Audience Reception of Reality Tv Show ‘imam Muda’: Contradictions and Contested Religious Identities Among Young Malaysian Muslims

Abstract

These papers seek to examine the impact of religious programmes on young Muslims’ identity and religiosity. Drawing on findings from two separate studies conducted in 2011 and 2012, this paper conclude that the media do not have a single dominant effect over young people and their religious identity. Rather, their identity is contingent of their social world outside and within. It is indigenised and negotiated with other cultural resources together with the media. It is found that the various political and social conditions, occurring at the public and private sphere of their lives, that have served as a resources for young Muslims to make sense of how ‘Islam’ and ‘Muslims’ should be. It is found that the various ‘contradictions’ from what Islam is about right up to how Muslims should conduct themselves led young Muslims to feel disenchanted with Muslims and its leaders. Hence, through their everyday media consumption practice, young Muslims negotiate and appropriate religious media content to recreate their own religious identity.