Internet and the public sphere in the Indonesian Islamic boarding schools (Pondok Pesantren) : power, piety, and the popular

This thesis explores the internet and public sphere in Pondok Pesantren, which are the Islamic boarding schools in Indonesia, in relation to the keywords of power, piety, and the popular. The three keywords are utilised to understand the articulation of power that affects the values of piety and the identity of the popular within the institutions. This thesis further elaborates the keywords through the internet policy that aims to maintain the offline religious life amidst the increasing interest of students to be well-connected in the digital environment. My thesis has found the inherent ambiguity and inconsistency in the implementation of internet policy and the aspiration of students in facing the pressure of the increasingly digitalised Indonesian public sphere. The rurality of Pondok Pesantren is key because it challenges the focus on the middle-class Muslim that could easily adapt to the digital environment and the misconception against the less-affluent Muslim communities that are prone to religious fundamentalism. Through interview and observation, this thesis has found that people in Pondok Pesantren are neither well-adapted to the digital environment nor hesitant to accept the existence of modernity that is represented by the internet. Within this context, the focus on young people in Indonesia is important because they have been exposed to various degrees of digitalisation amidst the persistent problem of the digital divide. It has been challenging for the national government to provide internet access in rural areas of the Indonesian archipelago, while systematically aiming to strengthen national identity. The three decades of development during the Suharto era has created an enormous inequality between urban and rural areas, between the middle-class and the less-affluent communities. The inequality has been critical in understanding the current trend of Islamic revival that has been driven eminently by the religious movement of the middle-class in the urban setting, with their economic privilege and extensive internet access. Furthermore, modernisation and Islamisation in contemporary Indonesia have challenged to rethinking about democracy, the public sphere, and entertainment. Indonesian democracy has always been different from the Habermasian public sphere because it involves identity politics as its main trajectory. At the same time, the field of entertainment has become the battlefield between different ideologies, particularly secular nationalism and political Islam. In this regard, this thesis has explored the possibility of students in Pondok Pesantren navigating the conflicting ideologies in the Indonesian public sphere, particularly after graduating from the institutions. This thesis has found that students are facing a difficult trajectory in their future mobility from local to national to the global level of the public sphere