ISLAMIC POPULAR CULTURE AND THE NEW IDENTITIES OF URBAN MUSLIM YOUNG PEOPLE IN INDONESIA: THE CASE OF ISLAMIC FILMS AND ISLAMIC SELF-HELP BOOKS HARIYADI This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at The University of Western Australia School of Social Sciences Discipline of Asian Studies 2013 ii ABSTRACT My thesis examines the emerging phenomenon of Islamic popular culture in Indonesia. Islamic popular culture has been thriving in Indonesia for more than a decade. It is a new and important aspect of the Islamic revival in this country and beyond. Popular culture has sometimes been viewed as a Western product and many people in Indonesia think that it introduces a Western lifestyle that is incompatible with Islam. Some Islamic teachings in Indonesia indeed challenge values from the West. However, my thesis shows that Islam and Western-influenced popular culture are not necessarily incompatible with each other. In this thesis, I examine Islamic films and Islamic self-help books as forms of popular culture. I also look at how Indonesian Muslim young people in urban areas interpret Islamic films and Islamic self-help books as a way of constructing their identity. I analysed some Islamic films and self-help books, as well as conducted interviews, focus group discussions and participant observation of young people who watch Islamic films or read Islamic self-help books. My informants were university students in Jakarta and Bandung, particularly students of Universitas Negeri Jakarta and Institut Teknologi Bandung respectively. Their consumption of Islamic popular culture suggests that urban young people in Indonesia are aiming to be modern and pious at the same time. In doing so, urban Indonesian Muslim young people demonstrate that they do not exclusively belong to either Westernisation or Islamism: they are creating their own distinctive identity. Islamic films have re-appeared recently to address practical issues and everyday life problems faced by Indonesian young people. They offer Islamic-style solutions and have become a means for the propagation of Islamic values. However, film is a sort of a battlefield for competing and contradicting ideas. Some Islamic films, which have been remarkably successful at the box office recently, adhere to more conservative Islamic principles. Other Islamic films tend to resonate with more liberal Islamic thinking. My informants did not intend to actually do the things they saw modelled in the films, though they did not object to the values that Islamic films nurture. Therefore, the intention of some Islamic filmmakers and book authors to educate urban young Muslims to be good Muslims in accord with the spirit of Islamisation has perhaps not translated into practice in quite the way some of them might have expected or hoped. iii Islamic self-help books are a technique of governmentality (Foucault) that prescribes particular ways of life and living for all Muslim readers. The discourses of the Islamic self-help books resonate with American self-help books, as well as the tarbiyah movement, the increasingly prominent contemporary Islamic movement in Indonesia, to which many Islamic self-help writers belong. The books have become one of Muslim young people’s sources for learning about Islam; the books remind them of their duties as Muslims, and counter the influence of a Western lifestyle. However, my informants also criticised the books for being mass-marketed commodities with repetitious messages. They also felt that only a few points from the books are truly important in their daily lives. Although film is a powerful medium through which messages can be delivered, in order to influence and to transform behaviours, and self-help books are a technique of governmentality that constructs subjects, urban Indonesian Muslim young people saw these two forms of popular culture less as moral authorities than as references and sources of inspiration. Indonesian Muslim young people are not passive recipients, as proposed by some popular culture theorists. They did not show total acceptance of the propagating mission of Islamic films and the governing power of Islamic self-help books over their conduct. Rather than imposing a particular ideology on Indonesian Muslim youth, Islamic films and books serve to show, involve, engage, motivate and inform Indonesian Muslim youth about a model of a particular version of Islam. Through modified appropriation of particular values offered by Islamic films and self-help books, urban Indonesian Muslim young people constitute themselves as modern Islamic subjects. A stable and unified Islamic identity that film directors and self-help book authors might want to see among Muslim youngsters does not exist. Urban Indonesian Muslim youth identities are non-essentialist identities, which are constantly being created and sustained in the reflexive activities of the individual. Their identities are not subject to external actors who want to put them in certain categories. The distinctive components of these identities are yet to be fixed and, perhaps, will be forever ‘in process’ as Muslim young people search for and construct their identities. iv DECLARATION FOR THESIS This thesis contains only sole-authored work, some of which has been published and/or prepared for publication under sole authorship. The bibliographical details of the work and where it appears in the thesis are outlined below. - Hariyadi. 2011. Islamic Movies: Propagating Islam to the Youth in Indonesia. 2011 MediAsia Official Conference Proceeding (A revised version of this paper appears in Chapter Five) - _______. 2011. Islamic Popular Culture and the New Identity of Indonesian Muslim Youth. Proceeding of the 18th Biennial Conference of Asian Studies Association (A revised version of this paper appears in Chapter Two) - _______. 2013. Finding Islam in Cinema: Islamic Films and the Identity of Indonesian Muslim Youths. Al-Jami’ah: Journal of Islamic Studies, Vol. 51, No.2 (Revised excerpts from this paper appear in Chapter Three, Five, and Seven) - _______. 2013. Islamic Films and Identity: The Case of Indonesian Muslim Youth. Proceeding of The Fifth International Conference on Indonesia Studies (A revised version of this paper appears in Chapter Five) - _______. 2013. Islamic Ideologies in Self-Help Books. Jurnal Komunikasi Indonesia, Vol.2, No.2, 2013. (A revised version of this paper appears in Chapter Six) Student Signature: v vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Institutional support, intellectual feedback, and emotional encouragement are the ingredients that enabled me to write this thesis. I am indebted to many people and organisations who have provided me with these essential elements, and I would like to thank and acknowledge them here. However, I alone take responsibility for the final work and any errors and shortcomings. I am very proud to have Professor Lyn Parker, Dr. Gregory Acciaioli, and Dr. Romit Dasgupta as my supervisors. I thank Professor Lyn for her great, continuing, and kind assistance not only in supervising my thesis, but also in helping me to sort out other matters that were very important during my stay in Perth in the past almost four years. I thank Dr. Greg Acciaioli for critically challenging me throughout my research journey. I thank Dr. Romit Dasgupta for sharing his enormous insight with me. I have learned so much from all of you and I hope that I will not disappoint you. I thank the Directorate General of Higher Education, Ministry of National Education for giving me the Overseas Education Scholarship. I thank Jenderal Soedirman University where I work as a lecturer and researcher for giving me the opportunity to pursue my PhD. I thank the Graduate Research School at the University of Western Australia for supporting me through a Graduate Research Student Travel Award and a PhD Completion Scholarship. I also must say thank you to the School of Social Sciences Faculty of Arts the University of Western Australia, for their support through Postgraduate Research Funding and Postgraduate Conference Funding. I am also indebted to Professor Van Ikin who supported me in the last year of my studies. I cannot find a way to properly thank Hanung Bramantyo and Irfan Hidayat who provided me with time and patience to share their ideas and experiences. I thank my informants in Jakarta and Bandung without whom my fieldwork could not be undertaken. I wish you all success in your studies and life. In Bogor and Bandung, my aunties Dewi Salma Prawiradilaga and Dewi Malia Prawiradilaga, my cousin Bukit Raharja, and my best friends Aquarini Priyatna and Ali Yahya have been an invaluable support during my exciting but also exhausting research visits. In their own ways and with their kind hearts, great humour, and genuine affection, they have given me a great sense of belonging. vii I greatly appreciated the stimulating environment nourished by great colleagues in Asian Studies School of Social Sciences Faculty of Arts the University of Western Australia. Among them were Dr. Raihani, Dr. Suzie Handayani, Dr. Yukimi Shimoda, Dr. Danau Tanau, Dr. Angelika Riyandari, Mee Mee Zaw, Wen Wen Zhao, Irma Riyani, and others who I cannot mention one by one. I thank all the staff at the university for providing an academic environment that is warm and friendly. I also thank Warga Nedlands, the Indonesian community in the Nedlands area who gave me great friendship during my time in Perth. In particular, I thank Yatna Supriyatna and Dina Sartika for letting me to stay in their place in the last six weeks