Taboo Language, Guilt, and Islamic Character Education: A Pilot Study of Indonesian Muslim Students

Taboo language is a recurring challenge in Indonesian Islamic education. Research has described what makes taboo words offensive, but less is known about the moral-emotional burden carried by producers and hearers in Indonesian Muslim educational settings. This pilot study asks whether students report higher guilt when imagining themselves as producers than as hearers, and whether this gives preliminary support to Basthomi’s (2010) sin-potential proposition. Twenty-one students of Arabic Language and Literature at UIN Sayyid Ali Rahmatullah Tulungagung (81% female; religiosity M = 4.00 on a five-point scale) completed a within-participants vignette questionnaire using the word “anjing” (dog) across four speaker types: stranger, close friend, young child, and ustadz. Producer guilt (M = 3.905, α = .958) exceeded hearer guilt (M = 3.127, α = .871), Wilcoxon T = 6.5, exact p = .0006, rank-biserial r = .90; 13 of 21 participants scored higher on producer guilt and 3 on hearer guilt. The asymmetry held after excluding careless responses and when the ustadz scenario was added to the hearer side, but on the most parallel item (berdosa, “sinful”) it was significant only without the ustadz scenario. Hearer guilt varied by speaker type, while the istighfar difference between roles was not significant (T=20, p=15). Producer guilt did not differ by pesantren background (n = 8 vs. 13, p = .58), though this subgroup is small. Given the fixed presentation order without counterbalancing, the small and predominantly female sample, and non-parallel composites, the findings are preliminary and do not establish that PAI character education should prioritise speaker responsibility. The study contributes role-differentiated moral emotion to research linking taboo language and Islamic character education and calls for counterbalanced pre-post replication.