Beyond Religious Motivation: Language Investment Among Indonesian University Students Learning Arabic

Religious motivation alone does not fully explain how learners connect Arabic with valued resources and imagined futures. Drawing on Darvin and Norton's investment model, this qualitative narrative study examined 20 undergraduate Arabic Language Education students at five Indonesian universities. Interviews and reflective narratives were analysed using Reflexive Thematic Analysis. Participants associated Arabic with direct access to religious knowledge, perceived academic opportunities and imagined professional positions. Reported multilingual and digital practices supported engagement without necessarily demonstrating multilingual identity negotiation. Retrospective accounts presented religious, academic and professional values as coexisting rather than replacing one another. We conceptualise this pattern as layered investment: intersecting values connected to access, capital, positioning and imagined participation, rather than multiple motivations alone. These findings concern retrospectively narrated experiences, not longitudinally observed change. The study contributes to understanding Arabic investment within multilingual higher education and suggests recognising valued textual access, anticipated pathways and multilingual resources in Arabic language programmes.