Abstract

This essay uses the instance of an Islamist flash mob to explain how, in Muslim Southeast Asia, a long-standing Islamist visual and auditory repertory is currently being reshaped in and through its interaction with both a national public sphere and international trends, and how a new-found repertory of spectacular street performance provides Malay Islamists with the means to articulate local political concerns with global pop aesthetics. In doing so, this chapter moves away from the ways street spectacle and a remediation of such performance through social media have mostly been studied for progressive and ‘artivist’ causes only, showing little concern for conservative, poor, reactionary or, in this case, Islamist appropriation of the very same imagery, technology and formats. The chapter aims to explain what is so appealing about the global format of the flash mob, and by whom, and to what ends it is being mobilized locally in Southeast Asia. The flash mob, in its combination of mob politics and sheer commercialism, its transgressive and attention-seeking noise versus global fashions, is shown to be a transitory and highly unstable genre that flawlessly captures the spirit of a Malaysia in precarious times.

Keywords: Islam, Malaysia, mob politics, social media, Muslim Modernities