Religious Exclusivism on YouTube: Truth Claim, Absolutization of Interpretation, and Reconstruction of the Demythologization of the Qur'an
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.64529/m61mn340Keywords:
Religious exclusivism, Digital religion, Demythologization of the Qur'an, Truth claim, YouTubeAbstract
Digital transformation has made YouTube not only a medium for the distribution of da'wah but also an arena for contesting authority, religious truth, safety, and the boundaries of group identity, while research on digital exclusivism still tends to explain these issues from the perspective of communication, algorithms, or moderation without sufficiently unraveling the hermeneutical mechanisms that transform human interpretations into seemingly absolute claims of truth. This research aims to analyze how truth claims develop into absolutizations of interpretation and subsequently form religious exclusivism in Indonesian-language religious content on YouTube, and to reconstruct the concept of demythology as a critical tool to distinguish the absoluteness of revelation from the limits of human understanding of revelation. The study used a qualitative approach through qualitative content analysis and critical hermeneutics on a purposively selected corpus of 10 YouTube videos, consisting of five main videos and five comparative videos, and was combined with the study of the Qur'an, interpretations, and literature on digital religion and exclusivism. The results of the study show that exclusivism does not arise solely from the existence of the claim that Islam is true but especially when the claim moves towards a monopoly of interpretation, claims of salvation, and the construction of "we–them" boundaries; on the contrary, comparative data show that the same theme can result in a more open religious articulation. This study concludes that demythologizing should be understood not as eliminating the sacred elements of the Qur'an but as criticizing the sacralization of human interpretation to build hermeneutical humility in digital religiosity.
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