Virtual Fatwas and Viral Misreadings: Religious Authority, Digital Misinformation and the Boycott Politics of Israeli Products in Indonesia

Abstract

As Israeli-Palestinian hostilities escalated in late 2023, the Indonesian Ulama Council (MUI) issued Fatwa No. 83 of 2023, a religious decree that quickly became the subject of sweeping misrepresentation across digital platforms. This study examines whether the decree constituted a legally binding prohibition on Israeli products or whether its circulation on social media generated a distorted, populist “virtual fatwa” disconnected from the original legal opinion. Using a qualitative, descriptive-analytical approach, the study draws on secondary data from Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, supplemented by semi-structured interviews with consumers, MUI members, pro-Palestinian activists, and digital communication specialists. Findings indicate that misreadings of the fatwa produced considerable public disorder: widespread ambiguity about the decree’s substantive content, social-conformity pressures that transformed boycott participation into a moral litmus test, and consumer confusion amplified by unverified digital information. The study argues that religious literacy and the institutional management of information authority are indispensable to preventing the weaponisation of religious decrees in digital discourse.