3 - Blogging Muslim Cosmopolitanism

Summary

Beyond the lived worlds of ordinary Muslims in Southeast Asia, the digital world is one of the most conspicuous places where Muslim cosmopolitanism is talked about, discerned and internalised. Unending discussions over what it means to be a Muslim and, at the same time, a citizen of the world occupy the pages of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram, just as these deliberations are ever-present in blogs and other social media platforms. A cursory survey of the Muslim digital universe reveals efforts by lay and learned Muslims to assist communities in need, as well as voices calling for justice and equality for those who have been marginalised by states and societies alike. So powerful have the internet and social media become in Southeast Asia that they have been portrayed as ‘not just tools for reasoned decision-making, but sites of political contest, or media activism’.

Blogs are among the social media platforms that have been at the centre stage of various forms of activism. From 2008 to 2015, Southeast Asian states introduced new laws to regulate digital media and filed more than a dozen legal suits and arrest warrants against bloggers. In 2008, a Malaysian blogger, Raja Petra Kamarudin, was put on trial for sedition for blog postings that the Malaysian government alleged could spark racial tensions. In June 2012, Alexander Aan was sentenced to two and half years in prison for posting blasphemous pictures and insulting Islam on Facebook. These materials were shared and discussed widely in the blogosphere and other social media platforms, which prompted the Indonesian government to arrest him. Commenting on the issue, the ‘Father of Indonesian Bloggers’ (Bapak Blogger Indonesia) said, ‘It's funny – we say we have freedom of expression, but it's only up to a certain point … Atheism is a no-no, it seems’. The most recent case involved a sixteen-year-old Singaporean teenager, Amos Yee, who was jailed for fifty days for making insensitive remarks about Christianity and uploading obscene pictures to his blog.