The Hijrah Communities and Religious Superficiality: Ideology and Religiosity of the Islamic Hijrah Communities on Social Media

The Hijrah communities in Indonesia are a complex and paradoxical phenomenon. These communities can be identified by how its members express religious attitudes on social media, especially Facebook. This position on social media affects the members’ religious and ideological merits in the Hijrah communities. This research applied a netnographic approach concerned with understanding how Hijrah community Facebook groups express their religiosity in texts, status, and images. The data sources were the members of Hijrah community Facebook groups in Indonesia. Through a qualitative approach with a netnographic design, this research succeeded in discovering a new hypothesis that ‘Facebook is one of the authoritative sources as well as Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, and offline meetings in improving religious knowledge by the Hijrah communities.’ This social media presence encouraged religious superficiality. In terms of ideology, the Hijrah communities showed ideological hybridity. In this case, exposed from various societies and streams received from populist Islamic scholarly authorities, religious attitudes virtually agreed upon by Hijrah communities were mixed.