Women and Religious Moderation: Interpretation of Legal Behavior and Identity Politics

Abstract

This paper aims to identify the interpretation and legal behavior of women in actualizing their understanding of religious moderation and its implications for women's identity politics. The research method used is a qualitative research approach. The research locations are Pekalongan City, Salatiga City, and Palembang City with a total of 130 informants selected by random sampling. The results and analysis show: first, women's understanding of the four indicators national commitment, tolerance, anti-violence, and accommodative to local culture is very subjective and can be said to be good; second, women's legal behavior in religious moderation is quite diverse, namely: for national commitment it tends to be normal and legal, neutral, and pathological or illegal; for tolerance it tends to be normal and legal, neutral, even potentially pathological and illegal; for anti-violence it tends to be normal and legal and there is potential for pathological and illegal; and for accommodative to local culture their legal behavior tends to be neutral and ambiguous; and third, women's identity politics shows that the majority of them are moderate or in the middle. They accept the concept of religious moderation and most of them have implemented the concept of religious moderation in their lives within the community. However, there are also some informants who are still "trapped" in pseudo-identity politics based on the reasons for group and belief similarities.