Indonesia Conference Directory

Abstract This article is motivated by the high interest of young people to be involved in dawah activities which have been driven by more senior citizens. Among the many influential mass organizations, Wahdah Islamiyah is a new oasis.This study aimed to determine 1) the roles of youth in the development of Islamiah Wahdah Movement in Makassar City 2) the opportunities and challenges of the youth in the development of the Islamiah Wahdah Movement in Makassar City.The method used in the study was the historical method which was divided into four stages, namely 1) the heuristics, i.e. the activity to gather or to collect the traces in the past, 2) the data criticism, i.e. the method to study the collected data with the purpose of achieving the validity and or the authenticity of the data. 3) the interpretation, i.e. the activity to explain, to analyze and then to draw a conclusion about the matters obtained, which was related to the facts either originated from books or documents of Islamiah Wahdah, 4) historiography, i.e. the steps to present the results of the interpretation of the historical facts and put them into a written form.The research results indicated that the roles of the youth in the development of Islamiah Wahdah Movement were in the scope of the physical activities, such as the assistances in the natural disaster, the care of the corpses, the blood donations, and other social actions, while the policy making is still in the authority of the elders in the Syuro Council. As for the development of the movement, the youth had the opportunities to involve in the technological utilities which were wider than the WI cadres, such as the maximization of the functions of social media (facebook, instagram, twitter, wa, and even websites and youtube). The challenge of the youth were their activities as students, the coming of feminism ideas, and the negative stigma related to WI and other Islamic Social Movement formed by the media.