Muslim Digital Publics and the Politics of Piety: Religious Identity Formation, Digital Authority, and Moral Visibility in Online Islamic Communities
Keywords:
Muslim Digital Publics, Politics of Piety, Digital Islamic Authority, Moral VisibilityAbstract
This article examines how Muslim religious identity is formed in online Islamic communities through the interaction of digital authority, moral visibility, and the politics of piety. It addresses the problem that digital platforms have become arenas for Islamic knowledge, ethical self-presentation, religious learning, and public debate, while existing scholarship treats online da‘wa, digital authority, Muslim identity, and pious visibility as separate fields of inquiry. Using a qualitative approach that combines digital ethnography, netnography, thematic analysis, and critical discourse analysis, the study analyzes materials, including posts, captions, videos, sermon clips, visual symbols, comment threads, platform policies, transparency reports, and Islamic documents on digital communication ethics. The findings show that Muslim digital publics operate as networked arenas where religious identity is produced through repeated encounters with Islamic symbols, moral narratives, audience responses, and platformed interaction. Digital authority is not simply transferred from classical institutions to online spaces, but reconfigured through textual reference, perceived credibility, affective proximity, platform visibility, algorithmic circulation, and audience validation. Moral visibility transforms piety into a public and interactive practice, enabling religious expression while generating ethical risks such as performative religiosity, moral surveillance, reputational anxiety, and commodification of pious identity. The article contributes to digital religion, Islamic studies, and Islamicate studies by proposing moral visibility as an analytical concept for understanding Muslim identity, authority, and ethics in platform-mediated publics.
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