‘Cadar Garis Lucu’ and the mediated political subjectivity of Muslim women in Indonesia

Abstract

ABSTRACT The growing use of the internet, especially in urban centres, has made social media the contemporary discursive battleground for Muslims to dispute their cultural and political subjectivities. Muslim womanhood, particularly, has always been a concept under constant scrutiny. Previously, narratives about the ideal Muslim women were dominated by male preachers in mosques and public seminars. Nonetheless, social media has given Muslim women a platform to express what their cultural identity entails, the problems they experience, and their aspirations. This paper analyses the cyberspace activism strategy used by so-called controversial Muslim women group to express their political subjectivity within the Muslims community. This paper focuses on the Instagram account of Cadar Garis Lucu, a self-proclaimed feminist niqabi (face-veiled) community. Content analysis of Cadar Garis Lucu’s Instagram posts and in-depth interviews with its members revealed their three discursive strategies: emphasising authenticity – that their choice of face veiling is their own choice; appealing to moderate Indonesian Muslims’ interpretations of religion as an expression of love and plurality; and utilising collaborations with other similarly moderate religious social media accounts, to further justify face-veiled as a part of moderate Islam in Indonesia.