| Summary: |
This paper discusses the emergent religious enthusiasm among young Indonesian
Muslims, with special reference to the university-based halaqah activists in
Yogyakarta. Halaqah is a growing phenomenon of socio-religious expression
amongst university students. Within the Islamic movement, it has had a new
and powerful influence on Indonesian Muslim youth cultures. It provides a system
within which young Muslims seeking a new personal or collective social
identity can cultivate their religious orientation and thirst for knowledge. The
regional spread of halaqah seems to correspond to the rapidly increasing number
of publishers producing the halaqah reference materials that the movement
desires, and making them readily available in the market. This paper aims to
provide a comprehensive account of the religious, political, and cultural orientations
of halaqah members by examining the reading materials circulating
within halaqah. It argues that campus-based mosques are controlled by two
kinds of halaqah, namely Salafi halaqah and Tarbiyah halaqah. The findings also
show that Indonesia’s two mainstream moderate-traditionalist and reformist
Islamic movements, Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama, are less favored
by university-based halaqah activists. This is partly because, although both
these Indonesian mass organizations are faith-based civil society associations,
they both overlook campus-based mosques in their main da‘wa agenda.
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