The front pembela Islam : national identity, hate spin and demonization

• Main Author: Muhammad Faiq Adi Pratomo
• Other Authors: Kumar Ramakrishna
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences::Sociology::Terrorism; DRNTU::Social sciences::Political science
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/77187
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This dissertation attempts to shed light on how the Front Pembela Islam (FPI) successfully demonized the Chinese-Indonesian and non-Muslim minorities in the Aksi Bela Islam campaign of 2016-2017, using the organization’s digitally-distributed posters as a case study. While ostensibly focused on defending Islam from blasphemy committed by Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, the campaign featured significant extremist undertones, promoting an aggrieved narrative of Indonesian national identity which cast Muslim sons-of-the-soil Indonesians as an oppressed ‘minority in their own country’, demonizing Chinese-Indonesians and non-Muslims as enemies stealing away their well-deserved privileges and attacking Islam. The central argument is that the FPI used a ‘toolbox’ consisting of three elements to justify demonization: first, the nationalist element which equated Islamism with Indonesian-ness; second, an anxiety of incompleteness which alleges that Muslim sons-of-the-soil are the rightful ethnic core of the nation; third, hate spin which uses manufactured indignation to justify violent action. The FPI built its toolbox on a bedrock of shared history and resentment created by historical Islamist campaigns, throughout the Old and New Order, to promote a highly exclusive national identity. Thus, the FPI was able to bridge the gap between non-violent extremism and actual out-group violence by promoting a virulent, exclusivist notion of national identity.