrah over Islamic attributes, including clothing, language and recitation circles to attract urban Muslims. Furthermore, their Islamic identity is also contesting many aspects of social life such as urban lifestyle, consumptive culture, and relation to other Muslim and non-Muslim communities.