The Crisis of Religious Identity Among Indonesian Gen Z Muslims in the Flow of Global Digital Culture: A Sociological Analysis Based on Tajfel and Turner's Social Identity Theory
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Abstract
Generation Z Muslims in Indonesia born between 1997 and 2012, raised as digital natives in the world's largest Muslim-majority democracy occupy a uniquely complex social position at the intersection of deeply embedded Islamic cultural identity and an all-pervasive global digital culture that transmits competing values, aesthetics, and identity frameworks at unprecedented velocity. This article examines the crisis of religious identity among Indonesian Gen Z Muslims through the theoretical framework of Henri Tajfel and John Turner's Social Identity Theory (SIT), particularly their concepts of social categorization, social comparison, and positive distinctiveness, extended by Turner's self-categorization theory. Through systematic qualitative literature review and secondary analysis of national survey data on Indonesian Muslim youth identity, the study identifies a characteristic pattern of religious identity negotiation that defies both the assimilationist prediction (wholesale adoption of global secular values) and the fundamentalist reaction hypothesis (defensive intensification of religious identity). Instead, the dominant pattern is what this study terms 'selective digital hybridization': the creative but often tension-laden process through which Gen Z Muslims selectively appropriate global digital cultural elements while renegotiating the content, authority structures, and boundaries of their Islamic identity. Five principal domains of religious identity tension are analyzed: ritual practice and worship, religious knowledge and authority, gender identity and social norms, political and civic identity, and social belonging. The findings have significant implications for Islamic educational institutions, Muslim youth organizations, and policy frameworks governing digital media's intersection with religious identity formation in Indonesia.
Keywords
digital culture; Gen Z; Islamic identity; Indonesia; social identity theory; Tajfel Turner
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