Shaping the Ahl al-Sunnah wa al-Jama’ah Thoughts in the Online Realm : The Case of Indonesia and Malaysia

Digitalization of moderate Aswaja understanding in the digital space is needed to counter religious extremist narratives. By focusing on the context of Indonesia and Malaysia, which are two countries where the majority of Muslims adhere to Aswaja teachings, this book aims to answer the question of how Aswaja is preserved in new media and how Aswaja values influence the new media environment in Indonesia and Malaysia? Therefore, this book uses the RSST (Religious Social Shaping of Technology) approach. This book found that the practice of Aswaja in Indonesia and Malaysia has transformed by appearing in various new media. Aswaja digitalization is based on its moderate principles. Aswaja’s moderate values have influenced the new religious environment as an anti-thesis to the more extreme and closed religious spaces controlled by extremist Puritan communities. Aswaja’s influence on the moderation of digital space occurs because of the strength of Aswaja’s community, authority, and traditional texts, which are the basis for constructing new texts that appear in new media. However, there are differences in the Aswaja institution between Indonesia and Malaysia. Aswaja thought in Malaysia is controlled by the state whose fatwas are binding, while in Indonesia, Aswaja thought lives in non-binding private Islamic organizations. This also has an impact on the process and dynamics of the digitalization of Aswaja in the new media space. In Malaysia, Aswaja tends to be in a narrative that can be controlled with little contestation, whereas in Indonesia, the Aswaja narrative tends to be more contested. This book contributes to the development of a new religious space, where the more moderate the ideological basis of new religious media, the more moderate the appearance of the religious media.