From New Media to New Piety: The Construction of Muhammadiyah Digital Piety Ideas

Abstract

Muktamar is the highest consultative forum in Muhammadiyah, held every five years to discuss and formulate various decisions on responding to the ummah and nationality issues. At the 48th Muktamar in 2022 in Surakarta, Muhammadiyah discussed six strategic issues, one of which was digital piety. This is very interesting because apart from Muhammadiyah, no Islamic organization in Indonesia has officially made the issue of digital piety a strategic issue to be discussed at its Muktamar. Therefore this study aims to analyze the construction of the idea of digital piety by Muhammadiyah. This study is qualitative research with a literature study approach. The data was obtained by collecting print and digital literature related to the idea of digital piety by Muhammadiyah. The data obtained were then analyzed using the Miles and Huberman interactive qualitative analysis model. This analysis model has three stages: data reduction, presentation, and conclusion. Analysis of the data obtained leads to two findings in this study. First, digital piety is interpreted by Muhammadiyah as behaving and doing activities in the digital space accompanied by morality and ethics based on Islamic values. At this level, digital piety will lead to more civilized interactions and activities in the digital space. Second, three dimensions build the construction of Muhammadiyah’s digital piety ideas, namely the ideological dimension, the normative dimension, and the internalization dimension. The three dimensions are related to one another to create a civilized digital culture.