Journal articles on the topic 'Marital violence Religious aspects Islam'

According to Act No. 23 of 2004, marital rape is mentioned as a variant of domestic violence. However, it still considered by some people as a reasonable action and often legitimized by religious arguments. In turn, this diversity of perception generates the contradiction between the implemented positive law and Islamic law. Through a comparative approach, this paper attempts to find the perspective of Islamic law on this critical issue by way of collecting as many Qur’ānic verses and prophetic hadith as possible, as well as the developed argumentations around it, and analyzing them accordingly in light of maqāṣid al-syarī’ah. At the end, this paper discovers that the practice of marital rape is unlawful according to Islamic law. Therefore, it can serve as a reason for divorce.Undang-Undang Nomor 23 Tahun 2004 tentang Penghapusan Kekerasan dalam Rumah Tangga (PKDRT) mengategorikan marital rape sebagai salah satu varian tindak kejahatan kekerasan dalam rumah tangga. Namun dalam tataran tertentu, marital rape masih dinilai sebagai tindakan wajar dan tak jarang dilegitimasi dengan dalil-dalil agama. Perbedaan persepsi ini telah menimbulkan kontradiksi antara hukum positif yang berlaku dengan hukum Islam yang dipahami masyarakat. Secara komparatif, tulisan ini berusaha menemukan perpektif hukum Islam dalam memandang persoalan marital rape dengan cara menghimpun sebanyak mungkin ayat Alqurān dan hadis serta argumen-argumen di sekitarnya, dan menganalisisnya dalam konteks maqāṣid al-syarī’ah. Di akhir penelitian ditemukan bahwa marital rape merupakan sesuatu yang bertentangan dengan syariat Islam. Oleh karena itu dapat dijadikan sebagai alasan perceraian.

What aspects of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood’s (a.k.a. the Ikhwan) cultural/ideological framing contributed to its failure to gather opponents of the Assad regime around its leadership during the 2011uprising? What does this reveal about why some Islamist political parties failed in situations of high political contention, such as the Syrian civil war? I argue that despite considerable evolution in the Syrian Brotherhood’s cultural/ideological framing since its first uprising (1977-82), it failed to target three crucial aspects of the 2011 uprising: the military struggle, the masses, and the religious minorities. My research outlines how the movement’s ideological shift toward non-violence and post-1982 reorientation toward democratic elections (ironically) prevented its members from playing a leadership role in what was mainly an armed struggle. At the same time, my research outlines how this evolution and its related changes attracted neither the masses, which remained oriented toward the traditional economic elites, nor the Sunni-oriented religious minorities. I argue that these three crucial aspects undermined the Ikhwan’s efforts and illustrate how poor cultural/ideological framing can doom even those Islamist political parties with the strongest resource mobilization capacities and previously unmatched situationsof political opportunity structures.

Mani established his religion on very broad syncretistic grounds, in the hope that it could conquer the whole oikumene, East and West, by integrating the religious traditions of all peoples—except those of the Jews. Although Manichaeism as an organized religion survived for more than a thousand years, and its geographical realm extended from North Africa to Southeast China, this ambition never came close to being realized, and the Manichaeans remained, more often than not, small and persecuted communities. Yet, in a somewhat paradoxical way, Mani did achieve his ecumenical goal. For more than half a millennium, from its birth in the third century throughout late antiquity and beyond, his religion was despised and rejected with the utmost violence by rulers and thinkers belonging to all shades of the spiritual and religious spectrum. In this sense, Manichaeism, an insane system, a “mania,” appeared as the outsider par excellence.

Abstract This article proposes the whole-school approach model, an approach to put multicultural education as strategy to involve all the stakeholders of schools in one system. Islamic education is a sub system of multicultural national education system. Religious moderation in Islamic education is a hidden curriculum, to present Islam as moderate religion, not to serve religious subject as violence and extremism. The strategy or religious moderation can be seen from some aspects, such as teacher, textbook and extra-curricular activities. Abstrak Artikel ini menawarkan model whole-school approach, pendekatan yang memandang pendidikan multikultural sebagai sebuah strategi pendidikan yang melibatkan semua elemen sekolah sebagai sebuah sistem. Pendidikan Agama Islam merupakan sub sistem dari sistem pendidikan nasional yang multikultural. Moderasi beragama dalam pendidikan agama Islam dijadikan sebagai hiidden curriculum berarti cara mengajarkan pendidikan agama Islam yang moderat, bukan pendidikan agama yang mengajarkan kekerasan dan keekstreman. Strategi moderasi beragama dalam pendidikan agama Islam untuk masyarakat Indonesia multikultural dapat dilihat dari beberapa aspek antara lain guru, buku ajar dan kegiatan ekstrakurikuler.

Violence, conflict, and terrorism in the name of religion often occur in Indonesia. These led to the emergence of prejudice and public perception that pesantren as educational institution which contributed to growing the seeds of fanaticism and radicalism. However, not all pesantrens act as they think and accuse. There are still a lot of pesantrens that remain consistent in instilling the values of Islam’s moderation in their students to this day, including Pondok Modern Arrisalah, one of pesantrens in Ponorogo that has implemented multicultural Islamic education because it has many students with different backgrounds in terms of region, ethnicity, language, culture, and class. This study aims to describe and analyze the implementation of multicultural Islamic education at Pondok Modern Arrisalah Slahung Ponorogo as an effort to strengthen the moderation vision of Islam to its students. The researcher in this case used the type of field research and a qualitative descriptive approach. The research data were collected through interview, observation, and documentation techniques. The results show that Pondok Modern Arrisalah has implemented multicultural Islamic education which can be seen from various aspects, namely the curriculum, supporting programs and activities, the creation of a religious-multicultural culture and gender relation in it.

Islamic marriage rules in practice form values that are lived out and practiced in the context of cultural society so that they emerge as symbols as a form of the dialectical process between religious values and cultural values. As an example of the concept of dowry in Islam which has two dimensions, the universality of the values adhered to by all its adherents and also the value locality that is formed from the dialectical process that occurs between religious teachings and the local culture of the adherents. This was seen in the santri community in Karangbesuki Village, Malang City in determining the dowry in their marriage by identifying aspects of the normative dowry in the fiqh that they embraced into their marital culture.

Islam is a major world religion and the Muslim population is one of the fastest growing religious populations in the Western world, including in the United States. However, few research studies have examined the lived religious experience of U.S. Muslim families. Much of the attention on Islam among researchers and the media tends to be on controversial aspects of the religion. The purpose of this paper is to examine the unique religious practice of the month-long fast of Ramadan, especially its perceived role on marital and familial relationships from an insider’s perspective. Content analysis of in-depth, qualitative interviews of twenty diverse Shia and Sunni Muslim families living in the United States (N = 47 individuals) yielded several emergent themes. This study presents and explores data on the focal theme: “fasting brings us closer together.” These data suggest that Ramadan serves a sacred, unifying, and integrating purpose for many of the 47 practicing Muslim mothers, fathers, and youth in this study. Meanings and processes involved in Ramadan and family relationships are explored and explained. Implications and applications of the research findings are discussed and some potential directions for future research are outlined.

Tulisan ini mengupas tentang fenomena radikalisme agama dan motif terorisme di Indonesia. Terorisme menjadi ancaman yang sangat serius dalam dinamika politik lokal, nasional dan internasional. Perang melawan terorisme sama halnya dengan perjuangan masa depan yang tidak berkesudahan. Membicarakan masalah terorisme, selalu dikaitkan dengan kelompok-kelompok radikal keagamaan. Begitu juga hal-hal yang berbau radikal selalu diidentikkan dengan kekerasan yang melibatkan agama di dalamnya. Fenomena terorisme yang melanda sebagian Negara, pelakunya senantiasa dipersepsikan sebagai kelompok radikal keagamaan. Lebih parah lagi banyak kalangan yang mencoba mengidentikkan terorisme dengan Islam. Penelitian ini munggunakan metode kualitatif dengan jenis penelitian kepustakaan (libary research), yaitu penelitian yang sumber datanya diperoleh dari buku-buku dan jurnal yang membahas terorisme. Penelitian ini mengidentifikasi motif terorisme di Indonesia yaitu motif politik, motif agama dan motif ideologi terorisme di Indonesia. Peneltian membuktikan bahwa rencana pembangunan Mall di sejumlah daerah, terjadinya jurang yang lebar antara orang kaya dan orang miskin, tidak terpenuhinya hak-hak masyarakat, orientasi pembangunan yang hanya mengedepankan aspek fisik, kurang memperhatikan aspek ruhani dan nilai-nilai sosial-keagamaan masyarakat, meluasnya kekerasan dan konflik merupakan faktor yang bisa menyuburkan terorisme This article analyzes about the phenomena of religious radicalism and motives of terrorism in Indonesia. Terrorism becomes a very serious threat in the dynamics of local, national and international politics. The fight against terrorism as well as the struggle for the future that never-ending. Discussing about terrorism issue is always related to radical religious groups. Likewise, the radicalism is always identic with religious violence. The phenomena of terrorism which happen in some countries, the perpetrators are often perceived as a radical religious group. Even many people attempt to equate terrorism with Islam. This study refers to qualitative method with library research, namely the research which the sources obtained from books and journals about terrorism. This study identify the motives of terrorism in Indonesia that are political, religious, and ideological motives of terrorism in Indonesia. The findings of the research show that the building plans in some places, big gap between rich and poor people, unfulfilled community rights, building orietation which focuses on physical aspects, not paying attention to spiritual aspects and religion and social values, the spread of violences and conflicts are some factors which can improve terrorism.

This article discusses a different side of two controversial fatwas — one against Muslims participating in Christmas celebrations and the other against pluralism, liberalism and secularism — issued by the Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI, Council of Indonesian Ulama). Most studies on MUI have emphasised the role that the Council's fatwas have played in inciting sectarian violence in Indonesia. Without denying the connections between violence and the MUI fatwas, this article argues that these controversial fatwas have also opened up room for more fruitful and constructive discussions among different religious groups in Indonesia. This article asks: What were the roots of the controversy over these intolerant fatwas? How did the state respond to them? And what does the controversy over these fatwas tell us about the nature of public debate on Islam in Indonesia? By answering these questions this article will shed light on aspects of contemporary Indonesian public debates about Islam that have been overlooked in current scholarship.

The inter-religious harmony is not a rare thing in Indonesian society, there are a lot of practice at the grassroots level, which show that the Indonesian people are able to build religious harmony. However, due to the rise of religiously motivated violent incidents, both the case of intra-religion and inter-religious, and global-scale violence, the peaceful images of Islam are slowly replaced by the religious issues that are less encouraging. Based on that irony, this study tries to show a portrait of interfaith harmony between Islam and Buddhism in two different places; Tlogowungu, Temanggung and Blingoh, Jepara. Although both remain predominantly Muslim region, but the region becomes the centre of Buddhist people which is growing rapidly. This study shows that religious harmony between Muslims and Buddhists has a long historical roots. In addition to each doctrinal aspects of religion, the driving force of harmony also came from the role of local wisdom that exist in each region. Muslims and Buddhists are also equally establish relations of coexistence between religions patterned or mutually support the existence of each religion and cooperative patterns or work together in real.

Patriarchy is a global phenomenon that has resulted in the unequal distribution of power and privilege between men and women. It has been established as a system that reinforces male dominance and subjugates women. Patriarchy is a system that reinforces the marginalization of women in all aspects of life, from the political and social to the cultural, economic, and ideological. It is evident in the lack of access to education, employment opportunities, and other resources. Additionally, women are often subjected to violence and harassment, and are denied basic rights within their own families and communities. In the post-colonial period, Islam, being the most adopted religion of the majority in Pakistan, has been manipulated to perpetuate this discrimination. Durrani (1999) dares to talk about one of the most taboo topics of ‘The Mullah-Pir Community’ which subjugates females by using a false image of Islam. The study uses the qualitative methods and theoretical foundations of Naik’s (2009) discourse on Islamic feminism and Spivak’s (1998) work ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ to analyze the postcolonial discourse on women subjugation. In light of these theories, this study explores the unspeakable horrors perpetrated in the name of Islam to subjugate women in the novel Blasphemy. Duranni presents an in-depth analysis of the misrepresentation of Islam by predatory religious leaders. The study reveals that pseudo-clerics like Pir Sain have misconstrued Islam and its constitution to exploit his wife Heer. The study unmasks the duplicity of a man who is deemed as a religious caretaker. He discourages reading the Holy Quran with translation so that he can manipulate religion as an instrument to persuade other people for a blind submission. Through his prejudiced analyses of the Holy Quran he tries to stop women from attaining education, and subjugates them to an inhumane extent. Keywords: Blasphemy, Discrimination, Subaltern, Women subjugation, Feminism.

This study examines the media dakwah in the form of mosque bulletin relation to harmony religious community in West Java. Some years ago the media reported that West Java is the province with the highest rate of inter-religious conflict in Indonesia. Resistance to physical violence is very likely one of them caused by the low level of understanding of the ummah against religious insight. This research is important to assess whether in the form of bulletin dakwah media has a role in preventing conflict, or even contribute to lower levels of religious harmony in West Java community. The method used research is qualitative with descriptive approach. By taking Uswah bulletin issued by Pusdai West Java and bulletins issued by the Gema Mujahidin by Muhammadiyah West Java. The study produced findings on historical aspects, management, and message bulletin dakwah . Content that has been developed and become a mainstream issue in the two bulletins in the form of community enlightenment through the messages of Islam are moderate and more peaceful. The second bulletin became a tool for community education about the importance of tolerance and Islamic deeper insight. Bulletin becomes adhesive media community as well as building human civilization through the message of Islam is universal.

Along with scientific development and technological growth which have created a lot of convenience to mankind there have also raised a deep cynicism towards the religious and spiritual aspects of life. Value crisis of humanity marked by the crisis of spirituality increased. Many societies are facing deep crisis. This condition makes the world vulnerable to violence and conflicts. Therefore, modern world society has been challenged to to be more attentive than before to deal with religious and spiritual values. This paper asserts that religion continues to be an important since it combines both personal and public character. Social problems faced by the modern world society such as cultural diversity, environmental preservation, economic equity, and conflict resolution are theologically reflected within the teaching of Islam. Sufism as a form of Islamic spiritualities offers some applicable answers for this phenomenon. In addition, characteristic of Sufism (mysticism) is commonly well known in almost all religions. Sufism cherishes from the private sphere into a popular Islamic culture. This research would like to see how the phenomenon of spiritual movement in the dimension of Sufism has a real powerful to improve social problem of the modern world.

Based on a critical analysis of the definitions of Jihad in popular science, dictionary refer-ence, commentary, and educational literature, the article establishes the methodological flaw of the abstract, one-sided representation of Jihad exclusively as a call to Muslims to wage a "Holy war". It concludes that such a one-sided definition of Jihad, imposed on the world community by Western Islamism, which is critical of everything Muslim, is used by the inspirers of interna-tional terrorism as a religious justification for the need to wage an armed war against non-believers and apostates. Understanding the Quranic provisions about Jihad, the historical en-richment of the content of Jihad, the various forms and varieties of its manifestation allows the authors to outline methodologically verified research principles and offer a conceptual defini-tion of Jihad that expresses its deep essence. The article defines Jihad as an Islamic phenome-non that consists in the concentration of consciousness, will, desires, and efforts of every Mus-lim and the entire Islamic Ummah in General to strengthen the faith in the One Allah, to protect and spread this faith, and to subordinate personal and public life to the requirements of Islam. This deep essence of Jihad is manifested in the most diverse efforts made by believers on the path of Islam, in the zeal that contributes to the qualitative improvement of the Muslim Ummah, its quantitative growth. The author of the article considers it inappropriate to claim that the religious phenomenon named by the Arabic term "Jihad" is exclusively an Islamic phenomenon. He puts forward the thesis that, although the term "Jihad" is used only in Islam to express the concentration of all ef-forts of Muslims on the path of establishing faith in the One Allah, a similar phenomenon occurs in other religions. The selfless service of Muslims to Islam should not become the basis for its characterization as a bloodthirsty religion associated with wars, battles, violence, suicides, and other negative aspects, since no religious and cult system can be established, strengthened, and spread except on the basis of the diligent service of its adherents.

Other than an identity in itself, religion plays a central role in other forms of collective identities, like ethnic and national. Moreover, as the constructivist theoretical position argues that identities are fluid and can be impacted by different factors, we propose that conflict and violence have repercussions for religion and the associated identities. Extending the constructivist theoretical position, we contend that conflicts do not ‘soften’ or ‘harden’ identities, rather its impacts are complex, multiple and significant. In the backdrop of recent conflict and violence in Pukhtun region of Swat, Islam is substantial due to its centrality to Pakistani national identity (represented and promoted by the Pakistani state) and Pukhtun ethnic identity (represented by the Pukhtuns in Swat) and militant discourse in the region. This study argues that, amidst the conflict in Swat, three forms and positions of Islam have emerged, including the Islam adopted by Pukhtuns as marker of their identity, Islam used by Pakistan for framing a national identity and the one promoted, rather imposed, by the militants. Pukhtuns in Swat try to detach and distance their ‘form’ of Islam (having both symbolic and practical aspects) from that of the Pakistani state and the militants. Moreover, Pukhtun’s form of Islam is considered closer to that of the state with a sharp distance from that of the militants. Pakistani state, religious clergy and militants are blamed and criticized for using Islam for their interests. Militant’s Islam is termed ‘violent’ and only based on their form of justice and is thus rejected. Pakistani state’s Islam is considered least practiced and more symbolic and thus disowned. Islam adopted and practiced by Pukhtuns, majority, in Swat is considered as peaceful and in practice and thus assumed to be better than the other contesting forms of Islam. Thus, the conflict in Swat, involving militants and Pakistani state, has complicated the divisive role of Islam in relation to its unifying role as a component and marker of Pakistani national identity. This has repercussions for Pakistani national identity. The study is based on 45 open-ended in-depth interviews and five focus group discussions in diverse parts of Swat, coupled with ethnographic observation.

<p><em>It is a fact that University, even Islamic University under the authority of Religious Ministry Institution, is not free from the incident of sexual violence, yet they don’t have rulings and procedure of preventing and handling the case of sexual violence involving civitas academic, be it happen inside or outside the campus. For this reason, it is crucial to conduct an analysis on the document of Preventing and Handling the Sexual Violence (PPKS) rules in National Islamic Higher Education with relate to the Decree of the General Director of Islamic Education on PPKS in PTKI and National regulations. This study method uses descriptive qualitative analysis with a socio-legal approach. The data sources are field data on sexual violence and harassment research in 2019 and 2020 and library documents. From the findings and socio-legal analysis, it is known that Indonesia's positive law is still partial and does not provide sufficient detail regarding the prevention and management of sexual violence. The Decree of the Director-General of Pendis uses the definition of the form of sexual violence referring to the Bill on the Elimination of Sexual Violence, where on the one hand it takes sides with victims and human rights but on the other hand, has potential problems in the application of the Decree of the Director-General of Pendis in the future. The Draft of a decree or existing decree of the rector at PTKI, including at UIN SU, try to refer to the Decree of the Director-General of Education, especially in the juridical, sociological, philosophical aspects as well as the benefit to victims and the academic community. However, in-depth analysis of the draft of the rector's regulation does not fully comply with the Decree of the Director-General of Education, particularly in the aspects of the referral service system, PPKS management structure, and monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.</em></p>

This article discusses theoretical issues behind the current shift in the policy of European states towards Islamic communities. The shift is driven by the idea that the values of political Islam are incompatible with Western values; that the main driver behind radicalization is ideology and that even non‑violent Islamists gradually prepare the Muslim youth to embracing violence. Based on current academic discussions as well as the results of the author’s own research, the author concludes that the opponents of these ideas have serious counter‑ arguments. In their views, radicalization can be explained by a wide range of different factors. Violent and non‑violent Islamists compete for the audience, and therefore, not only can non‑violent Islamists embrace jihadist views but also, vice versa, some jihadists can change their position to non‑violence. Moreover, Muslim values, as well as those of the Islamists, are not necessarily antagonistic in all their aspects with the values of Western democracies. Various theoretical approaches form the basis for an alternative program of practical measures that could be implemented in the future.

This paper will parse and explain the moderation movement initiated and mobilized by the Islamic organization Nahdhatul Ulama and radical movements conducted by Jama'ah Islamiyah. The focus of this paper will look at the Islamic philosophy and vision (NU and JI) on religious and political relations. This research uses qualitative method with descriptive analysis, that is data used in research and supported by theme-related literatures. The NU moderation movement is a manifestation of ideology formed in many spaces, one of the most important being culture. Contextualization and internalization of the interpretation of the sacred texts namely Al Quran and Hadith, birth concepts such as pluralism and endurance. The earthing of Islamic teachings in accordance with the concept of rahmatan lil alamin existing in the Qur'an can not be a left or right object (moderate). Islam is present as a religion that lays political and Islamic relations as two sides complement each other and maintain their own identity. Islam requires politics and state for the media to develop its teachings in all aspects of community life, while the state needs Islam to safeguard, guard and guide the life of the state and society. On the other hand, Jama'ah Islamiyah known as extremist groups who want a system of state order called "al-Khilafah al-Islamiyah", various ways and efforts must be implemented for the sake of the establishment of an Islamic state including the path of war (jihad) with violence, manifestation of the ideology of the application of Islamic Shari'ah in kaffah and syumul Keywords: Nahdhatul Ulama;Moderasi; Jama’ah Islamiy; Radikalisme

Islam as a thought explain alla aspects of life, both aspects of divinity and humanity aspects that make reconciliation as one of the solutions to face the world’s cucial conditions as result of hostilities and war. Reconcilition in the vacubalary of the Qur’an called islah or peace, which has the important objectives to maintain a relationship, not just among muslim in particular, but for people in general. So in this case, reconciliation can be categorized in several ways, namely reconciliation in temrs of faith or belief and worship, social, moral, also in terms of politics and government law. In the implementation, reconcilitation involves several parties, the parties to the dispute and the mediator in charge of mediating the dispute. Mediator required to act fairly and with dignity an also have sufficient scientific reputation. Disputants are also required to conduct an honest deliberation, do not insult or slander also full awareness and conduct of peace moreover instill on ourselves not to repeat acts tah may lead disunity. It is to realize the concept of brotherhood, harmony maintaining trust and caring between people and to realize the things that are far from disputes and violence, as we as to maintain social balance not only in religious life, but also in the state and nation.

<p>The author’s interest in researching on de-radicalization of religion in the literature of islamic boarding school education was driven by the fact that religion de-radicalization are now starting to touch many aspects of society. Religious radicalism is often associated with terrorism, such as suicide bombers under the pretext of <em>jihad</em> (martyrdom), violence in the name of <em>amar ma'ruf-nahy munkar</em> (commanding the good and forbidding the evil), even now starting to organize religious radicalism in the establishment of the state. Ironically, some of the perpetrators of terrorism are graduates of boarding schools. This is due to the fact that there are several texts in the literature of boarding school education that are vulnerable to radical behaviors, such as <em>jihad</em>, commanding the good, or fighting against non-Muslims. It makes boarding schools are negatively affected despite the fact that they are institutions of Islamic education in Indonesia who spread the teachings of Islam which is <em>rahmatan lil Alamin</em> (blessing for the universe), tolerant, and contextual. Therefore, this study wanted to know about de-radicalization of religion in the understanding of texts in the literature of boarding school education, particularly related to the meaning of <em>jihad</em>, commanding the good, and Islam as the blessing for the universe.</p><p>This research uses library research, which is a pure literature research. This method is used for obtaining data on de-radicalization in the view of boarding schools using descriptive approach. This research is a study on religious teachings in relation to society, nature, character, and the influence of the thoughts and ideas in forming the character of a group.</p><p>De-radicalization of religion in the literature of boarding schools includes several things. First, boarding schools should not teach jihad with war, but with education. Next, the applications of <em>amar ma'ruf-nahy munkar</em> must be done through certain stages, so that the direction fits the condition of the object of the missionary endeavor. Violence must not be used as long as it is still possible to use subtle ways since violence is only legalized when the situation is extremely urgent.</p><p><strong>Keywords:</strong> <em>De-radicalisation of Religion, Text, Literature, Boarding School</em></p>

<p><strong>Abstract:</strong><em> Talking about violence, including violence against women is actually talking about social relations in the long span of human history. Violence against women has been done and manifested in various forms, emerging from social, cultural, economic, and political status and even it was done in the name of religion in all levels of society. Social relationships and religious understanding often triggered violence against women. Through sociological and religious perspective, this study tried to explore violence against women which had happened in various public places. In the perspective of religion,</em>Islam <em>has taken a similar position as regards both women and men</em> and <em>their rights should be the same and the identical because Islam brings the mission of equality to the world, and the difference lies only in the presence of piety</em> and devotion to <em>God. In the perspective sociology, both men and women are actually in a balance position. The paradoxical happening of violence against women in the two aspects of knowledge had caused the feminism movement that did not only try to inforce justice and equality between men and women but also tried to reconstruct the role and function of women in order to achieve 'ideal social order’ for the sake of the ideas of equality and justice. At least there should be a movement of feminism which is basically as the transformation of women's movement that aims to create better relationship between men and women.</em></p><p dir="RTL"><strong>الملخص</strong> :إن الحديث عن "العنف" وفيه عن العنف تجاه المرأة حديث عن العلاقة الإجتماعية عبر تاريخ الإنسان. ظهر العنف تجاه المرأة في شتّى الأشكال، ظهر من الناحية الإجتماعية، والثقافية، والإقتصادية، والسياسية بل على أساس الدين في جميع مستويات المجتمع. والعلاقة الإجتماعية والفهم الديني أصبحا – كثيرا ما – مسببا لفعل العنف تجاه المرأة. حاولت هذه الدراسة – بوجهة النظر الإجتماعي الديني – دراسة ظاهرة هذا العنف في كثير من المجتمعات. إن الإسلام لا يفرّق بين كنه الرجل والمرأة. والفرق والتفوّق بينهما كانا في التقوى. وفي الناحية الإجتماعية فإن الرجل والمرأة متساويان متوازيان . فوقوع التعارض وهو العنف تجاه المرأة في العلمين يؤدّى إلى ظهور الحركة النسائية حاولت – ليس فقط - إقامة العدل والمساواة بين الرجل والمرأة، بل إعادة بناء الفكرة عن دور ووظيفة المرأة للحصول على النظام العادل للآراء عن العدل والمساواة. وعلى الأقل لابد من وجود الحركة النسائية كحركة إصلاحية للنساء لتكوين العلاقة الأحسن بين الرجل والمرأة.</p><p><strong>Abstrak: </strong><em>Membincang<strong> </strong>kekerasan termasuk kekerasan terhadap perempuan sejatinya membincang relasi sosial dalam rentang panjang sejarah umat manusia. Kekerasan terhadap perempuan menampakkan diri dalam beragam bentuk, muncul dari ranah sosial, budaya, ekonomi, politik bahkan dari dan atas nama agama dalam semua tingkatan masyarakat.Relasi sosial dan pemahaman keagamaan acapkali menjadi pemicu kekerasan terhadap perempuan. Melalui perspektif sosiologis dan agama, kajian ini berusaha untuk mengeksplorasi kekerasan terhadap perempuan yang muncul dalam beragam entitas masyarakat.</em><em> Dalam ranah agama, Islam sejatinya memandang bahwa tidak ada distingsi antara laki-laki dan perempuan karena ia (Islam) membawa misi kesetaraan, parameter distingsi hanyalah ketaqwaan kepada Tuhan..Dalam ranah sosiologis, semua manusia baik laki-laki maupun perempuan sejatinya berada pada posisi yang seimbang. Terjadinya paradoks berupa kekerasan terhadap perempuan dalam dua ranah keilmuan ini memunculkan gerakan feminisme yang tidak saja mencoba untuk menegakkan keadilan dan kesetaraan antara laki-laki dan perempuan tetapi juga berusaha untuk merekonstruksi peran dan fungsi perempuan demi tercapainya tatanan yang ‘ideal’ bagi ide-ide kesetaraan dan keadilan.Paling tidak harus ada gerakan feminism yang notabene merupakan gerakan transformasi bagi perempuan yang bertujuan untuk menciptakan relasi laki-laki dan perempuan kea rah yang lebih baik. </em></p><p><strong>Keywords:<em> </em></strong>kekerasan, perempuan, agama, sosiologi, kesetaraan, keadilan.</p>

<p><span lang="EN-US">This study attempts to reveal the elite concept from Antonio Gramsci's thought which supports elite studies in an Islamic perspective, by using library research methods. The elite according to Gramsci is a social category that is not related to class but related to hegemony. Hegemony is a winning power that is obtained through a consensus mechanism rather than through violence or oppression of other social classes. The regime spreads hegemonic power of influence because it is supported by related infrastructure organizations, namely in which intellectual obedience is supposed to occur due to cultural and political factors. This is where elites emerge which are categorized into two according to Gramsci, namely organic elites (politicians, bureaucrats, academics) and traditional elites (subject to authorities). Elites in Islam bring consequences or impacts by showing the importance of elite positions in the orderliness of civilization, the urgency of elite cadre formation in order to strengthen faith and belief as well as faith. This is important to do because of the vital role played by the elite for the advancement of society around them. Therefore, the religious elite, the religious elite, now have an obligation to participate in realizing national unity and are responsible for maintaining national resilience in its various aspects (ideological, political, economic, and socio-cultural)</span></p>

In many developing countries, the people cannot enjoy their basic human rights. Majority of women are refused their rights to admittance, own, or inherit land and property. As a result, they cannot afford to buy land. This deprivation makes them dependent on good marital and family relations. The right to inheritance is a legal and very legitimate right of every person, which has been given by Islam to women in very explicit words but unfortunately the custom of Pakistan is different regarding giving female legal right of inheritance. The chief objective of this research is to find out the causes of depriving women of their right to inheritance. For the accomplishment of the objectives of research, quantitative research method has been adopted. A survey was conducted in four public sector universities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The questionnaire was used as a research tool. Including highly educated faculty and students were selected for the collection of Data. These data were later analyzed to draw the results of the research. The research covers two main aspects. Firstly, the awareness level of the educated class about their rights and prevailing laws; and secondly, the major societal causes of depriving women of their inheritance right. Findings of the survey indicates that women are deprived of their religious right of inheritance even in the highly educated sector due to financial, social and cultural issues. Inheritance law is one of the key leavers for the sustainable development of the society which provides social justice and wellbeing for the family. Therefore, the inheritance law needs be implemented through public awareness regarding the Islamic Shania and state laws.Keywords: Inheritance, Islamic Law, Gender, Culture, Property rights, Sustainable development

The practice of girls circumcision in Indonesian still exists these days. Though it is not as severe as the practice of circumcision in Africa and Middle East, the practice of circumcision in Indonesia is still classified as very unsophisticated: utilizing a small knife and turmeric cut at the tip of the newborn baby clitoris. This practice has been performed hereditary. Merely, in various ways, the construction of gender often cause detriment on female, since there are assumptions and beliefs on female sanctity myth. Yet this practice is very detrimental for female if it is reviewed from the medical, humanity, and social aspects. Ironically, such practice often utilized teological legitimation theorem to strengthen the root of violence against female. Employing Fazlur Rahmans hermeneutic analysis on double movement theory, this article studied the practice of female circumcision along with tradition and religious interpretation. The result of this study is that the moral ideal aspect of the female circumcision tradition has caused detriment on female whether in medical side or womans rights. Subsequently, by legal aspect, the practice of circumcision is only for boys and not for girls.Praktik khitan bagi anak perempuan di daerah Nusantara masih eksis hingga sekarang, meski tidak separah seperti praktik khitan di daerah Afrika dan Timur tengah, praktik khitan di Indonesia masih tergolong sangat sederhana. Dengan menggunakan pisau kecil dan kunyit yang disayat di bibir klitoris bayi yang baru dilahirkan. Praktik tersebut telah berjalan secara turun temurun. Secara sederhana, dalam beberapa bentuk, seringkali konstruksi gender merugikan banyak kaum perempuan, karena adanya asumsi dan kepercayaan tentang mitos kesucian perempuan. Padahal praktik tersebut sangat merugikan perempuan jika ditinjau dari aspek medis, kemanusiaan dan sosial humaniora. Ironisnya, praktik yang demikian seringkali menggunakan dalil legitimasi teologis untuk menguatkan akar kekerasan terhadap perempuan. Dengan menggunakan pisau analisa hermeneutika Fazlur Rahman tentang teori gerak ganda, tulisan ini mengkaji praktik khitan perempuan dengan tradisi dan tafsir keagamaan. Adapun hasil kajian dari tulisan ini adalah bahwa aspek ideal moral dari tradisi khitan perempuan telah merugikan pihak perempuan baik dari segi medis maupun hak asasi perempuan. Kemudian secara aspek legal, praktik khitan adalah untuk anak laki-laki dan bukan kepada anak perempuan.

This research aims to make the development of moderate Islamic-based e-modules where this will have an impact or impact in realizing quality IAIN Curup in 2045. The product of this research is realized in the form of an electronic module based on Islamic Moderation to improve the English language skills of lecturers at IAIN Curup and also improve their understanding of moderate Islam as a whole and comprehensively. Because an understanding of Islamic moderation is critical, The Islamic-based Electronic Module (e-module) based on Moderation will later become the basis of the study of Islamic-based English Moderation. This is so that lecturers and employees can compete globally later. The research method used to conduct this research is a method of research and development or research and development. In this study, data was gathered through document analysis and a questionnaire. Research procedures that will be applied there are several procedures, namely investigation, strategy, improvement, assessment, realization, and estimation. The data collection technique in this study is the analysis of documents and questionnaires that will be used to obtain research results. Based on the results of the study, researchers conducted development in several aspects, (1) Religious Moderation; (2) Justice; (3) Radicalism, (4) Non Violence; (5) Tolerance; (6) Multicultural Society; (7) Accommodating to Local culture; (8) Cooperation; (9) National commitment; (10) Equilibrium. In addition, as the result, it is said that the electronic module (e-module) has been declared fit for use as a medium of learning English and Islamic Moderation at IAIN Curup.

AbstrakPenelitian ini membahas mengenai studi kasus Putusan Pengadilan Agama Banyumas Nomor 1160/Pdt.G/2018/PA.Bms yang mana dalam perkawinan antara Pemohon dan Termohon I merupakan perkawinan sedarah yang telah berjalan sejak tahun 1989. Dalam perkawinan ini dikaruniai 3 orang anak berumur 28 tahun, 23 tahun dan 12 tahun. Perkawinan kedua Termohon harus dibatalkan setelah Termohon I dan Pemohon yang hendak menikahkan salah satu anak kandungnya namun Termohon I tidak bisa menjadi wali nikah dari anak tersebut. Hal ini terungkap setelah KUA Kecamatan Sokaraja, Kabupaten Banyumas menolak Termohon I menjadi wali nikah dari anaknya dengan alasan perkawinan antara Pemohon dan Termohon I merupakan perkawinan yang sedarah/senasab. Metode penelitian ini menggunakan yuridis normatif dengan data sekunder melalui buku-buku, jurnal-jurnal terntang hukum perkawinan, hukum keluarga dan juga melihat aspek-aspek normatif dalam Undang-Undang Nomor 1 tahun 1974 Tentang Perkawinan dan Kompilasi Hukum Islam. Pembatalan perkawinan membawa pengaruh dan akibat hukum kepada status perkawinan serta kedudukan hukum keturunannya. Pasal 23 dan Pasal 26 ayat (1) Undang-Undang Perkawinan menyebutkan secara tegas terkait pihak yang berhak mengajukan pembatalan perkawinan. Pembatalan perkawinan mengakibatkan perkawinan yang dilangsungkan sebelumnya menjadi dianggap seolah tidak pernah terjadi. Kata Kunci: Pembatalan Perkawinan, Perkawinan Sedarah, Kedudukan Anak. Abstract This study discusses the case study of the Banyumas Religious Court Decision Number 1160/Pdt.G/2018/PA.Bms in which the marriage between the Petitioner and Respondent I was an incestuous marriage that had been going on since 1989. In this marriage, they were blessed with 3 children aged 28 years, 23 years and 12 years. The second marriage of the Respondent must be annulled after the Respondent I and the Petitioner who want to marry off one of their biological children but Respondent I cannot become the marriage guardian of the child. This was revealed after the KUA of Sokaraja District, Banyumas Regency refused Respondent I to be the marriage guardian of his child on the grounds that the marriage between the Petitioner and Respondent I was a blood marriage. This research method uses normative juridical with secondary data through books, journals on marriage law, family law and also looks at the normative aspects in Law Number 1 of 1974 concerning Marriage and the Compilation of Islamic Law. The annulment of marriage brings legal effects and consequences to the marital status and legal position of the offspring. Article 23 and Article 26 paragraph (1) of the Marriage Law explicitly state the parties who have the right to file for annulment of marriage. The annulment of a marriage causes a marriage that was previously held to be considered as if it never happened Keywords: Annulment of Marriage, Inbreeding, Child Position.

<p><em>Abstrak</em> -<strong> Pernikahan merupakan salah satu tugas perkembangan dewasa awal. Persiapan pernikahan yang dilakukan oleh pasangan dapat dilakukan melalui kursus pranikah. Kursus pranikah adalah pemberian bekal pemahaman dan pengetahuan tentang kehidupan rumah tangga/keluarga dalam mewujudkan keluarga sakinah, mawaddah warahmah serta mengurangi angka perselisihan, perceraian, dan kekerasan dalam rumah tangga. Penelitian ini bertujuan melihat gambaran persepsi dewasa awal tentang kursus pranikah. </strong><strong>Penelitian ini dilakukan dengan metode kuantitatif dengan jenis penelitian survei</strong><strong> menggunakan. Metode analisis data menggunakan analisis deskriptif yang melibatkan 30 responden. </strong><strong>Penelitian </strong><strong>menggunakan teknik purposive sampling dengan kriteria dewasa awal usia 18 sampai 40 tahun, </strong><strong>masa pernikahan kurang dari 10 tahun dan sudah pernah mengikuti kursus pranikah di Kantor Urusan Agama (KUA) sebelum melangsungkan pernikahan.</strong><strong> Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa dewasa awal memiliki persepsi yang</strong><strong> </strong><strong>baik terhadap kursus pranikah yang ditunjukkan dengan hasil persepsi terhadap hukum pernikahan memperoleh nilai rata-rata </strong><strong>3,50, dimensi mengenai mekanisme dan prosedur pencatatan perkawinan serta dimensi merawat cinta kasih memperoleh nilai rata-rata 3,37. Berikutnya dimensi penanaman nilai keimanan, ketaqwaan serta akhlaqul karimah dalam keluarga memperoleh rata-rata 3,32. Dimensi terkait fikih munakahat memperoleh nilai rata-rata 3,27. Serta dimensi pengetahuan umum mengenai kursus pranikah memperoleh rata-rata 3,17. Rata-rata kedua terendah adalah terkait kesehatan reproduksi yang hanya 3,04. Dan hanya satu dimensi yang memperoleh nilai rata-rata dibawah 3 yaitu materi mengenai manajemen konflik, dengan rata-rata 2,97. </strong><strong>Saran dari penelitian ini agar kursus pranikah dapat diikuti oleh dewasa awal dalam mempersiapkan pernikahan. </strong><strong>Diharapkan </strong><strong>Direktur Jenderal Bimbingan Masyarakat Islam dapat terus berkomitmen dalam menetapkan peraturan mengenai kursus pranikah dan menjadikannya sebagai persyaratan untuk melangsungkan pernikahan. Demikian juga bagi Organisasi keagamaan Islam yang telah memiliki akreditasi dari Kementerian Agama, agar terus melaksanakan pelatihan untuk penyelenggara kursus pranikah agar menghasilkan sumber daya manusia yang kompeten dalam pelaksanaan kursus tersebut. Bagi peneliti selanjutnya diharapkan untuk memaparkan keefektifan kursus pranikah guna mempersiapkan pernikahan dan mencegah terjadinya perceraian. </strong></p><p><strong> </strong></p><p><strong><em>Kata Kunci: </em></strong><em>Persepsi, Kursus Pranikah, Awal Kedewasaan</em></p><p><strong><em> </em></strong></p><p><em>Abstract - </em><strong>Marriage is one of the developmental tasks of early adulthood. Wedding preparations can be done by the pair through a premarital course. Premarital course is giving a better understanding and knowledge of the life of the household / family in realizing harmonious family, mawaddah warahmah as well as reduce the number of disputes, divorce and domestic violence. This study aims to look at the picture of early adult perceptions about premarital course. This research was conducted by a quantitative method with the type of survey research use. Methods of data analysis using descriptive analysis involving 30 respondents. Research using purposive sampling with criteria early adulthood ages 18 to 40 years, a period of less than 10 years of marriage and have completed a course of premarital at the Office of Religious Affairs (KUA) before a wedding. The results showed that mature early have a good perception of premarital courses as indicated by the results of the perception of the marriage law to obtain an average value of 3.50, the dimension of the mechanisms and procedures for registration of marriages as well as the dimensions of caring loving obtain an average value of 3.37 , Next dimensions planting values of faith, devotion and akhlaqul karimah in the family receives an average of 3.32. Jurisprudence related dimensions munakahat obtain an average value of 3.27. As well as the dimensions of a general knowledge of the course of premarital gained an average of 3.17. Average of the two lowest-related reproductive health is only 3.04. And only one dimension to obtain an average value below 3 that material on conflict management, with an average of 2.97. Suggestions from this study that the premarital courses can be followed by early adulthood in preparing for the wedding. Expected Director General of Islamic Community Guidance can continue to be committed in setting the rules regarding pre-marital courses and make it a requirement for a wedding. Likewise for the Islamic religious organization that has had accreditation from the Ministry of Religion, in order to continue to carry out training courses for organizers of premarital order to produce competent human resources in the implementation of the course. For further research is expected to explain the effectiveness of premarital courses to prepare for marriage and prevent divorce.</strong></p><p><strong> </strong></p><p align="left"><strong><em>Keywords – </em></strong><em>perception, premarital courses, early adulthood</em></p>

INTRODUCTION: Infertility is a life-changing experience that brings with it medical, psychiatric, psychological, and social problems, with cultural, religious, and social aspects, individual-specific, leadings to stress in couples, resulting in social labeling, sexual dysfunction. Many factors can trigger or increase the severity of infertility. Couples failing to achieve one of the basic functions of the family institution, also experience negativities in marriage. This study aimed to determine the severity of violence by men to his partner and the marital adjustment level in men in couples applying for infertility treatment. METHODS: The study population consisted of 286 men from the couples applying to Cukurova University Faculty of Medicine, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Infertility Outpatient Clinic June -October 2017. The data was collected using the Sociodemographic Data Form, Conflict Tactic Scale-2, Marital Adjustment Scale. Data analyzed using SPSS 20.0 Statistical analysis program. RESULTS: The mean age of men was 34.79±7.24 years, the mean duration of marriage was 5.87±4.86 years and the mean age at first marriage was 26.33±5.09 years. Of the participants, 93.4% were violent against their spouses based on the Conflict Tactics Scale-2 results. There was no significant relationship between the overall violence by men and any of the sociodemographic data. Marital Adjustment Scale revealed that there was a marital adjustment in 80.4% of men. A significant relationship was found between marital adjustment and sociodemographic variables including occupation, previous infertility treatment, and marital status. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: The men practiced violence against their wives and that the most common type of violence was psychological violence. In infertile couples, the majority of men had good marital adjustment and they did not seem to be affected by infertility.

<p><strong>Moderation is a core tenet of Islam. Moderate Islam is a religious understanding that is very relevant in the context of diversity in all aspects, both religion, customs, ethnicity and the nation itself. Educational institutions have a strategic role to break the chain of violence in the name of religion. An educational approach for all students that can be implemented in peace education which is integrated with the school curriculum. Thus, religious moderation is very necessary to be instilled in students in order to create a harmonious relationship between teachers, students, the community and the surrounding environment so as to create a peaceful and safe environment. of various threats to a peaceful Indonesia. This research is a research that uses qualitative research methods, where the research method describes and describes matters relating to Religious Moderation in Indonesia. Researchers describe and describe the data from the opinions of experts. It is hoped that this qualitative method will allow the research to comprehensively explain the facts regarding Religious Moderation in Indonesia.</strong></p>

The problems faced by Muslims are increasingly complex. The challenges of modern life cannot be overcome simply by citing old religious interpretations. Not only because they are irrelevant, but because old interpretations often create new problems. How much terror, violence, discrimination, and dehumanization is done by referring to religious texts. The research method used is descriptive qualitative with a phenomenological approach. Data collection by observation, interviews, and documentation. Data analysis was carried out by means of data documentation, data reduction, data display and drawing conclusions. The results of the study show that the paradigm shift in the methodology of Islamic law carried out by the figures has implications for aspects of Islamic law both methodologically and discourse. Therefore, the method of reforming Islamic law is not a method that can be separated from the renewal of thoughts that move from the sacred texts that can be understood and then carried out in the context of the modern world which of course is no longer the same as the context of the time of the prophet. So that there is an offer of renewal of contemporary Islamic law methods including Fazlur Rahman, Muhammad Syahrur.

The face of Islam in Indonesia, which is the largest Muslim country in the world, plays an urgent moderating role in religion. The essence of Islamic teachings is moderation for its adherents. Moderation in this case is a form of religious understanding that is very much in line with the existence of Islam in Indonesia, which has a wealth of natural resources, customs, ethnicities and religions. This research aimed to provide an integrated approach to religious moderation in the life of the people in the nation using the Al-Qur’an. This research involved a literature review. The results indicated that the minside understanding of religious moderation is appropriate if it is juxtaposed with the practice of tawajun (balanced) or tawasshuth (intermediate) attitudes with the correct understanding through practicing the messages of the Qur’an. In conclusion, the word of God reflects on the importance of moderation. This includes the aspects of acknowledging the truth on the other side of disputes, upholding a tolerant attitude, respecting differences of opinion and not imposing a will by means of violence. This is described in Al-Hujarat: 13 (respecting diversity and the willingness to interact), Hud: 118-119 (conducting religious expression wisely and politely), al-Baqarah: 185 and an-Nisa’: 28. Keywords: implementing, religious moderation, Al-Qur’an

The recommendations and instructions of the Prophet of Islam (PBUH) and the Imams (PBUT) as well as the effect of acting according to them are subjects of particular interest to all the believers. The explanation and description of these commands in different areas and their impacts on the health and hygiene are important for the religious and non-religious communities and can be useful for everyone. This research was carried out to determine the status of health and well-being in prayers and narrations using a combination of theology, psychology, and sociology approach. The results of this research showed that the prayers and narrations considered the health and hygiene of human beings in all dimensions, so that acting according to the religious trainings and instructions provided by the infallibles (PBUH) can guarantee human health. There are many instructions and suggestions in the prayers and narrations about physical and non-physical health. In the field of physical health, instructions are given for eating, drinking, marital matters, etc., observance of which ensures the human health. The orders in non-physical area can be divided into three categories of psychological, theological, and social. Most religious ethical advices (whether positive or negative) focus on the psychological health of humans, such as stinginess, envy, fear, and hypocrisy. Since belief and faith play a fundamental role in the formation and quality of behavior as well as the personality of human beings, Islam has emphasized on the appropriateness of believing systems in humans. In the area of ​​social well-being, Islam has strict orders to avoid ignorance, oppression, divisions, and covenants that can eliminate the productive and peaceful coexistence and hinder the growth of human beings. Although in this research, health and hygiene were divided into several aspects, we should have a holistic view on them.

The theme of this conference is "Being Muslim in a Disrupted Millenial Age". The conference was motivated by the real challenges of the millenial generation and era. Indonesia is predicted to get demographic bonus in 2020-2045. According to the calculations of the National Family Planning Board (BKKBN) RI, in the decade, as many as 70 percent of Indonesian citizens are in the productive age, which is between 15 to 64 years. Only 30 percent are unproductive, for instance under 14 years and over 65 years old. Of course, demographic bonuses have an impact on the increasing number of young people, or more specifically, millennial generation.According to Neil Howe and William Strauss in the book Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation (2000), millennial generation are those born between 1982 and 20 years later. This means that this year, they are between 15 to 35 years old. Neil and William call the millennial as the generation that determines the future. In Indonesian context, the millennial lifestyle has had a profound influence on various aspects of personal and public life; social, cultural, economic, political and even religious. The most noticeable aspect is the increasing role of social media, which is mainly driven by the millennial generation. The role of social media, for example, has far-reaching impacts on the creative economy, with the increasing variety of digital entrepreneurship-based professions utilizing online sites, youtube, instagram, twitter and facebook. While in politics, social media becomes the personal space of branding and attention seekers that characterize millennials. Interestingly, in many parts of the world, research on millennial generation has grown considerably. In addition to the above books, some of the more popular ones were the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and University of Berkeley research in 2011 about the millennial generation of America; The Pew Research Center Review entitled Millennials: A Portrait of Generation Next (2010). Similarly the Texas-US based Center for Generational Kinetics through the intense genhq.com site is doing recent research on Millennial and Z generations.Similar research focusing on Muslim millennials is done by the Tabah Foundation of the United Arab Emirates entitled Muslim Millennial Attitudes on Religion and Religious Leadership (2016); The work of British Muslim writer Shelina Zahra Janmohamed Generation M: Young Muslims Changing the World (2016) is also interesting. In Indonesia, research and publications on millennial generations begin, but it is still difficult to find specific references to Muslim millennials. In fact, Indonesia is a country with the largest Muslim population in the world. According to the latest data of the Cetral Intelligence Agency, the number of Indonesian Muslims reaches a range of 225 million, far beyond Muslim countries such as Iran, Turkey, Egypt, and countries in the Arabian Peninsula. The proportion of Indonesian Muslims is also very significant, namely 87.2% of the total population of Indonesia. Given that fact, Muslim millennial of Indonesia has a very strategic position in the future. Millennial Muslims in this country can lift the image of Indonesian Islam to become a world reference in realizing a peaceful and harmonious society. Actually, the image has been recognized world widely. Two decades ago, various international media praised Indonesian Islam as an ideal portrait of Muslim society. Newsweek in 1996 labeled Islam Indonesia as "Islam with a smiling face". Newsweek is so fascinated with the style of religious people in Indonesia, calling it: everyone was kind; everyone was moderate; everyone respected humanistic values and a harmonious life. Interestingly, six years ago, precisely in 2011, Indonesianist Martin van Bruinessen reviewed the label in his paper with a question: What happened to the smiling face of Indonesian Islam? Martin seemed restless with the Indonesian Islamic movement, which was originally identical with the vision of nationality and humanity, into a movement that tends to be more political and partisan.This is where Muslim millennial Indonesia can take on the role. Today, around us, the narrative of hatred seems so real. It is laid out clearly through utterances, arguments, and comments on the mass lines crammed with verbal and visual violence. With such great potential, Indonesian Muslim youth are given a choice: To let the hate narrative expand its space, or to present a counter-narrative, through viralization of virtues as the part of millennial-style. This is the significance of organizing this annual conference.

The theme of this conference is "Being Muslim in a Disrupted Millenial Age". The conference was motivated by the real challenges of the millenial generation and era. Indonesia is predicted to get demographic bonus in 2020-2045. According to the calculations of the National Family Planning Board (BKKBN) RI, in the decade, as many as 70 percent of Indonesian citizens are in the productive age, which is between 15 to 64 years. Only 30 percent are unproductive, for instance under 14 years and over 65 years old. Of course, demographic bonuses have an impact on the increasing number of young people, or more specifically, millennial generation.According to Neil Howe and William Strauss in the book Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation (2000), millennial generation are those born between 1982 and 20 years later. This means that this year, they are between 15 to 35 years old. Neil and William call the millennial as the generation that determines the future. In Indonesian context, the millennial lifestyle has had a profound influence on various aspects of personal and public life; social, cultural, economic, political and even religious. The most noticeable aspect is the increasing role of social media, which is mainly driven by the millennial generation. The role of social media, for example, has far-reaching impacts on the creative economy, with the increasing variety of digital entrepreneurship-based professions utilizing online sites, youtube, instagram, twitter and facebook. While in politics, social media becomes the personal space of branding and attention seekers that characterize millennials. Interestingly, in many parts of the world, research on millennial generation has grown considerably. In addition to the above books, some of the more popular ones were the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and University of Berkeley research in 2011 about the millennial generation of America; The Pew Research Center Review entitled Millennials: A Portrait of Generation Next (2010). Similarly the Texas-US based Center for Generational Kinetics through the intense genhq.com site is doing recent research on Millennial and Z generations.Similar research focusing on Muslim millennials is done by the Tabah Foundation of the United Arab Emirates entitled Muslim Millennial Attitudes on Religion and Religious Leadership (2016); The work of British Muslim writer Shelina Zahra Janmohamed Generation M: Young Muslims Changing the World (2016) is also interesting. In Indonesia, research and publications on millennial generations begin, but it is still difficult to find specific references to Muslim millennials. In fact, Indonesia is a country with the largest Muslim population in the world. According to the latest data of the Cetral Intelligence Agency, the number of Indonesian Muslims reaches a range of 225 million, far beyond Muslim countries such as Iran, Turkey, Egypt, and countries in the Arabian Peninsula. The proportion of Indonesian Muslims is also very significant, namely 87.2% of the total population of Indonesia. Given that fact, Muslim millennial of Indonesia has a very strategic position in the future. Millennial Muslims in this country can lift the image of Indonesian Islam to become a world reference in realizing a peaceful and harmonious society. Actually, the image has been recognized world widely. Two decades ago, various international media praised Indonesian Islam as an ideal portrait of Muslim society. Newsweek in 1996 labeled Islam Indonesia as "Islam with a smiling face". Newsweek is so fascinated with the style of religious people in Indonesia, calling it: everyone was kind; everyone was moderate; everyone respected humanistic values and a harmonious life. Interestingly, six years ago, precisely in 2011, Indonesianist Martin van Bruinessen reviewed the label in his paper with a question: What happened to the smiling face of Indonesian Islam? Martin seemed restless with the Indonesian Islamic movement, which was originally identical with the vision of nationality and humanity, into a movement that tends to be more political and partisan.This is where Muslim millennial Indonesia can take on the role. Today, around us, the narrative of hatred seems so real. It is laid out clearly through utterances, arguments, and comments on the mass lines crammed with verbal and visual violence. With such great potential, Indonesian Muslim youth are given a choice: To let the hate narrative expand its space, or to present a counter-narrative, through viralization of virtues as the part of millennial-style. This is the significance of organizing this annual conference.

The theme of this conference is "Being Muslim in a Disrupted Millenial Age". The conference was motivated by the real challenges of the millenial generation and era. Indonesia is predicted to get demographic bonus in 2020-2045. According to the calculations of the National Family Planning Board (BKKBN) RI, in the decade, as many as 70 percent of Indonesian citizens are in the productive age, which is between 15 to 64 years. Only 30 percent are unproductive, for instance under 14 years and over 65 years old. Of course, demographic bonuses have an impact on the increasing number of young people, or more specifically, millennial generation.According to Neil Howe and William Strauss in the book Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation (2000), millennial generation are those born between 1982 and 20 years later. This means that this year, they are between 15 to 35 years old. Neil and William call the millennial as the generation that determines the future. In Indonesian context, the millennial lifestyle has had a profound influence on various aspects of personal and public life; social, cultural, economic, political and even religious. The most noticeable aspect is the increasing role of social media, which is mainly driven by the millennial generation. The role of social media, for example, has far-reaching impacts on the creative economy, with the increasing variety of digital entrepreneurship-based professions utilizing online sites, youtube, instagram, twitter and facebook. While in politics, social media becomes the personal space of branding and attention seekers that characterize millennials. Interestingly, in many parts of the world, research on millennial generation has grown considerably. In addition to the above books, some of the more popular ones were the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and University of Berkeley research in 2011 about the millennial generation of America; The Pew Research Center Review entitled Millennials: A Portrait of Generation Next (2010). Similarly the Texas-US based Center for Generational Kinetics through the intense genhq.com site is doing recent research on Millennial and Z generations.Similar research focusing on Muslim millennials is done by the Tabah Foundation of the United Arab Emirates entitled Muslim Millennial Attitudes on Religion and Religious Leadership (2016); The work of British Muslim writer Shelina Zahra Janmohamed Generation M: Young Muslims Changing the World (2016) is also interesting. In Indonesia, research and publications on millennial generations begin, but it is still difficult to find specific references to Muslim millennials. In fact, Indonesia is a country with the largest Muslim population in the world. According to the latest data of the Cetral Intelligence Agency, the number of Indonesian Muslims reaches a range of 225 million, far beyond Muslim countries such as Iran, Turkey, Egypt, and countries in the Arabian Peninsula. The proportion of Indonesian Muslims is also very significant, namely 87.2% of the total population of Indonesia. Given that fact, Muslim millennial of Indonesia has a very strategic position in the future. Millennial Muslims in this country can lift the image of Indonesian Islam to become a world reference in realizing a peaceful and harmonious society. Actually, the image has been recognized world widely. Two decades ago, various international media praised Indonesian Islam as an ideal portrait of Muslim society. Newsweek in 1996 labeled Islam Indonesia as "Islam with a smiling face". Newsweek is so fascinated with the style of religious people in Indonesia, calling it: everyone was kind; everyone was moderate; everyone respected humanistic values and a harmonious life. Interestingly, six years ago, precisely in 2011, Indonesianist Martin van Bruinessen reviewed the label in his paper with a question: What happened to the smiling face of Indonesian Islam? Martin seemed restless with the Indonesian Islamic movement, which was originally identical with the vision of nationality and humanity, into a movement that tends to be more political and partisan.This is where Muslim millennial Indonesia can take on the role. Today, around us, the narrative of hatred seems so real. It is laid out clearly through utterances, arguments, and comments on the mass lines crammed with verbal and visual violence. With such great potential, Indonesian Muslim youth are given a choice: To let the hate narrative expand its space, or to present a counter-narrative, through viralization of virtues as the part of millennial-style. This is the significance of organizing this annual conference.

In its preamble, The Western Australian Charter of Multiculturalism (WA) commits the state to becoming: “A society in which respect for mutual difference is accompanied by equality of opportunity within a framework of democratic citizenship”. One of the principles of multiculturalism, as enunciated in the Charter, is “equality of opportunity for all members of society to achieve their full potential in a free and democratic society where every individual is equal before and under the law”. An important element of this principle is the “equality of opportunity … to achieve … full potential”. The implication here is that those who start from a position of disadvantage when it comes to achieving that potential deserve more than ‘equal’ treatment. Implicitly, equality can be achieved only through the recognition of and response to differential needs and according to the likelihood of achieving full potential. This is encapsulated in Kymlicka’s argument that neutrality is “hopelessly inadequate once we look at the diversity of cultural membership which exists in contemporary liberal democracies” (903). Yet such a potential commitment to differential support might seem unequal to some, where equality is constructed as the same or equal treatment regardless of differing circumstances. Until the past half-century or more, this problematic has been a hotly-contested element of the struggle for Civil Rights for African-Americans in the United States, especially as these rights related to educational opportunity during the years of racial segregation. For some, providing resources to achieve equal outcomes (rather than be committed to equal inputs) may appear to undermine the very ethos of liberal democracy. In Australia, this perspective has been the central argument of Pauline Hanson and her supporters who denounce programs designed as measures to achieve equality for specific disadvantaged groups; including Indigenous Australians and humanitarian refugees. Nevertheless, equality for all on all grounds of legally-accepted difference: gender, race, age, family status, sexual orientation, political conviction, to name a few; is often held as the hallmark of progressive liberal societies such as Australia. In the matter of religious freedoms the situation seems much less complex. All that is required for religious equality, it seems, is to define religion as a private matter – carried out, as it were, between consenting parties away from the public sphere. This necessitates, effectively, the separation of state and religion. This separation of religious belief from the apparatus of the state is referred to as ‘secularism’ and it tends to be regarded as a cornerstone of a liberal democracy, given the general assumption that secularism is a necessary precursor to equal treatment of and respect for different religious beliefs, and the association of secularism with the Western project of the Enlightenment when liberty, equality and science replaced religion and superstition. By this token, western nations committed to equality are also committed to being liberal, democratic and secular in nature; and it is a matter of state indifference as to which religious faith a citizen embraces – Wiccan, Christian, Judaism, etc – if any. Historically, and arguably more so in the past decade, the terms ‘democratic’, ‘secular’, ‘liberal’ and ‘equal’ have all been used to inscribe characteristics of the collective ‘West’. Individuals and states whom the West ascribe as ‘other’ are therefore either or all of: not democratic; not liberal; or not secular – and failing any one of these characteristics (for any country other than Britain, with its parliamentary-established Church of England, headed by the Queen as Supreme Governor) means that that country certainly does not espouse equality. The West and the ‘Other’ in Popular Discourse The constructed polarisation between the free, secular and democratic West that values equality; and the oppressive ‘other’ that perpetuates theocracies, religious discrimination and – at the ultimate – human rights abuses, is a common theme in much of the West’s media and popular discourse on Islam. The same themes are also applied in some measure to Muslims in Australia, in particular to constructions of the rights of Muslim women in Australia. Typically, Muslim women’s dress is deemed by some secular Australians to be a symbol of religious subjugation, rather than of free choice. Arguably, this polemic has come to the fore since the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001. However, as Aly and Walker note, the comparisons between the West and the ‘other’ are historically constructed and inherited (Said) and have tended latterly to focus western attention on the role and status of Muslim women as evidence of the West’s progression comparative to its antithesis, Eastern oppression. An examination of studies of the United States media coverage of the September 11 attacks, and the ensuing ‘war on terror’, reveals some common media constructions around good versus evil. There is no equal status between these. Good must necessarily triumph. In the media coverage, the evil ‘other’ is Islamic terrorism, personified by Osama bin Laden. Part of the justification for the war on terror is a perception that the West, as a force for good in this world, must battle evil and protect freedom and democracy (Erjavec and Volcic): to do otherwise is to allow the terror of the ‘other’ to seep into western lives. The war on terror becomes the defence of the west, and hence the defence of equality and freedom. A commitment to equality entails a defeat of all things constructed as denying the rights of people to be equal. Hutcheson, Domke, Billeaudeaux and Garland analysed the range of discourses evident in Time and Newsweek magazines in the five weeks following September 11 and found that journalists replicated themes of national identity present in the communication strategies of US leaders and elites. The political and media response to the threat of the evil ‘other’ is to create a monolithic appeal to liberal values which are constructed as being a monopoly of the ‘free’ West. A brief look at just a few instances of public communication by US political leaders confirms Hutcheson et al.’s contention that the official construction of the 2001 attacks invoked discourses of good and evil reminiscent of the Cold War. In reference to the actions of the four teams of plane hijackers, US president George W Bush opened his Address to the Nation on the evening of September 11: “Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts” (“Statement by the President in His Address to the Nation”). After enjoining Americans to recite Psalm 23 in prayer for the victims and their families, President Bush ended his address with a clear message of national unity and a further reference to the battle between good and evil: “This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace. America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time. None of us will ever forget this day. Yet, we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world” (“Statement by the President in His Address to the Nation”). In his address to the joint houses of Congress shortly after September 11, President Bush implicated not just the United States in this fight against evil, but the entire international community stating: “This is the world’s fight. This is civilisation’s fight” (cited by Brown 295). Addressing the California Business Association a month later, in October 2001, Bush reiterated the notion of the United States as the leading nation in the moral fight against evil, and identified this as a possible reason for the attack: “This great state is known for its diversity – people of all races, all religions, and all nationalities. They’ve come here to live a better life, to find freedom, to live in peace and security, with tolerance and with justice. When the terrorists attacked America, this is what they attacked”. While the US media framed the events of September 11 as an attack on the values of democracy and liberalism as these are embodied in US democratic traditions, work by scholars analysing the Australian media’s representation of the attacks suggested that this perspective was echoed and internationalised for an Australian audience. Green asserts that global media coverage of the attacks positioned the global audience, including Australians, as ‘American’. The localisation of the discourses of patriotism and national identity for Australian audiences has mainly been attributed to the media’s use of the good versus evil frame that constructed the West as good, virtuous and moral and invited Australian audiences to subscribe to this argument as members of a shared Western democratic identity (Osuri and Banerjee). Further, where the ‘we’ are defenders of justice, equality and the rule of law; the opposing ‘others’ are necessarily barbaric. Secularism and the Muslim Diaspora Secularism is a historically laden term that has been harnessed to symbolise the emancipation of social life from the forced imposition of religious doctrine. The struggle between the essentially voluntary and private demands of religion, and the enjoyment of a public social life distinct from religious obligations, is historically entrenched in the cultural identities of many modern Western societies (Dallmayr). The concept of religious freedom in the West has evolved into a principle based on the bifurcation of life into the objective public sphere and the subjective private sphere within which individuals are free to practice their religion of choice (Yousif), or no religion at all. Secularism, then, is contingent on the maintenance of a separation between the public (religion-free) and the private or non- public (which may include religion). The debate regarding the feasibility or lack thereof of maintaining this separation has been a matter of concern for democratic theorists for some time, and has been made somewhat more complicated with the growing presence of religious diasporas in liberal democratic states (Charney). In fact, secularism is often cited as a precondition for the existence of religious pluralism. By removing religion from the public domain of the state, religious freedom, in so far as it constitutes the ability of an individual to freely choose which religion, if any, to practice, is deemed to be ensured. However, as Yousif notes, the Western conception of religious freedom is based on a narrow notion of religion as a personal matter, possibly a private emotional response to the idea of God, separate from the rational aspects of life which reside in the public domain. Arguably, religion is conceived of as recognising (or creating) a supernatural dimension to life that involves faith and belief, and the suspension of rational thought. This Western notion of religion as separate from the state, dividing the private from the public sphere, is constructed as a necessary basis for the liberal democratic commitment to secularism, and the notional equality of all religions, or none. Rawls questioned how people with conflicting political views and ideologies can freely endorse a common political regime in secular nations. The answer, he posits, lies in the conception of justice as a mechanism to regulate society independently of plural (and often opposing) religious or political conceptions. Thus, secularism can be constructed as an indicator of pluralism and justice; and political reason becomes the “common currency of debate in a pluralist society” (Charney 7). A corollary of this is that religious minorities must learn to use the language of political reason to represent and articulate their views and opinions in the public context, especially when talking with non-religious others. This imposes a need for religious minorities to support their views and opinions with political reason that appeals to the community at large as citizens, and not just to members of the minority religion concerned. The common ground becomes one of secularism, in which all speakers are deemed to be indifferent as to the (private) claims of religion upon believers. Minority religious groups, such as fundamentalist Mormons, invoke secular language of moral tolerance and civil rights to be acknowledged by the state, and to carry out their door-to-door ‘information’ evangelisation/campaigns. Right wing fundamentalist Christian groups and Catholics opposed to abortion couch their views in terms of an extension of the secular right to life, and in terms of the human rights and civil liberties of the yet-to-be-born. In doing this, these religious groups express an acceptance of the plurality of the liberal state and engage in debates in the public sphere through the language of political values and political principles of the liberal democratic state. The same principles do not apply within their own associations and communities where the language of the private religious realm prevails, and indeed is expected. This embracing of a political rhetoric for discussions of religion in the public sphere presents a dilemma for the Muslim diaspora in liberal democratic states. For many Muslims, religion is a complete way of life, incapable of compartmentalisation. The narrow Western concept of religious expression as a private matter is somewhat alien to Muslims who are either unable or unwilling to separate their religious needs from their needs as citizens of the nation state. Problems become apparent when religious needs challenge what seems to be publicly acceptable, and conflicts occur between what the state perceives to be matters of rational state interest and what Muslims perceive to be matters of religious identity. Muslim women’s groups in Western Australia for example have for some years discussed the desirability of a Sharia divorce court which would enable Muslims to obtain divorces according to Islamic law. It should be noted here that not all Muslims agree with the need for such a court and many – probably a majority – are satisfied with the existing processes that allow Muslim men and women to obtain a divorce through the Australian family court. For some Muslims however, this secular process does not satisfy their religious needs and it is perceived as having an adverse impact on their ability to adhere to their faith. A similar situation pertains to divorced Catholics who, according to a strict interpretation of their doctrine, are unable to take the Eucharist if they form a subsequent relationship (even if married according to the state), unless their prior marriage has been annulled by the Catholic Church or their previous partner has died. Whereas divorce is considered by the state as a public and legal concern, for some Muslims and others it is undeniably a religious matter. The suggestion by the Anglican Communion’s Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, that the adoption of certain aspects of Sharia law regarding marital disputes or financial matters is ultimately unavoidable, sparked controversy in Britain and in Australia. Attempts by some Australian Muslim scholars to elaborate on Dr Williams’s suggestions, such as an article by Anisa Buckley in The Herald Sun (Buckley), drew responses that, typically, called for Muslims to ‘go home’. A common theme in these responses is that proponents of Sharia law (and Islam in general) do not share a commitment to the Australian values of freedom and equality. The following excerpts from the online pages of Herald Sun Readers’ Comments (Herald Sun) demonstrate this perception: “These people come to Australia for freedoms they have never experienced before and to escape repression which is generally brought about by such ‘laws’ as Sharia! How very dare they even think that this would be an option. Go home if you want such a regime. Such an insult to want to come over to this country on our very goodwill and our humanity and want to change our systems and ways. Simply, No!” Posted 1:58am February 12, 2008 “Under our English derived common law statutes, the law is supposed to protect an individual’s rights to life, liberty and property. That is the basis of democracy in Australia and most other western nations. Sharia law does not adequately share these philosophies and principles, thus it is incompatible with our system of law.” Posted 12:55am February 11, 2008 “Incorporating religious laws in the secular legal system is just plain wrong. No fundamentalist religion (Islam in particular) is compatible with a liberal-democracy.” Posted 2:23pm February 10, 2008 “It should not be allowed in Australia the Muslims come her for a better life and we give them that opportunity but they still believe in covering them selfs why do they even come to Australia for when they don’t follow owe [our] rules but if we went to there [their] country we have to cover owe selfs [sic]” Posted 11:28am February 10, 2008 Conflicts similar to this one – over any overt or non-private religious practice in Australia – may also be observed in public debates concerning the wearing of traditional Islamic dress; the slaughter of animals for consumption; Islamic burial rites, and other religious practices which cannot be confined to the private realm. Such conflicts highlight the inability of the rational liberal approach to solve all controversies arising from religious traditions that enjoin a broader world view than merely private spirituality. In order to adhere to the liberal reduction of religion to the private sphere, Muslims in the West must negotiate some religious practices that are constructed as being at odds with the rational state and practice a form of Islam that is consistent with secularism. At the extreme, this Western-acceptable form is what the Australian government has termed ‘moderate Islam’. The implication here is that, for the state, ‘non-moderate Islam’ – Islam that pervades the public realm – is just a descriptor away from ‘extreme’. The divide between Christianity and Islam has been historically played out in European Christendom as a refusal to recognise Islam as a world religion, preferring instead to classify it according to race or ethnicity: a Moorish tendency, perhaps. The secular state prefers to engage with Muslims as an ethnic, linguistic or cultural group or groups (Yousif). Thus, in order to engage with the state as political citizens, Muslims must find ways to present their needs that meet the expectations of the state – ways that do not use their religious identity as a frame of reference. They can do this by utilizing the language of political reason in the public domain or by framing their needs, views and opinions exclusively in terms of their ethnic or cultural identity with no reference to their shared faith. Neither option is ideal, or indeed even viable. This is partly because many Muslims find it difficult if not impossible to separate their religious needs from their needs as political citizens; and also because the prevailing perception of Muslims in the media and public arena is constructed on the basis of an understanding of Islam as a religion that conflicts with the values of liberal democracy. In the media and public arena, little consideration is given to the vast differences that exist among Muslims in Australia, not only in terms of ethnicity and culture, but also in terms of practice and doctrine (Shia or Sunni). The dominant construction of Muslims in the Australian popular media is of religious purists committed to annihilating liberal, secular governments and replacing them with anti-modernist theocratic regimes (Brasted). It becomes a talking point for some, for example, to realise that there are international campaigns to recognise Gay Muslims’ rights within their faith (ABC) (in the same way that there are campaigns to recognise Gay Christians as full members of their churches and denominations and equally able to hold high office, as followers of the Anglican Communion will appreciate). Secularism, Preference and Equality Modood asserts that the extent to which a minority religious community can fully participate in the public and political life of the secular nation state is contingent on the extent to which religion is the primary marker of identity. “It may well be the case therefore that if a faith is the primary identity of any community then that community cannot fully identify with and participate in a polity to the extent that it privileges a rival faith. Or privileges secularism” (60). Modood is not saying here that Islam has to be privileged in order for Muslims to participate fully in the polity; but that no other religion, nor secularism, should be so privileged. None should be first, or last, among equals. For such a situation to occur, Islam would have to be equally acceptable both with other religions and with secularism. Following a 2006 address by the former treasurer (and self-avowed Christian) Peter Costello to the Sydney Institute, in which Costello suggested that people who feel a dual claim from both Islamic law and Australian law should be stripped of their citizenship (Costello), the former Prime Minister, John Howard, affirmed what he considers to be Australia’s primary identity when he stated that ‘Australia’s core set of values flowed from its Anglo Saxon identity’ and that any one who did not embrace those values should not be allowed into the country (Humphries). The (then) Prime Minister’s statement is an unequivocal assertion of the privileged position of the Anglo Saxon tradition in Australia, a tradition with which many Muslims and others in Australia find it difficult to identify. Conclusion Religious identity is increasingly becoming the identity of choice for Muslims in Australia, partly because it is perceived that their faith is under attack and that it needs defending (Aly). They construct the defence of their faith as a choice and an obligation; but also as a right that they have under Australian law as equal citizens in a secular state (Aly and Green). Australian Muslims who have no difficulty in reconciling their core Australianness with their deep faith take it as a responsibility to live their lives in ways that model the reconciliation of each identity – civil and religious – with the other. In this respect, the political call to Australian Muslims to embrace a ‘moderate Islam’, where this is seen as an Islam without a public or political dimension, is constructed as treating their faith as less than equal. Religious identity is generally deemed to have no place in the liberal democratic model, particularly where that religion is constructed to be at odds with the principles and values of liberal democracy, namely tolerance and adherence to the rule of law. Indeed, it is as if the national commitment to secularism rules as out-of-bounds any identity that is grounded in religion, giving precedence instead to accepting and negotiating cultural and ethnic differences. Religion becomes a taboo topic in these terms, an affront against secularism and the values of the Enlightenment that include liberty and equality. In these circumstances, it is not the case that all religions are equally ignored in a secular framework. What is the case is that the secular framework has been constructed as a way of ‘privatising’ one religion, Christianity; leaving others – including Islam – as having nowhere to go. Islam thus becomes constructed as less than equal since it appears that, unlike Christians, Muslims are not willing to play the secular game. In fact, Muslims are puzzling over how they can play the secular game, and why they should play the secular game, given that – as is the case with Christians – they see no contradiction in performing ‘good Muslim’ and ‘good Australian’, if given an equal chance to embrace both. Acknowledgements This paper is based on the findings of an Australian Research Council Discovery Project, 2005-7, involving 10 focus groups and 60 in-depth interviews. The authors wish to acknowledge the participation and contributions of WA community members. References ABC. “A Jihad for Love.” Life Matters (Radio National), 21 Feb. 2008. 11 March 2008. < http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lifematters/stories/2008/2167874.htm >.Aly, Anne. “Australian Muslim Responses to the Discourse on Terrorism in the Australian Popular Media.” Australian Journal of Social Issues 42.1 (2007): 27-40.Aly, Anne, and Lelia Green. “‘Moderate Islam’: Defining the Good Citizen.” M/C Journal 10.6/11.1 (2008). 13 April 2008 < http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/08aly-green.php >.Aly, Anne, and David Walker. “Veiled Threats: Recurrent Anxieties in Australia.” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 27.2 (2007): 203-14.Brasted, Howard.V. “Contested Representations in Historical Perspective: Images of Islam and the Australian Press 1950-2000.” Muslim Communities in Australia. Eds. Abdullah Saeed and Akbarzadeh, Shahram. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2001. 206-28.Brown, Chris. “Narratives of Religion, Civilization and Modernity.” Worlds in Collision: Terror and the Future of Global Order. Eds. Ken Booth and Tim Dunne. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. 293-324. Buckley, Anisa. “Should We Allow Sharia Law?” Sunday Herald Sun 10 Feb. 2008. 8 March 2008 < http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,231869735000117,00.html >.Bush, George. W. “President Outlines War Effort: Remarks by the President at the California Business Association Breakfast.” California Business Association 2001. 17 April 2007 < http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/10/20011017-15.html >.———. “Statement by the President in His Address to the Nation”. Washington, 2001. 17 April 2007 < http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010911-16.html >.Charney, Evan. “Political Liberalism, Deliberative Democracy, and the Public Sphere.” The American Political Science Review 92.1 (1998): 97- 111.Costello, Peter. “Worth Promoting, Worth Defending: Australian Citizenship, What It Means and How to Nurture It.” Address to the Sydney Institute, 23 February 2006. 24 Apr. 2008 < http://www.treasurer.gov.au/DisplayDocs.aspx?doc=speeches/2006/004.htm &pageID=05&min=phc&Year=2006&DocType=1 >.Dallmayr, Fred. “Rethinking Secularism.” The Review of Politics 61.4 (1999): 715-36.Erjavec, Karmen, and Zala Volcic. “‘War on Terrorism’ as Discursive Battleground: Serbian Recontextualisation of G. W. Bush’s Discourse.” Discourse and Society 18 (2007): 123- 37.Green, Lelia. “Did the World Really Change on 9/11?” Australian Journal of Communication 29.2 (2002): 1-14.Herald Sun. “Readers’ Comments: Should We Allow Sharia Law?” Herald Sun Online Feb. 2008. 8 March 2008. < http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/comments/0,22023,23186973-5000117,00.html >.Humphries, David. “Live Here, Be Australian.” The Sydney Morning Herald 25 Feb. 2006, 1 ed.Hutcheson, John S., David Domke, Andre Billeaudeaux, and Philip Garland. “U.S. National Identity, Political Elites, and Patriotic Press Following September 11.” Political Communication 21.1 (2004): 27-50.Kymlicka, Will. “Liberal Individualism and Liberal Neutrality.” Ethics 99.4 (1989): 883-905.Modood, Tariq. “Establishment, Multiculturalism and British Citizenship.” The Political Quarterly (1994): 53-74.Osuri, Goldie, and Subhabrata B. Banerjee. “White Diasporas: Media Representations of September 11 and the Unbearable Whiteness of Being in Australia.” Social Semiotics 14.2 (2004): 151- 71.Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1971.Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books 1978.Western Australian Charter of Multiculturalism. WA: Government of Western Australia, Nov. 2004. 11 March 2008 < http://www.equalopportunity.wa.gov.au/pdf/wa_charter_multiculturalism.pdf >.Yousif, Ahmad. “Islam, Minorities and Religious Freedom: A Challenge to Modern Theory of Pluralism.” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 20.1 (2000): 30-43.

IllegitimacyBack in 1987, Gregory Bateson argued that:Kurt Vonnegut gives us wary advice – that we should be careful what we pretend because we become what we pretend. And something like that, some sort of self-fulfilment, occurs in all organisations and human cultures. What people presume to be ‘human’ is what they will build in as premises of their social arrangements, and what they build in is sure to be learned, is sure to become a part of the character of those who participate. (178)The human capacity to marginalise and discriminate against others on the basis of innate and constructed characteristics is evident from the long history of discrimination against people whose existence is ‘illegitimate’, defined as being outside the law. What is inside or outside the law depends upon the context under consideration. For example, in societies such as ancient Greece and the antebellum United States, where slavery was legal, people who were constructed as ‘slaves’ could legitimately be treated very differently from ‘citizens’: free people who benefit from a range of human rights (Northup). The discernment of what is legitimate from that which is illegitimate is thus implicated within the law but extends into the wider experience of community life and is evident within the civil structures through which society is organised and regulated.The division between the legitimate and illegitimate is an arbitrary one, susceptible to changing circumstances. Within recent memory a romantic/sexual relationship between two people of the same sex was constructed as illegitimate and actively persecuted. This was particularly the case for same-sex attracted men, since the societies regulating these relationships generally permitted women a wider repertoire of emotional response than men were allowed. Even when lesbian and gay relationships were legalised, they were constructed as less legitimate in the sense that they often had different rules around the age of consent for homosexual and heterosexual couples. In Australia, the refusal to allow same sex couples to marry perpetuates ways in which these relationships are constructed as illegitimate – beyond the remit of the legislation concerning marriage.The archetypal incidence of illegitimacy has historically referred to people born out of wedlock. The circumstances of birth, for example whether a person was born as a result of a legally-sanctioned marital relationship or not, could have ramifications throughout an individual’s life. Stories abound (for example, Cookson) of the implications of being illegitimate. In some social stings, such as Catherine Cookson’s north-eastern England at the turn of the twentieth century, illegitimate children were often shunned. Parents frequently refused permission for their (legitimate) children to play with illegitimate classmates, as if these children born out of wedlock embodied a contaminating variety of evil. Illegitimate children were treated differently in the law in matters of inheritance, for example, and may still be. They frequently lived in fear of needing to show a birth certificate to gain a passport, for example, or to marry. Sometimes, it was at this point in adult life, that a person first discovered their illegitimacy, changing their entire understanding of their family and their place in the world. It might be possible to argue that the emphasis upon the legitimacy of a birth has lessened in proportion to an acceptance of genetic markers as an indicator of biological paternity, but that is not the endeavour here.Given the arbitrariness and mutability of the division between legitimacy and illegitimacy as a constructed boundary, it is policed by social and legal sanctions. Boundaries, such as the differentiation between the raw and the cooked (Lévi-Strauss), or S/Z (Barthes), or purity and danger (Douglas), serve important cultural functions and also convey critical information about the societies that enforce them. Categories of person, place or thing which are closest to boundaries between the legitimate and the illegitimate can prompt existential anxiety since the capacity to discern between these categories is most challenged at the margins. The legal shenanigans which can result speak volumes for which aspects of life have the potential to unsettle a culture. One example of this which is writ large in the recent history of Australia is our treatment of refugees and asylum seekers and the impact of this upon Australia’s multicultural project.Foreshadowing the sexual connotations of the illegitimate, one of us has written elsewhere (Green, ‘Bordering on the Inconceivable’) about the inconceivability of the Howard administration’s ‘Pacific solution’. This used legal devices to rewrite Australia’s borders to limit access to the rights accruing to refugees upon landing in a safe haven entitling them to seek asylum. Internationally condemned as an illegitimate construction of an artificial ‘migration zone’, this policy has been revisited and made more brutal under the Abbot regime with at least two people – Reza Barati and Hamid Khazaei – dying in the past year in what is supposed to be a place of safety provided by Australian authorities under their legal obligations to those fleeing from persecution. Crock points out, echoing the discourse of illegitimacy, that it is and always has been inappropriate to label “undocumented asylum seekers” as “‘illegal’” because: “until such people cross the border onto Australian territory, the language of illegality is nonsense. People who have no visas to enter Australia can hardly be ‘illegals’ until they enter Australia” (77). For Australians who identify in some ways – religion, culture, fellow feeling – with the detainees incarcerated on Nauru and Manus Island, it is hard to ignore the disparity between the government’s treatment of visa overstayers and “illegals” who arrive by boat (Wilson). It is a comparatively short step to construct this disparity as reflecting upon the legitimacy within Australia of communities who share salient characteristics with detained asylum seekers: “The overwhelmingly negative discourse which links asylum seekers, Islam and terrorism” (McKay, Thomas & Kneebone, 129). Some communities feel themselves constructed in the public and political spheres as less legitimately Australian than others. This is particularly true of communities where members can be identified via markers of visible difference, including indicators of ethnic, cultural and religious identities: “a group who [some 585 respondent Australians …] perceived would maintain their own languages, customs and traditions […] this cultural diversity posed an extreme threat to Australian national identity” (McKay, Thomas & Kneebone, 129). Where a community shares salient characteristics such as ethnicity or religion with many detained asylum seekers they can become fearful of the discourses around keeping borders strong and protecting Australia from illegitimate entrants. MethodologyThe qualitative fieldwork upon which this paper is based took place some 6-8 years ago (2006-2008), but the project remains one of the most recent and extensive studies of its kind. There are no grounds for believing that any of the findings are less valid than previously. On the contrary, if political actions are constructed as a proxy for mainstream public consent, opinions have become more polarised and have hardened. Ten focus groups were held involving 86 participants with a variety of backgrounds including differences in age, gender, religious observance, religious identification and ethnicity. Four focus groups involved solely Muslim participants; six drew from the wider Australian community. The aim was to examine the response of different communities to mainstream Australian media representations of Islam, Muslims, and terrorism. Research questions included: “Are there differences in the ways in which Australian Muslims respond to messages about ‘fear’ and ‘terror’ compared with broader community Australians’ responses to the same messages?” and “How do Australian Muslims construct the perceptions and attitudes of the broader Australian community based on the messages that circulate in the media?” Recent examples of kinds of messages investigated include media coverage of Islamic State’s (ISIS’s) activities (Karam & Salama), and the fear-provoking coverage around the possible recruitment of Australians to join the fighting in Syria and Iraq (Cox). The ten focus groups were augmented by 60 interviews, 30 with respondents who identified as Muslim (15 males, 15 female) and 30 respondents from the broader community (same gender divisions). Finally, a market research company was commissioned to conduct a ‘fear survey’, based on an established ‘fear of rape’ inventory (Aly and Balnaves), delivered by telephone to a random sample of 750 over-18 y.o. Australians in which Muslims formed a deliberative sub-group, to ensure they were over-sampled and constituted at least 150 respondents. The face-to-face surveys and focus groups were conducted by co-author, Dr Anne Aly. General FindingsMuslim respondents indicate a heightened intensity of reaction to media messages around fear and terror. In addition to a generalised fear of the potential impact of terrorism upon Australian society and culture, Muslim respondents experienced a specific fear that any terrorist-related media coverage might trigger hostility towards Muslim Australian communities and their own family members. According to the ‘fear survey’ scale, Muslim Australians at the time of the research experienced approximately twice the fear level of mainstream Australian respondents. Broader Australian community Australian Muslim communityFear of a terrorist attackFear of a terrorist attack combines with the fear of a community backlashSpecific victims: dead, injured, bereavedCommunity is full of general victims in addition to any specific victimsShort-term; intense impactsProtracted, diffuse impactsSociety-wide sympathy and support for specific victims and all those involved in dealing with the trauma and aftermathSociety-wide suspicion and a marginalisation of those affected by the backlashVictims of a terrorist attack are embraced by broader communityVictims of backlash experience hostility from the broader communityFour main fears were identified by Australian Muslims as a component of the fear of terrorism:Fear of physical harm. In addition to the fear of actual terrorist acts, Australian Muslims fear backlash reprisals such as those experienced after such events as 9/11, the Bali bombings, and attacks upon public transport passengers in Spain and the UK. These and similar events were constructed as precipitating increased aggression against identifiable Australian Muslims, along with shunning of Muslims and avoidance of their company.The construction of politically-motivated fear. Although fear is an understandable response to concerns around terrorism, many respondents perceived fears as being deliberately exacerbated for political motives. Such strategies as “Be alert, not alarmed” (Bassio), labelling asylum seekers as potential terrorists, and talk about home-grown terrorists, are among the kinds of fears which were identified as politically motivated. The political motivation behind such actions might include presenting a particular party as strong, resolute and effective. Some Muslim Australians construct such approaches as indicating that their government is more interested in political advantage than social harmony.Fear of losing civil liberties. As well as sharing the alarm of the broader Australian community at the dozens of legislative changes banning people, organisations and materials, and increasing surveillance and security checks, Muslim Australians fear for the human rights implications across their community, up to and including the lives of their young people. This fear is heightened when community members may look visibly different from the mainstream. Examples of the events fuelling such fears include the London police killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian Catholic working as an electrician in the UK and shot in the month following the 7/7 attacks on the London Underground system (Pugliese). In Australia, the case of Mohamed Hannef indicated that innocent people could easily be unjustly accused and wrongly targeted, and even when this was evident the political agenda made it almost impossible for authorities to admit their error (Rix).Feeling insecure. Australian Muslims argue that personal insecurity has become “the new normal” (Massumi), disproportionately affecting Muslim communities in both physical and psychological ways. Physical insecurity is triggered by the routine avoidance, shunning and animosity experienced by many community members in public places. Psychological insecurity includes fear for the safety of younger members of the community compounded by concern that young people may become ‘radicalised’ as a result of the discrimination they experience. Australian Muslims fear the backlash following any possible terrorist attack on Australian soil and describe the possible impact as ‘unimaginable’ (Aly and Green, ‘Moderate Islam’).In addition to this range of fears expressed by Australian Muslims and constructed in response to wider societal reactions to increased concerns over radical Islam and the threat of terrorist activity, an analysis of respondents’ statements indicate that Muslim Australians construct the broader community as exhibiting:Fear of religious conviction (without recognising the role of their own secular/religious convictions underpinning this fear);Fear of extremism (expressed in various extreme ways);Fear of powerlessness (responded to by disempowering others); andFear of political action overseas having political effects at home (without acknowledging that it is the broader community’s response to such overseas events, such as 9/11 [Green ‘Did the world really change?’], which has also had impacts at home).These constructions, extrapolations and understandings by Australian Muslims of the fears of the broader community underpinning the responses to the threat of terror have been addressed elsewhere (Green and Aly). Legitimate Australian MuslimsOne frustration identified by many Muslim respondents centres upon a perceived ‘acceptable’ way to be an Australian Muslim. Arguing that the broader community construct Muslims as a homogenous group defined by their religious affiliation, these interviewees felt that the many differences within and between the twenty-plus national, linguistic, ethnic, cultural and faith-based groupings that constitute WA’s Muslim population were being ignored. Being treated as a homogenised group on a basis of faith appears to have the effect of putting that religious identity under pressure, paradoxically strengthening and reinforcing it (Aly, ‘Australian Muslim Responses to the Discourse on Terrorism’). The appeal to Australian Muslims to embrace membership in a secular society and treat religion as a private matter also led some respondents to suggest they were expected to deny their own view of their faith, in which they express their religious identity across their social spheres and in public and private contexts. Such expression is common in observant Judaism, Hinduism and some forms of Christianity, as well as in some expressions of Islam (Aly and Green, ‘Less than equal’). Massumi argues that even the ways in which some Muslims dress, indicating faith-based behaviour, can lead to what he terms as ‘affective modulation’ (Massumi), repeating and amplifying the fear affect as a result of experiencing the wider community’s fear response to such triggers as water bottles (from airport travel) and backpacks, on the basis of perceived physical difference and a supposed identification with Muslim communities, regardless of the situation. Such respondents constructed this (implied) injunction to suppress their religious and cultural affiliation as akin to constructing the expression of their identity as illegitimate and somehow shameful. Parallels can be drawn with previous social responses to a person born out of wedlock, and to people in same-sex relationships: a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ kind of denial.Australian Muslims who see their faith as denied or marginalised may respond by identifying more strongly with other Muslims in their community, since the community-based context is one in which they feel welcomed and understood. The faith-based community also allows and encourages a wider repertoire of acceptable beliefs and actions entailed in the performance of ‘being Muslim’. Hand in hand with a perception of being required to express their religious identity in ways that were acceptable to the majority community, these respondents provided a range of examples of self-protective behaviours to defend themselves and others from the impacts of perceived marginalisation. Such behaviours included: changing their surnames to deflect discrimination based solely on a name (Aly and Green, ‘Fear, Anxiety and the State of Terror’); keeping their opinions private, even when they were in line with those being expressed by the majority community (Aly and Green, ‘Moderate Islam’); the identification of ‘less safe’ and ‘safe’ activities and areas; concerns about visibly different young men in the Muslim community and discussions with them about their public behaviour and demeanour; and women who chose not to leave their homes for fear of being targeted in public places (all discussed in Aly, ‘Australian Muslim Responses to the Discourse on Terrorism’). Many of these behaviours, including changing surnames, restricting socialisation to people who know a person well, and the identification of safe and less safe activities in relation to the risk of self-revelation, were common strategies used by people who were stigmatised in previous times as a result of their illegitimacy.ConclusionConstructions of the legitimate and illegitimate provide one means through which we can investigate complex negotiations around Australianness and citizenship, thrown into sharp relief by the Australian government’s treatment of asylum seekers, also deemed “illegals”. Because they arrive in Australia (or, as the government would prefer, on Australia’s doorstep) by illegitimate channels these would-be citizens are treated very differently from people who arrive at an airport and overstay their visa. The impetus to exclude aspects of geographical Australia from the migration zone, and to house asylum seekers offshore, reveals an anxiety about borders which physically reflects the anxiety of western nations in the post-9/11 world. Asylum seekers who arrive by boat have rarely had safe opportunity to secure passports or visas, or to purchase tickets from commercial airlines or shipping companies. They represent those ethnicities and cultures which are currently in turmoil: a turmoil frequently exacerbated by western intervention, variously constructed as an il/legitimate expression of western power and interests.What this paper has demonstrated is that the boundary between Australia and the rest, the legitimate and the illegitimate, is failing in its aim of creating a stronger Australia. The means through which this project is pursued is making visible a range of motivations and concerns which are variously interpreted depending upon the position of the interpreter. The United Nations, for example, has expressed strong concern over Australia’s reneging upon its treaty obligations to refugees (Gordon). Less vocal, and more fearful, are those communities within Australia which identify as community members with the excluded illegals. The Australian government’s treatment of detainees on Manus Island and Nauru, who generally exhibit markers of visible difference as a result of ethnicity or culture, is one aspect of a raft of government policies which serve to make some people feel that their Australianness is somehow less legitimate than that of the broader community. AcknowledgementsThis paper is based on the findings of an Australian Research Council Discovery Project (DP0559707), 2005-7, “Australian responses to the images and discourses of terrorism and the other: establishing a metric of fear”, awarded to Professors Lelia Green and Mark Balnaves. The research involved 10 focus groups and 60 individual in-depth interviews and a telephone ‘fear of terrorism’ survey. The authors wish to acknowledge the participation and contributions of WA community members and wider Australian respondents to the telephone survey. ReferencesAly, Anne. “Australian Muslim Responses to the Discourse on Terrorism in the Australian Popular Media.” Australian Journal of Social Issues 42.1 (2007): 27-40.Aly, Anne, and Lelia Green. “Fear, Anxiety and the State of Terror.” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 33.3 (Feb 2010): 268-81.Aly, Anne, and Lelia Green. “Less than Equal: Secularism, Religious Pluralism and Privilege.” M/C Journal 11.2 (2008). 15 Oct. 2009 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/32›.Aly, Anne, and Lelia Green. “‘Moderate Islam’: Defining the Good Citizen”. 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Since September 11, Muslims in Australia have experienced a heightened level of religiously and racially motivated vilification (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission). These fears were poignantly expressed in a letter to the Editor of The West Australian newspaper from a Muslim woman shortly after the London terror attacks: All I want to say is that for those out there who might have kamikaze ideas of doing such an act here in Australia, please think of others (us) in your own community. The ones who will get hurt are your own, especially we the women who are an obvious target in the public and have to succumb to verbal abuse most of the time. Dealing with abuse and hatred from some due to 9/11 and Bali is not something I want to go through again. (21) The atmosfear of terror finds many expressions among the Muslim communities in Australia: the fear of backlash from some sectors of the wider community; the fear of subversion of Islamic identity in meeting the requirements of a politically defined “moderate” Islam; the fear of being identified as a potential terrorist or “person of interest” and the fear of potentially losing the rights bestowed on all other citizens. This fear or fears are grounded in the political and the media response to terrorism that perpetuates a popular belief that Muslims, as a culturally and religiously incompatible “other”, pose a threat to the Australian collective identity and, ostensibly, to Australia’s security. At the time of publication, for example, there was mob violence involving 5,000 young people converging on Sydney’s Cronulla beach draped in Australian flags singing Waltzing Matilda and Advance Australia Fair as well as chanting “kill the Lebs”, “no more Lebs” (Lebanese). The mob was itself brought together by a series of SMS messages, appealing to participants to “help support Leb and Wog bashing day” and to “show solidarity” against a government-identified “threat to Aussie identity” (The West Australian). Since September 11 and the ensuing war on terror, a new discourse of terrorism has emerged as a way of expressing how the world has changed and defining a state of constant alert (Altheide). “The war on terror” refers as much to a perpetual state of alertness as it does to a range of strategic operations, border control policies, internal security measures and public awareness campaigns such as “be alert, not alarmed”. According to a poll published in The Sydney Morning Herald in April 2004, 68 per cent of Australians believed that Australia was at threat of an imminent terrorist attack (Michaelsen). In a major survey in Australia immediately after the September 11 attacks Dunn & Mahtani found that more than any other cultural or ethnic group, Muslims and people from the Middle East were thought to be unable to fit into Australia. Two thirds of those surveyed believed that humanity could be sorted into natural categories of race, with the majority feeling that Australia was weakened by people of different ethnic origins. Fifty-four per cent of those surveyed, mainly women, said they would be concerned if a relative of theirs married a Muslim. The majority of the Muslim population, not surprisingly, has gone into a “siege mentality” (Hanna). The atmosfear of terror in the Western world is a product of the media and political construction of the West as perpetually at threat of a terrorist attack from a foreign, alien, politically defined “other”, where “insecurity…is the new normal” (Massumi 31). Framed in a rhetoric that portrays it as a battle for the Western values of democracy and freedom, the “war on terror” becomes not just an event in space and time but a metonym for a new world order, drawing on distinctions between “us” and “them” and “the West” and “others” (Osuri and Banerjee) and motivating collective identity based on a construction of “us” as victims and “them” as the objects of fear, concern and suspicion. The political response to the war on terror has inculcated an atmosfear of terror where Australian Muslims are identified as the objects of this fear. The fear of terrorism is being modulated through government and the popular media to perpetuate a state of anxiety that finds expression in the heightened levels of concern and suspicion over a perceived threat. In the case of the war on terror, this threat is typically denoted as radical Islam and, by inference, Australian Muslims. In his exposition of political fear, Corey Robin notes that a central element of political fear is that it is often not read as such – rendering it alien to analysis, critical debate and understanding. Nowhere is this more salient than in the rhetoric on the war on terror characterised by the familiar invocation of terms like democracy and freedom to make distinctions between “the West and the rest” and to legitimise references to civilised and uncivilised worlds. In his speech delivered at the United Nations Security Council Ministerial Session on Terrorism on 20 January 2003, Colin Powell invoked the rhetoric of a clash of civilisations and urged, “we must rid the civilised world of this cancer … We must rise to the challenge with actions that will ride the globe of terrorism and create a world in which all God’s children can live without fear”. It is this construction of the war on terror as a global battle between “the West and the rest” that enables and facilitates the affective response to political fear – a reaffirmation of identity and membership of a collective. As Robin states: Understanding the objects of our fear as less than political allows us to treat them as intractable foes. Nothing can be done to accommodate them: they can only be killed or contained. Understanding the objects of our fear as not political also renews us as a collective. Afraid, we are like the audience in a crowded theatre confronting a man falsely shouting fire: united, not because we share similar beliefs of aspiration but because we are equally threatened. (6) This response has found expression in the perception of Muslims as an alien, culturally incompatible and utterly threatening other, creating a state of social tension where the public’s anxiety has been and continues to be directed at Australian Muslims who visibly represent the objects of the fear of terror. The Australian Government’s response to the war on terror exemplifies what Brian Massumi terms “affective modulation” whereby the human response to the fear of terror, that of a reinforcement and renewal of collective identity, has been modulated and transformed from an affective response to an affective state of anxiety – what the authors term the atmosfear of terror. Affect for Massumi can be inscribed in the flesh as “traces of experience” – an accumulation of affects. It is in this way that Massumi views affect as “autonomous” (Megan Watkins also makes this argument, and has further translated Massumi's notions into the idea of pedagogic affect/effect). In the Australian context, after more than four years of collected traces of experiences of images of threat, responses to terrorism have become almost reflexive – even automated. Affective modulation in the Australian context relies on the regenerative capacity of fear, in Massumi’s terms its “ontogenetic powers” (45) to create an ever-present threat and maintain fear as a way of life. The introduction of a range of counter-terrorism strategies, internal-security measures, legislative amendments and policies, often without public consultation and timed to coincide with “new” terror alerts is testimony to the affective machinations of the Australian government in its response to the war on terror. Virilio and Lotringer called “pure war” the psychological state that happens when people know that they live in a world where the potential for sudden and absolute destruction exists. It is not the capacity for destruction so much as the continual threat of sudden destruction that creates this psychology. Keith Spence has stated that in times of crisis the reasoned negotiation of risk is marginalised. The counter-terrorism legislation introduced in response to the war on terror is, arguably, the most drastic anti-libertarian measures Australia has witnessed and constitutes a disproportionate response to Australia’s overall risk profile (Michaelsen). Some of these measures would once have seemed an unthinkable assault on civil liberties and unreasonably authoritarian. Yet in the war on terror, notes Jessica Stern, framed as a global war of good versus evil, policies and strategies that once seemed impossible suddenly become constructed as rationale, if not prudent. Since September 11, the Australian government has progressively introduced a range of counter-terrorism measures including over 30 legislative amendments and, more recently, increased powers for the police to detain persons of interest suspected of sedition. In the wake of the London bombings, the Prime Minister called a summit with Muslim representatives from around the nation. In the two hours that they met, the summit developed a Statement of Principles committing members of Muslim communities to combat radicalisation and pursue “moderate” Islam. As an affective machination, the summit presents as a useful political tool for modulating the existing anxieties in the Australian populace. The very need for a summit of this nature and for the development of a Statement of Principles (later endorsed by the Council of Australian Governments or COAG) sends a lucid message to the Australian public. Not only are Australian Muslims responsible for terrorism but they also have the capacity to prevent or minimise the threat of an attack in Australia. Already the focus of at least a decade of negative stereotyping in the popular Australia media (Brasted), Australian Muslims all too quickly and easily became agents in the Government’s affective tactics. The policy response to the war on terror has given little consideration to the social implications of sustaining a fear of terrorism, placing much emphasis on security- focused counter-terrorism measures rather than education and dialogue. What governments and communities need to address is the affective aspects of the atmosfear of terror. Policy makers can begin by becoming self-reflexive and developing an understanding of the real impact of fear and the affective modulation of this fear. Communities can start by developing an understanding of how policy induced fear is affecting them. To begin this process of reflection, governments and communities need to recognise fear of terrorism as a political tool. Psychological explanations for fear or trauma are important, especially if we are to plan policy responses to them. However, if we are to fight against policy-induced fear, we need to better understand and recognise affective modulation as a process that is not reducible to individual psychology. Viewed from the perspective of affect, the atmosfear of terror reveals an attempt to modulate public anxiety and sustain a sense of Australia as perpetually at threat from a culturally incompatible and irreconcilable “other”. References Altheide, David. L. “Consuming Terrorism.” Symbolic Interaction 27.3 (2004): 289–308. Brasted, Howard, V. “Contested Representations in Historical Perspective: Images of Islam and the Australian Press 1950-2000”. In A. Saeed & S. Akbarzadeh, Muslim Communities in Australia. Sydney: U of NSW P, 2001. Dunn, K.M., and M. Mahtani. “Media Representations of Ethnic Minorities.” Progress in Planning 55.3 (2001): 63–72. Dunn, K.M. “The Cultural Geographies of Citizenship in Australia.” Geography Bulletin 33.1 (2001): 4–8. “Genesis of Cronulla’s Ugly Sunday Began Years Ago.” The West Australian 2005: 11. Green, Lelia. “Did the World Really Change on 9/11?” Australian Journal of Communication 29.2 (2002): 1–14. Hanna, D. 2003. “Siege Mentality: Current Australian Response.” Salam July-Aug. (2003): 12–4. Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. Ismaa – Listen: National Consultations on Eliminating Prejudice against Arab and Muslim Australians. Sydney: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 2004. Kerbaj, Richard. “Clerics Still Preaching Hatred of West.” The Australian 3 Nov. 2005. Kinnvall, Catarina. “Globalization and Religious Nationalism: Self, Identity, and the Search for Ontological Security.” Political Psychology 25.5 (2004): 741. “Letters to the Editor.” The West Australian 25 July 2005: 21. Massumi, Brian. “Fear (The Spectrum Said).” Positions 13.1 (2005): 31–48. Massumi, Brian. “The Autonomy of Affect.” In P. Patton, ed., Deleuze: A Critical Reader. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996. “Meeting with Islamic Community Leaders, Statement of Principles.” 23 Aug. 2005. http://www.pm.gov.au/news/media_releases/media_Release1524.html> Michaelsen, Christopher. “Antiterrorism Legislation in Australia: A Proportionate Response to the Terrorist Threat?” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 28.4 (2005): 321–40. Osuri, Goldie, and Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee. “White Diasporas: Media Representations of September 11 and the Unbearable Whiteness of Being in Australia.” Social Semiotics 14.2 (2004): 151–71. Powell, Colin. “Ridding the World of Global Terrorism: No Countries or Citizens are Safe.” Vital Speeches of the Day 69.8 (2003): 230–3. Robin, Corey. Fear: The History of a Political Idea. New York: Oxford UP, 2004. Spence, Keith. “World Risk Society and War against Terror.” Political Studies 53.2 (2005): 284–304. Stern, Jessica. “Fearing Evil.” Social Research 71.4 (2004): 1111–7. “Terrorism Chronology.” Parliament of Australia Parliamentary Library. http://www.aph.gov.au/library/intguide/law/terrorism.htm> Tomkins, Silvan. Affect, Imagery and Consciousness. New York: Springer Publishing, 1962. Virilio, Paul, and Sylvere Lotringer. Pure War. New York: Semio-text(e), 1997. Watkins, Megan. “Pedagogic Affect/Effect: Teaching Writing in the Primary Years of School.” Presented at Redesigning Pedagogy: Research, Policy, Practice Conference. Singapore: National Institute of Education, 31 May 2005. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Aly, Anne, and Mark Balnaves. "The Atmosfear of Terror: Affective Modulation and the War on Terror." M/C Journal 8.6 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/04-alybalnaves.php>. APA Style Aly, A., and M. Balnaves. (Dec. 2005) "The Atmosfear of Terror: Affective Modulation and the War on Terror," M/C Journal, 8(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/04-alybalnaves.php>.

Introduction As the country with the fifth largest population in the world, Indonesia is a massive potential market for mobile technology adoption and development. Despite an annual per capita income of only $1,280 USD (World Bank), there are 63 million mobile phone users in Indonesia (Suhartono, sec. 1.7) and it is predicted to reach 80 million in 2007 (Jakarta Post 1). Mobile phones are not only a symbol of Indonesian modernity (Barendregt 5), but like other communication technology can become a platform through which to explore socio-political issues (Winner 28). In this article we explore the role mobile phone technology in contemporary forms of social, intimate, and sexual relationships in Indonesia. We argue that new forms of expression and relations are facilitated by the particular features of mobile technology. We discuss two cases from contemporary Indonesia: a mobile dating service (BEDD) and mobile phone pornography. For each case study, we first discuss the socio-political background in Indonesia, then describe the technological affordances of the mobile phone which facilitate dating and pornography, and finally give examples of how the mobile phone is effecting change in dating and pornographic practices. This study is placed at a time when social relations, intimacy, and sexuality in Indonesia have become central public issues. Since the end of the New Order whilst many people have embraced the new freedoms of reformasi and democratization, there is also a high degree of social anxiety, tension and uncertainty (Juliastuti 139-40). These social changes and desires have played out in the formations of new and exciting modes of creativity, solidarity, and sociality (Heryanto and Hadiz 262) and equally violence, terror and criminality (Heryanto and Hadiz 256). The diverse and plural nature of Indonesian society is alive with a myriad of people and activities, and it is into this diverse social body that the mobile phone has become a central and prominent feature of interaction. The focus of our study is dating and pornography as mediated by the mobile phone; however, we do not suggest that these are new experiences in Indonesia. Rather over the last decade social, intimate, and sexual relationships have all been undergoing change and their motivations can be traced to a variety of sources including the factors of globalization, democratization and modernization. Throughout Asia “new media have become a crucial site for constituting new Asian sexual identities and communities” (Berry, Martin, and Yue 13) as people are connecting through new communication technologies. In this article we suggest that mobile phone technology opens new possibilities and introduces new channels, dynamics, and intensities of social interaction. Mobile phones are particularly powerful communication tools because of their mobility, accessibility, and convergence (Ling 16-19; Ito 14-15; Katz and Aakhus 303). These characteristics of mobile phones do not in and of themselves bring about any particular changes in dating and pornography, but they may facilitate changes already underway (Barendegt 7-9; Barker 9). Mobile Dating Background The majority of Indonesians in the 1960s and 1970s had arranged marriages (Smith-Hefner 443). Education reform during the 70s and 80s encouraged more women to attain an education which in turn led to the delaying of marriage and the changing of courtship practices (Smith-Hefner 450). “Compared to previous generations, [younger Indonesians] are freer to mix with the opposite sex and to choose their own marriage,” (Utomo 225). Modern courtship in Java is characterized by “self-initiated romance” and dating (Smith-Hefner 451). Mobile technology is beginning to play a role in initiating romance between young Indonesians. Technology One mobile matching or dating service available in Indonesia is called BEDD (www.bedd.com). BEDD is a free software for mobile phones in which users fill out a profile about themselves and can meet BEDD members who are within 20-30 feet using a Bluetooth connection on their mobile devices. BEDD members’ phones automatically exchange profile information so that users can easily meet new people who match their profile requests. BEDD calls itself mobile social networking community; “BEDD is a new Bluetooth enabled mobile social medium that allows people to meet, interact and communicate in a new way by letting their mobile phones do all the work as they go throughout their day.” As part of a larger project on mobile social networking (Humphreys 6), a field study was conducted of BEDD users in Jakarta, Indonesia and Singapore (where BEDD is based) in early 2006. In-depth interviews and open-ended user surveys were conducted with users, BEDD’s CEO and strategic partners in order to understand the social uses and effects BEDD. The majority of BEDD members (which topped 100,000 in January 2006) are in Indonesia thanks to a partnership with Nokia where BEDD came pre-installed on several phone models. In management interviews, both BEDD and Nokia explained that they partnered because both companies want to help “build community”. They felt that Bluetooth technology such as BEDD could be used to help youth meet new people and keep in touch with old friends. Examples One of BEDD’s functions is to help lower barriers to social interaction in public spaces. By sharing profile information and allowing for free text messaging, BEDD can facilitate conversations between BEDD members. According to users, mediating the initial conversation also helps to alleviate social anxiety, which often accompanies meeting new people. While social mingling and hanging out between Jakarta teenagers is a relatively common practice, one user said that BEDD provides a new and fun way to meet and flirt. In a society that must balance between an “idealized morality” and an increasingly sexualized popular culture (Utomo 226), BEDD provides a modern mode of self-initiated matchmaking. While BEDD was originally intended to aid in the matchmaking process of dating, it has been appropriated into everyday life in Indonesia because of its interpretive flexibility (Pinch & Bjiker 27). Though BEDD is certainly used to meet “beautiful girls” (according to one Indonesian male user), it is also commonly used to text message old friends. One member said he uses BEDD to text his friends in class when the lecture gets boring. BEDD appears to be a helpful modern communication tool when people are physically proximate but cannot easily talk to one another. BEDD can become a covert way to exchange messages with people nearby for free. Another potential explanation for BEDD’s increasing popularity is its ability to allow users to have private conversations in public space. Bennett notes that courtship in private spaces is seen as dangerous because it may lead to sexual impropriety (154). Dating and courtship in public spaces are seen as safer, particularly for conserving the reputation young Indonesian women. Therefore Bluetooth connections via mobile technologies can be a tool to make private social connections between young men and women “safer”. Bluetooth communication via mobile phones has also become prevalent in more conservative Muslim societies (Sullivan, par. 7; Braude, par. 3). There are, however, safety concerns about meeting strangers in public spaces. When asked, “What advice would you give a first time BEDD user?” one respondent answered, “harus bisa mnilai seseorang krn itu sangat penting, kita mnilai seseorang bukan cuma dari luarnya” (translated: be careful in evaluating (new) people, and don’t ever judge the book by its cover”). Nevertheless, only one person participating in this study mentioned this concern. To some degree meeting someone in a public may be safer than meeting someone in an online environment. Not only are there other people around in public spaces to physically observe, but co-location means there may be some accountability for how BEDD members present themselves. The development and adoption of matchmaking services such as BEDD suggests that the role of the mobile phone in Indonesia is not just to communicate with friends and family but to act as a modern social networking tool as well. For young Indonesians BEDD can facilitate the transfer of social information so as to encourage the development of new social ties. That said, there is still debate about exactly whom BEDD is connecting and for what purposes. On one hand, BEDD could help build community in Indonesia. One the other hand, because of its privacy it could become a tool for more promiscuous activities (Bennett 154-5). There are user profiles to suggest that people are using BEDD for both purposes. For example, note what four young women in Jakarta wrote in the BEDD profiles: Personal Description Looking For I am a good prayer, recite the holy book, love saving (money), love cycling… and a bit narcist. Meaning of life Ordinary gurl, good student, single, Owen lover, and the rest is up to you to judge. Phrenz ?! Peace?! Wondeful life! I am talkative, have no patience but so sweet. I am so girly, narcist, shy and love cute guys. Check my fs (Friendster) account if you’re so curious. Well, I am just an ordinary girl tho. Anybody who wants to know me. A boy friend would be welcomed. Play Station addict—can’t live without it! I am a rebel, love rock, love hiphop, naughty, if you want proof dial 081********* phrenz n cute guyz As these profiles suggest, the technology can be used to send different kinds of messages. The mobile phone and the BEDD software merely facilitate the process of social exchange, but what Indonesians use it for is up to them. Thus BEDD and the mobile phone become tools through which Indonesians can explore their identities. BEDD can be used in a variety of social and communicative contexts to allow users to explore their modern, social freedoms. Mobile Pornography Background Mobile phone pornography builds on a long tradition of pornography and sexually explicit material in Indonesia through the use of a new technology for an old art and product. Indonesia has a rich sexual history with a documented and prevalent sex industry (Suryakusuma 115). Lesmana suggests that the country has a tenuous pornographic industry prone to censorship and nationalist politics intent on its destruction. Since the end of the New Order and opening of press freedoms there has been a proliferation in published material including a mushrooming of tabloids, men’s magazines such as FHM, Maxim and Playboy, which are often regarded as pornographic. This is attributed to the decline of the power of the bureaucracy and government and the new role of capital in the formation of culture (Chua 16). There is a parallel pornography industry, however, that is more amateur, local, and homemade (Barker 6). It is into this range of material that mobile phone pornography falls. Amongst the myriad forms of pornography and sexually explicit material available in Indonesia, the mobile phone in recent years has emerged as a new platform for production, distribution, and consumption. This section will not deal with the ethics of representation nor engage with the debate about definitions and the rights and wrongs of pornography. Instead what will be shown is how the mobile phone can be and has been used as an instrument/medium for the production and consumption of pornography within contemporary social relationships. Technology There are several technological features of the mobile phone that make pornography possible. As has already been noted the mobile phone has had a large adoption rate in Indonesia, and increasingly these phones come equipped with cameras and the ability to send data via MMS and Bluetooth. Coupled with the mobility of the phone, the convergence of technology in the mobile phone makes it possible for pornography to be produced and consumed in a different way than what has been possible before. It is only recently that the mobile phone has been marketed as a video camera with the release of the Nokia N90; however, quality and recording time are severely limited. Still, the mobile phone is a convenient and at-hand tool for the production and consumption of individually made, local, and non-professional pieces of porn, sex and sexuality. It is impossible to know how many such films are in circulation. A number of websites that offer these films for downloads host between 50 and 100 clips in .3gp file format, with probably more in actual circulation. At the very least, this is a tenfold increase in number compared to the recent emergence of non-professional VCD films (Barker 3). This must in part be attributed to the advantages that the mobile phone has over standard video cameras including cost, mobility, convergence, and the absence of intervening data processing and disc production. Examples There are various examples of mobile pornography in Indonesia. These range from the pornographic text message sent between lovers to the mobile phone video of explicit sexual acts (Barendregt 14-5). The mobile phone affords privacy for the production and exchange of pornographic messages and media. Because mobile devices are individually owned, however, pornographic material found on mobile phones can be directly tied to the individual owners. For example, police in Kotabaru inspected the phones of high school students in search of pornographic materials and arrested those individuals on whose phones it was found (Barendregt 18). Mobile phone pornography became a national political issue in 2006 when an explicit one-minute clip of a singer and an Indonesian politician became public. Videoed in 2004, the clip shows Maria Eva, a 27 year-old dangdut singer (see Browne, 25-6) and Yahya Zaini, a married 42 year-old who was head of religious affairs for the Golkar political party. Their three-year affair ended in 2005, but the film did not become public until 2006. It spread like wildfire between phones and across the internet, however, and put an otherwise secret relationship into the limelight. These types of affairs and relationships were common knowledge to people through gossip, exposes such as Jakarta Undercover (Emka 93-108) and stories in tabloids; yet this culture of adultery and prostitution continued and remained anonymous because of bureaucratic control of evidence and information (Suryakusuma 115). In this case, however, the filming of Maria Eva once public proves the identities of those involved and their infidelity. As a result of the scandal it was further revealed that Maria Eva had been forced by Yayha Zaini and his wife to have an abortion, deepening the moral crisis. Yahya Zaini later resigned as his party’s head of Religious Affairs (Asmarani, sec. 1-2), due to what was called the country’s “first real sex scandal” (Naughton, par. 2). As these examples show, there are definite risks and consequences involved in the production of mobile pornography. Even messages/media that are meant to be shared between two consenting individuals can eventually make their way into the public mobile realm and have serious consequences for those involved. Mobile video and photography does, however, represent a potential new check on the Indonesian bureaucratic elite which has not been previously available by other means such as a watchdog media. “The role of the press as a control mechanism is practically nonexistent [in Jakarta], which in effect protects corruption, nepotism, financial manipulation, social injustice, and repression, as well as the murky sexual life of the bureaucratic power elite,” (Suryakusuma 117). Thus while originally a mobile video may have been created for personal pleasure, through its mass dissemination via new media it can become a means of sousveillance (Mann, Nolan and Wellman 332-3) whereby the control of surveillance is flipped to reveal the often hidden abuses of power by officials. Whilst the debates over pornography in Indonesia tend to focus on the moral aspects of it, the broader social impacts of technology on relationships are often ignored. Issues related to power relations or even media as cultural expression are often disregarded as moral judgments cast a heavy shadow over discussions of locally produced Indonesian mobile pornography. It is possible to move beyond the moral critique of pornographic media to explore the social significance of its proliferation as a cultural product. Conclusion In these two case studies we have tried to show how the mobile phone in Indonesia has become a mode of interaction but also a platform through which to explore other current issues and debates related to dating, sexuality and media. Since 1998 and the fall of the New Order, Indonesia has been struggling with blending old and new, a desire of change and nostalgia for past, and popular desire for a “New Indonesia” (Heryanto, sec. Post-1998). Cultural products within Indonesia have played an important role in exploring these issues. The mobile phone in Indonesia is not just a technology, but also a product in and through which these desires are played out. Changes in dating and pornography practices have been occurring in Indonesia for some time. As people use mobile technology to produce, communicate, and consume, the device becomes intricately related to identity struggle and cultural production within Indonesia. It is important to keep in mind, however, that while mobile technology adoption within Indonesia is growing, it is still limited to a particular subset of the population. As has been previously observed (Barendregt 3), it is wealthier, young people in urban areas who are most intensely involved in mobile technology. As handset prices decrease and availability in rural areas increases, however, no longer will mobile technology be so demographically confined in Indonesia. The convergent technology of the mobile phone opens many possibilities for creative adoption and usage. As a communication device it allows for the creation, sharing, and viewing of messages. Therefore, the technology itself facilitates social connections and networking. As demonstrated in the cases of dating and pornography, the mobile phone is both a tool for meeting new people and disseminating sexual messages/media because it is a networked technology. The mobile phone is not fundamentally changing dating and pornography practices, but it is accelerating social and cultural trends already underway in Indonesia by facilitating the exchange and dissemination of messages and media. As these case studies show, what kinds of messages Indonesians choose to create and share are up to them. The same device can be used for relatively innocuous behavior as well as more controversial behavior. With increased adoption in Indonesia, the mobile will continue to be a lens through which to further explore modern socio-political issues. 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"Modernity and the Mobile Phone: Exploring Tensions about Dating and Sex in Indonesia." M/C Journal 10.1 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0703/06-humphreys-barker.php>. APA Style Humphreys, L., and T. Barker. (Mar. 2007) "Modernity and the Mobile Phone: Exploring Tensions about Dating and Sex in Indonesia," M/C Journal, 10(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0703/06-humphreys-barker.php>.