Battling it out with Memes: Contesting Islamic Radicalism on Indonesian Social Media

In this chapter, Leonie Schmidt considers a recent phenomenon which represents a creative counterpart of the online “jihadi cool” movement. She examines how cyberwarrior accounts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter creatively and digitally alter images to counter the threats of interreligious violence and radicalization. In Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, volunteers battle Islamic radicalism with memes, hashtags, comics and videos producing an Islamic counter-terror culture. Schmidt argues that the social media posts portray kyai (students of Islam in Indonesia) and ulama (Islamic scholars and interpreters) as authentic and inspirational stars, voices of reason in troubling times and antidotes to extremism.