ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the nexus of religious sound and social conflict in multiethnic Indonesia. It analyzes recent controversy over mosque loudspeakers, including the case of a non-Muslim woman who was imprisoned in 2018 for “religious defamation” after complaining about noise from her local mosque. This event was bound up with a broader contest between groups favoring a greater role for Islam in the public domain, and groups upholding the principle of religious neutrality on which Indonesia’s quasi-secular state is based. The essay articulates a close parallel between popular hostility to critics of Islamic noise in Indonesia, and popular hostility to makers of Islamic noise in Western countries, both of which can be understood as expressions of nativistic, majoritarian identity politics.
