CONSTRUCTING THE AUTHENTIC MUSLIM: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Urban Hijrah and Neo-Sufi Narratives
Abstract
The growing mediation of religious life through digital platforms has intensified contestation over how Muslim authenticity, piety, and legitimate religious authority are defined in contemporary urban Indonesia. This study examines how selected Urban Hijrah and Neo-Sufi narratives construct the figure of the “authentic Muslim” and how these constructions shape moral boundaries, authority, and religious subjectivity. Employing a qualitative, exploratory-critical design, the analysis draws on Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis of 48 publicly accessible digital materials, comprising 26 Urban Hijrah and 22 Neo-Sufi items, supplemented by three semi-structured interviews. The findings show that Urban Hijrah narratives more frequently frame religious transformation through moral reorientation, disciplined practice, and publicly recognizable change, whereas Neo-Sufi narratives more often emphasize continuous ethical cultivation, reflexivity, and regulation of the inner self. These tendencies, however, are internally differentiated. Urban Hijrah also contains critiques of superficial piety, while Neo-Sufi discourse can reproduce normative expectations and hierarchical spiritual authority. Religious authenticity therefore emerges not as a fixed property of either formation but as a contested discursive achievement shaped by representation, legitimation, and digital mediation. The findings highlight the need to understand contemporary Muslim subjectivity beyond binary distinctions between formalism and spirituality.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.30821/miqot.v50i2.1522
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