Religious Authority in the Digital Age of Islam in Indonesia: A Study of YukNgaji.id

Religious authority in Islamic sciences has historically become attached to the ʿulamaʾ as the heirs of the Prophet. Therefore, the guidance of the ʿulamaʾ is crucial in learning Islam. However, statistically speaking, Muslim commoners in Indonesia, as in other parts of the Islamic world, have increasingly started to rely upon self-taught preachers.Based upon this observation, this study seeks to answer the following questions: How do popular preachers gain the trust of Indonesian Muslims? How do they use new media, and what messages do they seek to deliver? Why do Muslims turn away from the ʿulamaʾ? Are they aware of the special status of ʿulamaʾ and of normative requirements for teaching Islam?This thesis examines these questions by investigating one popular digital media-savvy da'wa community, YukNgaji.id (Let's Study), created in 2015, and its most prominent preacher, Felix Siauw (b. 1981). The analysis relies primarily upon YouTube videos and books produced by this community and Siauw and interviews with members of one local branch.This research finds that YukNgaji.id and Siauw have been successfully competed for religious authority, in terms of capability to influence, with the mainstream religious actors due to applying the well-structured strategy in reciprocal use of online and offline spaces. By upholding the notion of hijra, which is discussed enjoy fully and illustrated beautifully in books, events, and videos, they gained public trust, especially the youth. This influence becomes more vital as the followers' activism on defending ideas and actors of YukNgaji.id. They are aware of Siauw's less capability compared to the well-trained scholars but are still following him. They look up to Siauw's activism as a notable example of being da'i (sender) which is an individual obligation and knowledge seeker (receiver) at the same time. They defend the idea of Khilafa as an implementation of hijra in politics, a broader space than individual transformation. This fact makes us aware that religious authority is not only a matter of competing for the religious podium but has a more crucial impact for Indonesian Muslims, validity of Indonesia's nation-state, which have been approved religiously by the mainstream scholars of NU and Muhammadiyah. Siauw lately changed his position regarding Pancasila and tried to describe this principle as not contradicting the concept of the Khilafa. At the same time, however, Siauw continued to emphasize the notion of Islam's comprehensiveness, which does not require any changes, additions, or subtractions. These two positions are not easily compatible. The relative incoherency of this position gives an idea of the constraints under which he is acting, one can argue.