Abstract
This study examines how members of the Indonesian Muslim diaspora negotiate their religious identity through boycott of Israel-affiliated products, comparing the contrasting settings of Muslim-majority Malaysia and Muslim-minority Netherlands. Addressing a gap at the intersection of boycott studies, Muslim diaspora scholarship, and transnational Islamic activism, the article treats boycott not as an individual psychological disposition but as a socially and politically embedded practice through which diasporic Muslims articulate belonging, solidarity, and moral commitment. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with twenty-two diaspora members—eleven in each country—analysed comparatively and interpreted through the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) as a heuristic lens, the study argues that boycott functions as a repertoire of identity negotiation whose meaning is shaped by diaspora identity and host-country socio-political opportunity structures. The findings reveal a shared baseline of moral awareness regarding the Palestinian issue but sharply divergent modes of enactment. In Malaysia, boycott is institutionalized and normalized—sustained by strong social norms, institutional legitimacy, and the ready availability of alternative products—allowing Muslim identity to be expressed collectively and with little friction. In the Netherlands, boycott is more fragmented and conditional, as a Muslim minority translates confessional commitments into universalist human-rights claims amid weaker normative support from the government and informational uncertainty. Variation, the study demonstrates, is driven not primarily by differences in religiosity but by the degree of alignment between identity, social norms, and structural conditions. The article thus offers a transnational, identity-centred account of Muslim boycott activism and shows how diasporic Islamic identity is negotiated differently across distinct socio-political ecologies.
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