Beyond Clickbait Islam: Sufistic Da‘wah as a Counter-Model to Religious Commodification in the Digital Age
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31098/ijeiis.v6i1.4446Keywords:
Sufistic Da‘Wah, Digital Religion, Religious Commodification, Islamic Communication, Spiritual Presence, Mediatization, Habib Umar Bin HafizhAbstract
The expansion of digital media has profoundly transformed contemporary Islamic da‘wah by reshaping religious authority, communication patterns, and audience engagement within algorithm-driven environments. While digital platforms have broadened access to Islamic knowledge, they have also intensified the commodification of religion through visibility-oriented communication characterized by virality, sensationalism, performative piety, and emotional polarization. This study examines Sufistic da‘wah as a communicative counter-model to religious commodification through the case of Habib Umar bin Hafizh. Employing a qualitative case study combined with digital ethnography, the research analysed approximately 40 digital sermons and online religious materials, participant observation, and semi-structured interviews with 15 Indonesian Muslim participants engaged in Sufistic da‘wah communities. The findings suggest that Sufistic da‘wah operates through a communicative framework centered on mahabbah (compassionate love), rifq (gentleness), adab (ethical conduct), and tazkiyat al-nafs (spiritual purification). Participants consistently associated this communication model with emotional calmness, ethical self-reflection, and spiritually meaningful engagement in digital environments. Unlike commodified forms of digital religiosity that prioritize algorithmic visibility and symbolic performance, this paradigm emphasizes spiritual presence, emotional resonance, contemplative engagement, and ethical transformation. The study introduces the concept of spiritual presence as an original analytical framework for understanding religious authority beyond platform visibility and media performance, thereby extending current scholarship on digital religion and Islamic communication. These findings suggest that Sufistic da‘wah offers an ethically grounded model for navigating increasingly mediatized and commodified digital religious environments.
Downloads
Published
Citation Check
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 khairulhidayah, Badrah Uyuni, ZamakhsyariAbdulMajid, sarbinianim, mohammadadnan
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Content, Licensing, Copyright and Permission
1. License
International Journal of Emerging Issues in Islamic Studies has CC-BY NC or an equivalent license as the optimal license for the publication, distribution, use, and reuse of scholarly work for non-commercial purpose. The non-commercial use of the article will be governed by the Creative Commons Attribution license as currently displayed on Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Creative Commons License
2. Author’s Warranties
The author warrants that the article is original, written by stated author(s), has not been published before, contains no unlawful statements, does not infringe the rights of others, is subject to copyright that is vested exclusively in the author and free of any third party rights, and that any necessary written permissions to quote from other sources have been obtained by the author(s).
3. User Rights
International Journal of Emerging Issues in Islamic Studies objective is to disseminate articles published are as free as possible. Under the Creative Commons license, this journal permits users to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work for non-commercial purposes only. Users will also need to attribute authors and this journal on distributing works in the journal.
4. Rights of Authors
Authors retain the following rights:
Copyright, and proprietary rights relating to the article, such as patent rights,
The right to use the substance of the article in future own works, including lectures and books, The right to reproduce the article for own purposes, The right to self-archive the article, the right to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the article's published version (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal International Journal of Emerging Issues in Islamic Studies).
The author has a non-exclusive publishing contract with a publisher and the work is published with a more restrictive license, the author retains all the rights to publish the work elsewhere, including commercially, because she/he is not subject to the conditions of her / his own license, regardless of the type of CC license chosen.
5. Co-Authorship
If the article was jointly prepared by other authors, the signatory of this form warrants that he/she has been authorized by all co-authors to sign this agreement on their behalf, and agrees to inform his/her co-authors of the terms of this agreement.
6. Termination
This agreement can be terminated by the author or International Journal of Emerging Issues in Islamic Studies upon two months’ notice where the other party has materially breached this agreement and failed to remedy such breach within a month of being given the terminating party’s notice requesting such breach to be remedied. No breach or violation of this agreement will cause this agreement or any license granted in it to terminate automatically or affect the definition of International Journal of Emerging Issues in Islamic Studies
7. Royalties
This agreement entitles the author to no royalties or other fees. To such extent as legally permissible, the author waives his or her right to collect royalties relative to the article in respect of any use of the article by This agreement can be terminated by the author or International Journal of Emerging Issues in Islamic Studies upon two months’ notice where the other party has materially breached this agreement and failed to remedy such breach within a month of being given the terminating party’s notice requesting such breach to be remedied. No breach or violation of this agreement will cause this agreement or any license granted in it to terminate automatically or affect the definition of International Journal of Emerging Issues in Islamic Studies or its sublicensee.
8. Miscellaneous
International Journal of Emerging Issues in Islamic Studies will publish the article (or have it published) in the journal if the article’s editorial process is successfully completed and International Journal of Emerging Issues in Islamic Studies or its sublicensee has become obligated to have the article published. International Journal of Emerging Issues in Islamic Studies may conform the article to a style of punctuation, spelling, capitalization, referencing and usage that it deems appropriate. The author acknowledges that the article may be published so that it will be publicly accessible and such access will be free of charge for the readers
