Mediatization of Islam; The Case of The Indonesian Muslims In Hungary

This article addresses mediatization of religion which particularly focuses on how Indonesian Muslims in Hungary mediatize their Islamic practices. It is a result of an empirical study incorporating two approaches, qualitative and quantitative methods. Participant observation and semi-structured in-depth interviews involving 18 informants were conducted for collecting the quantitative data whereas the quantitative data was generated from an online survey collected from 102 participants (60 males and 42 females). The result of the study shows that the lack of integration to the local Islamic institutions affects the mediatization of Islam. The form of Islamic mediatization can be seen through their way of obtaining religious messages, news, and information which primarily relies on the internet. Most of them depend on Social media, where YouTube channel was the most favorite one followed by Facebook and Instagram, to obtain Islamic resources. The dependency upon media particularly YouTube has the potential to shift religious authority from institutional to individual authority. While some scholars debate whether mediatization of religion could encourage secularization or not, the case of Indonesian Muslims in the Hungarian context shows that instead of becoming more secular, the dependency upon media for religious practices affects them to be more religious.


This article addresses mediatization of religion by particularly attention to
Indonesian Muslims living in Hungary. Investigating this issue is pivotal for some reasons. First, the population of Indonesian Muslims living in Hungary is small and do not have adequate Islamic infrastructures to fulfill their religious specific needs.
Indonesian Islamic institutions in Hungary accommodating their religious interests are not available, even it is not easy for this community to find Indonesian Muslim scholars that might help to provide religious resources or information.
According to official data, the total number of Indonesian living in Hungary by 2021 is 416 people comprised of workers, students, and those who are living in this country for family reunification (Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia in Budapest 2021). Among them, there is no reliable statistical data about the number of Indonesian Muslims in Hungary. They are expected around 50% of the total population which means they would be around 200 people. This minority group is living in various cities, yet those who live in Budapest are predominant.
Second, as a minority group, the Indonesian Muslims experience a serious problem of social integration to the local Muslim communities. Integration refers to the acculturation process of minority groups to a majority group where there is an interest in both maintaining one's original culture and interacting with others (Berry and Sam 1997). By contrast, they tend to be "separation" meaning when a minority group members place a value on holding on to their original culture, at the same time attempt to avoid interaction with the majority group (Berry and Sam 1997). Language is one of the primary hindrances limiting their integration since most of the local religious rituals, events, and ceremonies are carried out either in Arabic or Hungarian instead of in English where no many Indonesians understand these languages.
Due to the facts, this article aims to investigate how the Indonesian Muslims in Hungary deal with the problems. For more specific, this study focuses on how they mediatize their religion rooted from the assumptions that they are actively using media for their religious needs, communicating religious messages, and managing media representation of their religion as a consequence of the poor integration to the local religious communities.

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The concept of mediatization has been widely used by many scholars as a new theoretical approach to address the role and influence of media in societies in the digital age. There are two interrelated processes of social changes as characteristics of mediatization in an advanced society. The first concerns the evolution of media in the last decades from its previous function working for another social institution to be more independent and autonomous social institutions. The second refers to the degree to which the media have been integrated into the working of other social institutions in which through this integration the media have partly been appropriated to serve the needs of these institutions (Hjarvard 2008(Hjarvard , 2011Lövheim 2014).
While some media theorists associate the term mediatization as the same as mediation (Lövheim 2014), Hjarvard (2011) argues that those terms have different meanings and consequences. According to him, mediation refers to the concrete acts of communication by means of a medium in a specific social context, the intervention of which can affect both the message and the relationship between sender and receiver. However, there will not necessarily have any substantial impacts of the use of a medium on other social institutions, include religious institutions. By contrast, Hjarvard describes mediatization as a more long-term process characterized by the change of social and cultural institutions as well as modes of social interaction as a consequence of the development of the media's effect (Hjarvard 2011;Lövheim 2014) In the context of mediatization of religion, it means that media offers a great challenge to take over the role of religious institutions in conveying religious messages in public discourse. Furthermore, mediatization changes the "core elements" of religion, that is how religion is conveyed in a society (Hjarvard 2008(Hjarvard , 2011Lövheim 2014).
According to Hjarvard (2008Hjarvard ( , 2011, mediatization of religion is characterized by the transformation of three aspects of religion. First, the way of people uses as a primary source of religious information has changed from relying on religious institutions to the media. Second, as a consequence of the media become independent and autonomous institutions, the media have their authority to produce and distribute religious experiences, and media may provide a platform for the expression and circulation of individual beliefs. The popular media genres determine the way media represent religious information and experiences whereas H a z i m : M e d i a t i z a t i o n o f I s l a m ; T h e C a s e o f T h e I n d o n e s i a n M u s l i m s I n H u n g a r y | 45 existing religious symbols, practices, and beliefs become raw material for the media's agenda. Third, the new position in society, media have developed into social and cultural environments allowing media to take over many of the cultural and social functions of religious institutions, such as providing moral and spiritual guidance and a sense of community (Hjarvard 2008;Lövheim 2014).
Mediatization of religion itself implies various consequences depending on the particular religious and media contexts. While most scholars agree that mediatization of religion affects an increasing plurality of representations of religion in the media landscape, they have different opinions on the implication on the individual levels. Some scholars believe that the mediatization of religion leads to increase individualization and secularization (Hepp 2009). In line with this view, Hjarvard (2008Hjarvard ( , 2011 argues, there is a strong connection between mediatization of religion and the secularization of society. His argument is grounded from his investigation on Western culture, particularly the Nordic Countries characterized by a low degree of institutional commitment and a high degree of individualized belief (Hjarvard 2008).
Yet, some scholars, particularly those viewing beyond the western context, do not believe the increase of individualization and secularization as a consequence of mediatization of religion. Lynch (2011) is one of the scholars criticizing Hjarvard's theory of mediatization of religion and its implications. According to Lynch, the concept may only be applicable to particular religious, historical, social and political contexts. More specifically, Lynch points out that Hjarvard's theory is most relevant to Northern and Western societies characterized by the prevalence of non-confessional media institutions, decreasing direct public participation in religious institutions, the association of religious authority with specific traditional institutions, and wider evidence of secularization. Lynch even argues that mediatization of religion theory is useful to grasp the complex relationships among media, religion, and social changes (Lynch 2011). Setianto (2015) investigating Indonesian Muslim diasporas in the United States has proven that there is no correlation between mediatization of religion and secularization. Indonesian Muslims in the US could carry out religious rituals without any significant differences with performing their religious practices in real society. Even they take benefits from meditization of religion used as a way of internal "da'wah" particularly for promoting and sharing religious teaching among them. In addition, Setianto (2015) points out that mediatized Islam implies the Indonesian Muslim to be more religious.
The presence of the internet in the end of the 20 th century has become mediatization of religion more massive in a society. Some studies revealed that the new media, on the one hand, have encouraged people to become more active both in obtaining religious information and how to interpret religious messages (Ali 2010;Hutchings 2011;Setianto 2015), on the other hand, have empowered individuals to perform self-representation of their personal religious beliefs in digital media that potentially changes the conventional concept of religious authority (Lövheim and Lundmark 2019).
Concerning authority, it is a term that is initially conceptualized by Max Weber (1978) to explain a special type of power in a society. He formulates three ideal types of authority namely traditional, charismatic and legal-rational (Weber 1978). Yet, within the context of religious authority, recent scholars have documented the changes of authority in a society affecting some aspects of religious institutions, such as hierarchy, structure, ideology, and text (Campbell 2007(Campbell , 2012 Lövheim and Lundmark 2019). The central discussion on media and religious literature has revealed how religious authority shifts from institutional to individual-centered, for instance, webmasters, bloggers, and influencers (Hoover 2020; Lövheim and Lundmark 2019).
Considering the previous literature debate, this article focuses on the investigation of how mediatization of religion among Indonesian Muslim diasporas in Hungary and its implications. This is a challenging investigation since they have a strong religious-cultural background in their home country, Indonesia, but they live in a weak religious atmosphere, Hungary. Complementing the qualitative data, an online survey circulated through google form was carried out involving 102 respondents (60 males and 42 females) who self-identified as a Muslim and met the criteria of being 15 years or older and either living in Hungary for study, work, or family reunification for at least 6 months out of the year.

This
To analyze, the qualitative data were analyzed using a Miles and Haberman data analysis approach comprised three steps; data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing or verification. The results were compared and contrasted to the survey data in order to construct comprehensive findings.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The lack of integration to the local Islamic institutions. One of the most challenging things of the Indonesian Muslims in Hungary is that they do not wellintegrated into local Islamic communities. On the contrary, they tend to be "separated" meaning when the community members maintain their original culture at the same time attempt to avoid interaction with the local religious institutions (Berry and Sam 1997). Quantitatively, the paucity of integration to the local institutions can be seen at least from the degree to which they participate in any Islamic practices, events, and ceremonies in the Hungarian mosques. The survey involving 102 respondents from 17 cities and predominated by students (67,6%) while workers and family reunification were 22,5% and 9,8% respectively shows the low degree of involvement. There were only 7,8% of the respondents going to the mosques every day, 16,7% were weekly, while almost a half of them stated that they went to the mosques once or twice a year, or even never gone to the mosques anymore.
However, the lack of integration to the local religious communities for the Indonesian Muslims does not mean that this is a consequence of mediatization of religion leading them to be individualist and secular as conceptualized by mediatization of religion theorists such as Hjarvard (2008Hjarvard ( , 2011 and Hepp (2009) Language is the main hindrance preventing them to have a close relationship with the local institutions. This is reasonable because most Indonesians living in Hungary rely on English while no one of the Islamic institutions officially using English for the Islamic rituals and ceremonies. For instance, in terms of Friday sermons, in Budapest which has 5 mosques, three of them perform sermons in Arabic, one mosque uses in Hungarian while another is in Turkish. In some mosques also have weekly Islamic teachings. Hilmy Huzsein Mosque is an example of the mosques providing Islamic discussion guided by the Imam every Saturday.
But the instruction is in Hungarian which is not understandable for most Indonesians.
Anggi, a Master student at Eotvost Lorand Univerity, (ELTE), pointed out: "Jujur saja saya tidak banyak mendapatkan penambahan pengetahuan yang berarti selama mengikuti kegiatan keagamaan, setidaknya pada saat shalat Jumat. Alasannya adalah karena kendala bahasa. Saya selama ini mengikuti shalat jumat di masjid-masjid di Budapest yang menggunakan bahasa yang saya sendiri tidak faham karena khutbahnya menggunakan bahasa arab atau bahasa Turki. Mungkin akan sangat membantu bagi saya bila ada yang bahasa Inggris. Tetapi saya merasa mendapat manfaat ketika diskusi dengan sesama jamaah, karena kita dapat berkomunikasi dengan bahasa inggris. Kami bisa share sedikit pengetahuan keagamaan." "To be honest, I didn't get much added to my knowledge while participating in religious events, at least during the Friday prayer ceremonies. The reason was because of the language barrier. I had participated in Friday prayers at mosques in Budapest that I did not understand what they said because the sermons were in Arabic or Turkish. It would be helpful for when the sermons were in English. But I felt I got benefits when discussing with other fellows because we can communicate in English. We can share a little religious knowledge." The survey also reported, more than 50% of the respondents stated that the religious teachings in the mosques do not contribute to the religious knowledge improvement, whereas less than 10% saying the events were insightful for them. Under the circumstance, some Muslims tend to avoid the consequences and continue their daily activities. Otherwise, they just go to the mosque when they are on holiday. As stated by Mira, a master student at Eotvost Lorand Univerity, (ELTE); "Saya di sini merasakan tinggal di suasana yang sangat berbeda, kalau di Indonesia selain kita biasanya ada waktu-waktu khusus istirahat shalat, sehingga memungkinkan untuk ke masjid, atau setidaknya kita masih mudah menemukan musholah di tempat-tempat umum terdekat dari aktifitas kita, sementara di sini shalat harus benar-benar mengatur diri sendiri. Bahkan jujur saya sering telat waktu shalat karena menyesuaikan jam kuliah. Saya tidak berani meninggalkan kelas meskipun sudah waktu masuk shalat, karena tahu sendiri kan, taka ada peduli hak kita sebagai Muslim, sekalipun itu dosen-dosen kita. Jadi saya harus kompromi dengan keadaan ini".
"Here I am feeling living in a very different atmosphere, when we were in Indonesia, besides we used to have special times for prayer breaks allowing us to go to the mosque, or at least we had no any difficulties finding prayer rooms in any public places. Here we have to really manage ourselves for the prayer times. To be honest, I am often late for prayer because the times are in conflict with my classes. I do not dare to leave the class even though it was time for prayer, you know, nobody cares about our rights as Muslims, even our lecturers. So I have to compromise with this situation." Another cause why most of the respondents did not participate in the Islamic rituals when living in Hungary is the location of the mosques which is far away from their living. As an illustration, some respondents stated that they had to go around 50-100 km or had to travel approximately 2-3 hours to reach a mosque. Even

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in some cities do not have mosque anymore such as in Veszprém, Komarom, Kaposvar, Tatabanya, Tata, and Szigethalom. The lack of Islamic infrastructure hinders the Indonesian Muslims to be able to integrate into the local muslim communities.
The coronavirus pandemic in the last two years becomes another challenge for Muslims to engage in the local Islamic activities. Some mosques are closed during the outbreak, while others restrict their activities and change to be online ceremonies. For instance, in Pecs, during the pandemic, the only one mosque in this city namely Pasha Qasim Mosque has been closed since the COVID-19 pandemic occurs. There are no religious activities, even for Friday prayer. Consequently, those who need to go to the mosque have to go to another city which around 50 km far away. In Budapest, Hilmy Huzsein Mosque located at Paskal street had a weekly Islamic teaching program every Saturday morning. But during the COVID-19 outbreak, the program has been changed to be online. The change of the program affects the possibility of Indonesian Muslims participating in the religious event.
Indonesian Muslim females experience more limitations to get in touch with the local Muslim communities. For female Muslims, no many mosques have Islamic rituals or programs accommodating their existences in Hungary. As pointed by Afriza, a PhD student at Szeged University, who did not participate in the mosque anymore during living in Hungary because there were no special events for female Muslims.
The only community that allows Indonesian female Muslims to join is "Muslima in Budapest". This community is welcome for every female Muslim.
This Islamic group had a weekly meeting in Budapest mosques but during the coronavirus outbreak, the program has been changed to be online during the coronavirus. However, no many Indonesian females joined the group. Nurul These are the advantages of using the internet opening new ways of finding any religious news or information challenging the role of conventional religious institutions' authorities (Lövheim and Lundmark 2019). When some scholars (Ali 2010;Hutchings 2011;Setianto 2015) reveal that the easiness offered by the Internet has also encouraged people to be more active both in obtaining religious messages, this also happens in Hungary. Most Indonesian Muslims are more intensive in accessing the internet rather than going to the mosques to obtain religious news and information. Yet, as Hjarvard (2011) points out, the internet does not have any interest to disseminate particular religious views. Speaking up religious teaching is not their business. The purpose is only how to attract people as much as possible by displaying a lot of "menu", including religious "menu" with various genres in order to earn money.
In line with the qualitative data, the survey circulated to examine the Indonesian Muslims' ways of dealing with their religious issues shows that accessing the internet was the predominant choice which was more than 85%.
Reading the Holy Quran and Hadith, discussing with their families or close friends, and joining Islamic teachings through social media were three frequent activities conducted by the respondents after accessing the Internet. Interestingly, participating in religious events in the mosques, and consulting to the Muslim scholars representing the basic characteristics of Indonesian Muslims in their home country were only 17,6% and 5,9% respectively (table 1) In-depth interview with Ahmad Hidayat, a PhD student at Szeged university, best delineates the reasons why social media become alternative spheres to fulfill his spiritual needs. According to him, on the one hand, social media contribute to killing his boring and feeling lonely when just staying at home due to the coronavirus outbreak. On the other hand, the media also provide resources, including religious resources that are unavailable in the Islamic institutions where he is living.
Among the social media use, quantitatively, the data survey shows that

practices. As stated by Nurul Musdholifah that she prefers listening to Hanan Attaki
Channel because of the ability of the speaker to bring the audiences into their personal experiences by illustrating some stories while speaking. In addition, Hanan Attaki shows a unique appearance who is not like other Muslim scholars. He wears clothes different from others when presenting religious teachings, like wearing a hat that is uncommon for other Muslim scholars.
Indeed, these channels have been recognized as Islamic channels which have the highest subscribers in Indonesia, and they earn the highest income through their contents (Ekonomi.co.id 2019). But, other respondents have different preferences to access YouTube channels such as Gus Baha, Ustadz Halid Basalamah, Ustadz Ali Jabir, etc. though the number choosing these channels was not really significant.
Even some of them do not have any preferences. They accessed various YouTube channels based on topics their needs.
Basically, YouTube and other social media, in general, do not have any interest to propagate particular religious outlooks. They are not in the business to preach any religious messages (Hjarvard 2011). While conventional media like TV or radio have their own authority to produce and circulate religious contents as one of mediatization of religion characteristics (Hjarvard 2011), the new media, like YouTube, open a new system of modus operandi. They just provide "new malls" allowing them to collaborate with content creators in order to create various genres to attract customers as much as possible, included religious believers. By doing this will result in money and this is the main purpose of media.
As consequences of the dominant use of social media which is particularly in this case is predominated by YouTube are not only opening a new space of creating individual charisma (Tee 2019) but also shifting religious legitimate power from organizational to individual authority as revealed by previous scholars on media and religions, such as Hoover (2020), Lövheim & Lundmark (2019).
Classical Islamic authority could be represented by religious organizations, mosques, or religious leaders. In the Indonesian context, as the informants' home country background, the authority could be from religious organizations, such as Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the two biggest Islamic organizations in Indonesian. The former associated with urban middle-class Muslims, the latter is represents rusticated rural communities and traditional outlooks (Barton 2014).
Meanwhile, in the Hungarian context where they are living, it could be from each However, the religious content creators on YouTube recently have more potential to influence the audiences than those religious institutions. They have thousands even millions of subscribers and followers that can be associated with a "congregation" in classical religious institutions. In another world, the religious institutions' authority in communicating religious messages in public discourse is taken over by the content creators of the social media, and this the last characteristic of mediatization of religion conceptualized by Hjarvard (2008Hjarvard ( , 2011.

CONCLUSION
Understanding mediatization of religion cannot be separated from the contexts where the study is conducted. In the contexts of Indonesian Muslims diaspora in Hungary, the lack of integration into the local Islamic institutions encourages them to find alternative ways in dealing with their religious issues.
There are some reasons hindering the minority group to be integrated into the local communities. While the language barrier is the predominant reason, conflict of time, accessibility to the mosques, and the coronavirus pandemic are other reasons limiting them to acculturate with the local Muslims. Mediatization of Islam in the Hungarian context can be seen through the dependency of the Indonesian Muslims upon the internet to obtain religious news, information. The majority of them access social media in which YouTube is the most favorite one followed by Facebook and Instagram to fulfill their spiritual needs. The dependency upon media particularly YouTube has the potential to shift religious authority from institutional to individual authority. Finally, when mediatization of religion results in secularization or not remains debatable, the finding shows that instead of becoming more secular, the dependency upon media for Indonesian Muslims in the Hungarian context has an influence on them to be more religious.