Before this article discusses the topic as the title above. First let me lead you to talk about the power of media; one of the instruments that almost everybody used and has significant influence to enable everything spread quickly. Media will bring any kind of information, way of thinking, opinion, and even ideology spread anywhere. Why do we talk about this? Because the narrative and ideology of extremism nowadays are easily spread through this way.
Then, what is the emergence of woman here? In some case regarding the idea of implementing ideology that contains extreme thoughts, some groups may place men who are considered to have more responsibility and power (some of these thoughts are regarding to the textual interpretation of the sacred scriptures) at the forefront of the struggle. However, the role of women on the other hand occupies another position that is quite significant in this modern era through the media.
Several studies show how women’s movements in the media in spreading certain messages and understandings have a big impact since women have what is called as a loyalty character. The term loyalty in this case may refer to women’s loyalty as followers of men who are considered leaders to accompany the struggle from the back line through what may often be called a call to action (in Indonesia with the majority Moslem adherants it oftenly known as dakwah).
If we look at the form of spreading the message of dakwah in the era before the rise of technology and the development of social media, women played a fairly similar role in maintaining the message of dakwah which included extreme religious ideology and ways of thinking by passing on similar educational thinking to children and families. So, if there is a question about how an ideology and way of thinking of a movement will continue to exist and last even though a movement may no longer operate formally, then the role of women in maintaining the existence of the movement’s ideology is one that is certain and specific from the various possible answers.
However, the development of technology that provides benefits for all parties also becomes an opportunity that cannot be missed by some group with extremism ideology. So that the role of spreading the dakwah movement has so far spread widely. It is undeniable that the movement to spread dakwah to do jihad or war, the spread of ideology, and so on are often found in the form of website pages, media on Facebook, and on other social media. I personally have experience observing the presence of these platforms, some of which have been banned by the government. However, it seems that the loyalty of the women’s movement manifested in media management leads to resistance to the existence of the platform, then the similar media and platforms using only different domains have re-emerged.
This explanation seems sufficient to address the urgency of women’s role in the same strategy but with different goals. If the extremist agenda is ultimately able to survive and spread widely through the use of the internet, then resistance and the same steps are needed to spread messages of peace as a counter narrative of extremism. Loyalty as a female character in one movement can be adopted with the aim of presenting resistance in greater way of spreading counter narratives containing messages of peace widely on social media.
Last to conclude, it is important to re-emphasize about the urgency of woman involvement in the process of countering extremist movement narratives as a relevant strategic step. It requires the use of women’s loyalty characteristics as a resource in disseminating messages and the ability to reach wider communities through social media, solely as an effort to create active resistance to ideologies that contain extremism and have the potential to violent activism. It was such an excellent community for women to become agents of peacebuilding that bring to the more peaceful change. By all of this argument, it is also important to note the importance of cross-sector collaboration in empowering women to educate women to have a vision of realizing a more peaceful and inclusive world.
