A Fatwa against Gaming? How Indonesian Muslims Deal with Online Games and Islamophobia
Published in Indonesia and the Malay World, 2023
Recommended citation: Woltermann, Leon. (2023). "A Fatwa against Gaming? How Indonesian Muslims Deal with Online Games and Islamophobia." Indonesia and the Malay World. 51(149):27-49. https://doi.org/10.1080/13639811.2023.2182562
This article examines the discourse surrounding the possible issue of a fatwa haram (legal advice) to ban the online game PlayerUnknown’s battlegrounds (PUBG), which occurred in the Indonesian public sphere between March and July 2019. The article firstly scrutinises the framework and preconditions facilitating the formation of the discourse, after which it will try to disentangle the layers of public discourse to investigate underlying tensions, complications, and interactions between gaming and Islam. I find it problematic to argue that Indonesia’s Muslim community is for or against gaming. Instead, I propose to consider the discourse as a negotiation between different voices within Indonesia’s Muslim community, and in the multifarious currents of thought and practice in developing its own model of popular consumption in connection with religious ideals.