Sharia Housing: Religious Commodification and the Urban Muslims’ Politics of Space

Abstract

Abtsrak Perumahan syariah terus bermunculan di berbagai daerah dan semakin diminati terutama oleh kaum muslim urban. Berkat strategi komodifikasi agama yang dijalankan para pengembang, perumahan berlabel syariah itu pelan-pelan menjadi icon bisnis baru di sektor properti. Kehadirannya menjadi penanda simbolik revivalitas konservatisme religius di kalangan muslim urban sekaligus alarm peringatan dini tentang terus menguatnya spirit ideolog islamis di tengah mereka. Yang merisaukan darinya bukanlah skema kepemilikan yang diklaim bebas riba, tetapi tendensi eksklusif yang menjadi basis produksi ruang publik di dalamnya. Gegara tendensi tersebut, ruang sosial perumahan syariah praktis menampilkan segregasi, bahkan hingga tingkat tertentu sering memainkan fungsi demarkasi sosial. Kondisi ini tentu potensial menyuburkan intoleransi sekaligus mengancam koeksistensi sosial antarpenghuni atau antara penghuni dan warga sekitar perumahan. Sementara, pada saat yang sama, hal itu juga dimanfaatkan kaum muslim urban yang berideologi islamis untuk menjalankan agenda politik ruang, yakni menginstitusionalisasi spirit Islamisme di ruang publik perumahan melalui institusi keluarga. Inilah efek samping komodifikasi agama dari bisnis perumahan syariah. Artinya, ini bukan semata persoalan etika bisnis yang mendesakralisasi agama sebatas komoditas, tapi juga masalah politik ruang yang memfasilitasi Islamisme untuk mendelegitimasi eksistensi Negara Kesatuan Republik Indonesia (NKRI). Abstract The demand of Sharia housing intensely emerge in various cities with urban moslem population. The Sharia-labeled housing has gradually become a new business icon in the property sector due to the religious commodification strategy by developers. Its presence is a symbolic sign of the revival of religious conservatism. This leads to the potential problem of exclusivism in residential life style, as Sharia housing often seems implementing segregation in social spaces. This potentially create intolerances and threaten social coexistence among Sharia housings residents and/or between the residents and surrounding communities. Meanwhile, the urban Islamists have shown an agenda of the politics of space, namely institutionalizing the Islamism spirit in the public sphere of Sharia housing through family institutions. This paper argues that these potential problems are is a side effects of the religious commodification in the Sharia housing business. This is not just a matter of business ethics, but it potentially desacralizes religion so as to be a mere commodity. What is more, it can be a catalyst of the politics of space which facilitates Islamism to delegitimize the existence of the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 3 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.