‘Morning Slaps’ Da’wah: A Study on @taqy_malik Instagram Account Registers

Abstract

The use of social media as a tool to convey religious thoughts has a considerable impact when carried out on/by accounts of public figures that are popular among millennials. Technological savviness and religious knowledge acquisition are not only required to be possessed by those accounts but also the creativity to engage with the audience by formulating genuine rhetorics. An example is the Instagram account of Taqiyudin Malik (@taqy_malik – hereinafter referred to as Taqy), a young Indonesian entrepreneur-preacher with around 2.4 million followers. Using sociolinguistics and netnography approaches as well as employing a descriptive qualitative method, we examined Taqy’s account posts, specifically those collected in the #TamparanPagi (Morning Slaps) category. Through a register study on 12 posts, found that Taqy carried out digital da’wah in simple, humorous, and casual rhetorical ways filled with satirical irony. We categorised six categories of Taqy’s posts, namely remembering and preparing the afterlife, the Allah’s commands, the fruitfulness of ibadah, the oneness of Allah, call for marriage, and improving personalities. The finding confirms that the use of social media, specifically Instagram, can be a tool for spreading da’wah messages with no explicit impression of being patronising or intimidating.