“The Best Damn Representation of Islam:” Muslims, Gender, Social Media, and Islamophobia in the United States

Theoretical and Methodological Framework for Studying Video Games and Orientalism
Vit Sisler Article This article proposes a theoretical and methodological framework for studying orientalism and representation in video games, grounded in information science, communication studies, game studies, and cultural studies. Utilizing the approaches of critical transculturalism, game production studies, and a newly refined concept of gamevironments, the proposed framework understands video games as hybrid cultural artifacts existing within interconnected technical, socio-cultural, political, economic, and religious spheres. It examines…

Article

A Psychoanalysis of Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) in the Context of India 2020–2021

A Psychoanalysis of Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) in the Context of India 2020–2021
Achintya Debnath Article This article is based on field surveys and interviews among mobile users. It provides a heuristic framework for understanding the dynamics of violent content, recent issues regarding banning PUBG (player unknown’s battlegrounds) video games, and the complex characteristics of its perspectives. More precisely, it brings up an explanation and relation between violence and certain video games primarily focused on mobile user gamers who play PUBG…

Article

Living the American Dream: Playlist GTA in the Third World Country

Living the American Dream: Playlist GTA in the Third World Country
Animesh Dhara Comment This research critically examines the nexus between video games, specifically the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series, and the nuanced perceptions of the American Dream among teenagers in developing nations, primarily focusing on India. Situated within the broader exploration of the American Dream across academic disciplines, my qualitative research employs semi-structured interviews and online surveys. Targeting participants aged 13 to 22 with extensive GTA exposure, my…

Comment

Liz Przybylski. 2020. Hybrid Ethnography: Online, Offline, and In Between. SAGE Publications, Inc.

Liz Przybylski. 2020. Hybrid Ethnography: Online, Offline, and In Between. SAGE Publications, Inc.
Anders Ackfeldt Book Review As social media proliferates globally, affecting over half the world’s population, ethnographic research must adapt to evolving modes of communication and representation. Liz Przybylski’s book Hybrid Ethnography: Online, Offline, and In Between offers an accessible, practical guide to hybrid ethnography spanning both digital and physical spaces. Covering project formulation, research ethics, site selection, data collection, analysis, and writing, the book draws on the author’s experience…

Book Review

Postcolonial Play in the Orient’s Sandbox

Postcolonial Play in the Orient’s Sandbox
Souvik Mukherjee, Zahra Rizvi Editorial In this introduction to the special double issue, the guest editors outline their vision behind the work by giving a short overview of the orientalist bias in game studies, the postcolonialist turn in the field, and the need for South Asia-centric scholarship to contribute to and invite South-South discourse in games scholarship. This short introduction also introduces the various contributions to this double issue which…

Editorial

“Raji’s Burden”

“Raji’s Burden”
Soraya Murray Article This article uses a visual culture studies approach to examine how video games invoking non-Western cultural specificities face heightened pressures to completely and “authentically” represent their cultures. Focusing on the independent Indian video game Raji: An Ancient Epic (Nodding Heads 2020) as a key example, I employ art historian Kobena Mercer’s concept of the “burden of representation” to show how race, ethnicity, and gender intersect…

Article

How Not to Play an Indian Mythic: Raji: A Modern Fantasy

How Not to Play an Indian Mythic: Raji: A Modern Fantasy
Arkabrata Chaudhury, Arunoday Chaudhuri Article The current paper analyses the video game Raji: An Ancient Epic (Nodding Head Games 2020) to determine the accuracy of its representation of historical Indian experiences, in the domains of architecture, aesthetics, spatiality, technology, and so on. The ludic elements of the game, including weapon or enemy design and their compatibility with reflecting an Indian ethos in video game mechanisms have also been discussed. The…

Article

Mukherjee, Souvik. 2022. Videogames in the Indian Subcontinent. Development, Culture(s) and Representations. Bloomsbury

Mukherjee, Souvik. 2022. Videogames in the Indian Subcontinent. Development, Culture(s) and Representations. Bloomsbury
Xenia Zeiler Book Review The book Videogames in the Indian Subcontinent. Development, Culture(s) and Representations is the first ever comprehensive presentation and discussion of material spanning over all nations of South Asia, including Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Discussed by the leading expert on the theme, it offers both an overview of as well as numerous detailed examples of both, historical and contemporary developments.…

Book Review

Prayer, Dreams, and Sex: A Showcase of an AI-Augmented Distant Reading of 20 Thousand e-Fatwas

31 Oct 2024

Prayer, Dreams, and Sex: A Showcase of an AI-Augmented Distant Reading of 20 Thousand e-Fatwas
Jonas Svensson Article This article provides a methodologically oriented case study of the application of Large Language Models (LLMs) in Islamic studies. Its empirical focus is on 20 thousand e-fatwas from the website askimam.org. The study demonstrates how LLMs, here represented by the open-source tool BERTopic, can significantly augment a process of distant reading. The research focuses on a topic modelling revealing insights into recurring concerns evident from…

Article

Who Speaks Tho Fan? Deconstructing the Constructed Language of Jade Empire

31 Oct 2024

Who Speaks Tho Fan? Deconstructing the Constructed Language of Jade Empire
Alesha Serada Article Despite being the largest East Asian country, China is underrepresented in video games, particularly those produced in the West. This article examines the video game Jade Empire (2005), developed by the acclaimed Canadian studio Bioware. Despite its age and now historical status in video game culture, Jade Empire remains one of the few relatively successful standalone video games based on Chinese culture (or appropriation thereof)…

Article

Book Review: Heidi A. Campbell. 2020. Digital Creatives and the Rethinking of Religious Authority. Routledge.

31 Oct 2024

Book Review: Heidi A. Campbell. 2020. Digital Creatives and the Rethinking of Religious Authority. Routledge.
Helena Lipková Book Review The book Digital Creatives and the Rethinking of Religious Authority makes a valuable contribution to the study of how religious authority is evolving in the digital age. The author synthesizes previous research and introduces a new framework for categorizing types of religious authority in digital spaces. Building upon Anderson’s earlier typology, Campbell significantly advances this framework through her original empirical research, which is based on…

Book Review

Algerian Youth and the Contestation over Sound on TikTok

Algerian Youth and the Contestation over Sound on TikTok
Luca Bruls Article In Algeria, youth form attitudes towards music as a result of their TikTok usage. The responses of governmental institutions, Facebook users, and middle-class TikTokers to popular raï songs unfold the contestation over sound. Drawing on nethnography, I expose the moralizing and politicized responses that couple these different groups in their criticism. Through an account of the conversations and interactions with middle-class Algerian youth, I demonstrate…

Article

Palestinian Youth Engagement with Online Political Contents Shared by Citizen Journalists—The Case of Save Sheikh Jarrah

Palestinian Youth Engagement with Online Political Contents Shared by Citizen Journalists—The Case of Save Sheikh Jarrah
Rola Khalid Yousef Article Initial research on online political activism reveals that new information and communication technologies (ICTs) have increasingly become a growing and supportive space for political participation, which has influenced the conception of political activism. Furthermore, ICTs have become a facilitator for the formation of online political networks and communities. The shocking images of young children killed in the latest genocidal onslaught by Israel against Gaza in…

Article

Digital Monitoring as a Threat to Human Mobility

Digital Monitoring as a Threat to Human Mobility
Mirna Wabi-Sabi Comment During the COVID-19 pandemic, a “privacy nutrition label” was introduced to the Apple applications store. Its aim was to simplify access that consumers have to the content of terms and conditions, specifically to its implications on individual privacy. Nevertheless, undocumented migrants in the United States and Europe were and still are subject to invasive digital monitoring, begging the question of how to handle unhinged uses…

Comment

“All Compressed and Rendered with a Pathetic Delicacy That Astounds the Eye”: Midjourney Renders Ambergris as Constantinople

“All Compressed and Rendered with a Pathetic Delicacy That Astounds the Eye”: Midjourney Renders Ambergris as Constantinople
Emir Alışık Comment Text-to-image software have become widely accessible over the last few years, and the resolution of the images generated by these machine-learning software has increased to such a degree that the images attract more and more public attention. Midjourney is one of the few available AI tools that provides images to textual prompts. With early beta access granted, I have put the abilities and biases of…

Comment

Review: Brunton, Finn. 2019. Digital Cash: The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Utopians, and Technologists Who Created Cryptocurrency. Princeton University Press

Review: Brunton, Finn. 2019. Digital Cash: The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Utopians, and Technologists Who Created Cryptocurrency. Princeton University Press
Michaela Slussareff Book Review The book Digital Cash: The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Utopians, and Technologists Who Created Cryptocurrency is a very important piece of work in the field of digital currencies development. The author applies the media archaeology method of research and points out the most important ideas, projects, but as well barriers and beliefs that influenced the way of thinking about digital currencies and their development.…

Book Review

Good Tidings for Saudi Women? Techno-Orientalism, Gender, and Saudi Politics in Global Media Discourse

Good Tidings for Saudi Women? Techno-Orientalism, Gender, and Saudi Politics in Global Media Discourse
Joel W. Abdelmoez Article Gender equality in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is still a contentious and hotly debated issue, both within the country and in global news media as well as social media. Not least has the government app “Absher” drawn attention and criticism, due to features that allow male guardians to track their female dependants, issue or withdraw travel permits, and file for divorce at the click…

Article

The Role of the Internet in the Formation of Muslim Subjectivity Among Polish Female Converts to Islam

The Role of the Internet in the Formation of Muslim Subjectivity Among Polish Female Converts to Islam
Anna Piela, Joanna Krotofil, Katarzyna Górak-Sosnowska, Beata Abdallah-Krzepkowska Article In this article, we discuss the main arguments related to female Muslim converts’ formation of a religious subjectivity in the context of studying Islam in online spaces. In distinguishing between Western and Eastern Europe, it is our purpose to highlight the significance of online sources for converts who inhabit geographic “peripheries” of Islam. After giving an overview of the literature that discusses Muslim subject formation…

Article

Review: Stein, Rebecca L. 2021. Screen Shots: State Violence on Camera in Israel and Palestine. Stanford University Press.

Review: Stein, Rebecca L. 2021. Screen Shots: State Violence on Camera in Israel and Palestine. Stanford University Press.
Omneya Ibrahim Book Review Screen Shots takes an ethnographic approach to explore the visual history of the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territories and the different roles photography played within the decades-long conflict. Choosing to forgo the usual route of exploring the impact of photos on social activism, the author focused instead on how easily images can be utilized as tools of colonialism supporting the occupation; a unique viewpoint…

Book Review

Review: O’Neil, Cathy. 2016. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy

Review: O’Neil, Cathy. 2016. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
Michaela Slussareff Book Review The book Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy provides a very important point of view on the mathematical models and algorithms used for decision-making in our society. As the title suggests the author sees the possible dangerous influences of algorithms used for the specific groups in the society as huge and disastrous. The book describes the mechanism and functioning…

Book Review

Facebook as Embodiment of Social Relations and Piety among American Muslim Women

Facebook as Embodiment of Social Relations and Piety among American Muslim Women
Ashley Hahn Article Based on a three-year-long ethnographic research on a group of young Turkish–American Muslim women, affiliated with a faith-based social movement, I explored why these young women turned to Facebook to maintain their religious sisterhood after their graduation from high school and how their media choice and use of Facebook contribute to their Muslim subject formation. Drawing from literature on ethics and morality and employing a…

Article

From Deception to Inception: Social Media and the Changing Function of Fake News (Lessons from Egypt 2013)

From Deception to Inception: Social Media and the Changing Function of Fake News (Lessons from Egypt 2013)
Hesham Shafick Article The continued political influence of fake news despite the unprecedented accessibility of corrective information raises a pressing question: How can fake news impact publics which recognize its inveracity? Building on and developing Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s theory of “cognitive endowments,” this article unpacks the mechanisms by which news endows hypotheses, models, references, and relations that impact public assumptions of what might possibly be true,…

Article

Censorship in the Study of Early Islam

Censorship in the Study of Early Islam
Philip Wood Comment This article argues that an important driver for complaints about anti-Muslim blasphemy has been the political and legal environment of Pakistan. It examines a case where an academic text on early Islam was suppressed because of fears over its reception in Pakistan. It argues that university presses ought to keep open a space where ideas can be critiqued in a non-polemical fashion, but that, in…

Comment

Review: Islam, Science Fiction and Extraterrestrial Life: The Culture of Astrobiology in the Muslim World ; Space Science and the Arab World: Astronauts, Observatories and Nationalism in the Middle East

Review: Islam, Science Fiction and Extraterrestrial Life: The Culture of Astrobiology in the Muslim World ; Space Science and the Arab World: Astronauts, Observatories and Nationalism in the Middle East
Leif Stenberg Book Review This review discusses two books by Jörg Mathias Determann. The books explore space science in the Arab world and Islam, science fiction and extraterrestrial life in the Muslim world. Both are detailed accounts, and they place their respective subjects in a historical context. The books also present and analyse topics such as science, science fiction, and astrobiology, which are rarely the focus of scholars of…

Book Review

Review: Representing Islam: Hip-Hop of the September 11 Generation

Review: Representing Islam: Hip-Hop of the September 11 Generation
Anders Ackfeldt Book Review The book Representing Islam: Hip-Hop of the September 11 Generation (2020) by Kamaludeen Mohmed Nasir explores the entangled relationship between Islam and hip-hop. The book centers around Muslim hip-hop artists affected by the war on terror and the long-term consequences of the 9/11 attacks; increased surveillance, a securitization of Islam, and an amplified islamophobia, not only in the United States but around the world. The…

Book Review

Ambivalence, Discontent, and Divides in Southeast Asia’s Islamic Digital Realms: An Introduction

Ambivalence, Discontent, and Divides in Southeast Asia’s Islamic Digital Realms: An Introduction
Martin Slama, James Bourk Hoesterey Editorial This introductory article to the special issue Ambivalence, Discontent, and Divides in Southeast Asia’s Islamic Digital Realms discusses the latest transformations in the field of Islam in Southeast Asia with a particular focus on digital media. It introduces the three key themes – ambivalence, discontent, divides – through which the special issue approaches contemporary socioreligious phenomena in Islamic Southeast Asia as they find their expressions…

Editorial

Digital Theology: Saintly Marvels and God-talk on Facebook

Digital Theology: Saintly Marvels and God-talk on Facebook
Ismail Fajrie Alatas Article Among Indonesia’s traditionalist Muslims, anecdotes of saintly marvels (karāma) relating occurrences that contradict reason or human understanding of nature are lodged in everyday conversations. While scholars have noted how recounting and listening to karāma anecdotes is believed by Muslims to transmit the blessing (baraka) of the saints and facilitate their intercession, this article explores such anecdotes’ capacity to engender conversations about God and other issues…

Article

Humor, Piety, and Masculinity: The Role of Digital Platforms in Aiding “Conversations” Between Islamic Preachers and Waria in Indonesia

Humor, Piety, and Masculinity: The Role of Digital Platforms in Aiding “Conversations” Between Islamic Preachers and Waria in Indonesia
Amirah Fadhlina Article This article explores the influence of digital platforms in opening up ways for Islamic preachers in Indonesia to conduct dakwah and connect with their Muslim audience using distinct affective mechanisms, such as localized humor, pious activism, and display of Islamic knowledge–authority. Since 2016, influenced by online preachers who have earned a loyal following through YouTube, there has been a spike in national interest toward the…

Article

Nahdlatul Ulama’s “Funny Brigade”: Piety, Satire, and Indonesian Online Divides

Nahdlatul Ulama’s “Funny Brigade”: Piety, Satire, and Indonesian Online Divides
James Bourk Hoesterey Article Indonesia’s largest Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), arrived relatively late on the Islamic social media scene. By the time Nahdlatul Ulama leadership recognized and commissioned the need for online advocacy, a generation of young media-savvy preachers had already stoked the embers of sectarian divides and cast suspicion on those deemed secular or liberal. Even within Nahdlatul Ulama, a sprawling network of religious leaders and Islamic…

Article

Negotiating Salafism: Women Prayer Groups and their Preachers in Indonesia’s Islamic Digital Mediascapes

Negotiating Salafism: Women Prayer Groups and their Preachers in Indonesia’s Islamic Digital Mediascapes
Fatimah Husein Article This article is concerned with Muslim women’s negotiation of Salafism at the intersection of online and offline spaces. It focuses on two groups of Indonesian Muslim women who formed majelis taklim (study groups on Islam), namely Majelis Mutia (lit. Assembly of the Obedient) and Majelis Sahabat Cinta (lit. Assembly of the Friends of Love), to examine how these social media-savvy women, who demand a more…

Article

Reading the Digital Muslim Romance

Reading the Digital Muslim Romance
Alicia Izharuddin Article This article considers the practices of social formation on the online self-publishing platform Wattpad. Interactive and interfaced with other social media, Wattpad was founded in 2006 by Allen Lau and Ivan Yuen to facilitate self-publishing by well-known and emerging authors alike. Wattpad is popular among Malay readers and authors in Malaysia with stories clocking up millions of reads each. Most stories are aimed at women…

Article

Mualaf Chic: Conversion and Mediation in Indonesian Pious Sociality

Mualaf Chic: Conversion and Mediation in Indonesian Pious Sociality
Carla Jones Article Scholars of the visible rise of public forms of Islamic piety movements in Indonesia in the past two decades have noted its transnational character. Unsurprisingly, Arab inspiration has been prominent, as direct clerical influence and indirect aesthetic prestige. In this article, I suggest that another feature of this shared religious community relays a slightly different allure, that of accessing and domesticating foreignness through conversion and…

Article

Ambivalence, Virtual Piety, and Rebranding: Social Media Uses among Tablighi Jama’at in Indonesia

Ambivalence, Virtual Piety, and Rebranding: Social Media Uses among Tablighi Jama’at in Indonesia
Wahyu Kuncoro Article Advanced smartphone technology and easy access to the Internet have contributed to the embeddedness of social media in the daily lives of many Indonesians. However, among conservative Muslims, social media are regarded as potentially harmful, and their use is largely discouraged. The article discusses the ambivalence that characterizes social media usage within the Tablighi Jama’at, an Islamic reformist movement known for its missionary activities. Many…

Article

Online Halal Dating, Ta’aruf, and the Shariatisation of Matchmaking among Malaysian and Indonesian Muslims

Online Halal Dating, Ta’aruf, and the Shariatisation of Matchmaking among Malaysian and Indonesian Muslims
Eva F . Nisa Article Halal (permissible according to Islamic law) matchmaking and anti-dating campaigns and businesses have mushroomed since the 2000s in Indonesia and neighbouring Malaysia. In Malaysia, the Soul Seekers of Marriage Conference was established in 2008 and Halal Speed Dating was launched in 2014. In Indonesia, Rumah Taaruf MyQuran (MyQuran’s House to Get to Know Each Other) was founded in 2014 and Indonesia Tanpa Pacaran (Indonesia Without…

Article

Emerging Islamic Representations in the Cambodian Muslim Social Media Scene: Complex Divides and Muted Debates

Emerging Islamic Representations in the Cambodian Muslim Social Media Scene: Complex Divides and Muted Debates
Zoltan Pall, Alberto Pérez Pereiro Article This article explores the characteristics and structure of the Cambodian Muslim social media scene and considers what they tell us about the sociopolitical setting of the country’s Muslim minority. It focuses on how the relationship between Islamic actors of the Cambodian Muslim minority, that is, groups, movements and institutions, and their offline environment shape their online representations and proselytization activities. It particularly considers the observation…

Article

Tracing Digital Divides in Indonesian Islam: Ambivalences of Media and Class

Tracing Digital Divides in Indonesian Islam: Ambivalences of Media and Class
Martin Slama Article The article examines questions of the digital divide from a religious perspective. It asks about the consequences of unequal access to and limitations on uses of social media among Indonesian Muslims with regard to their Islamic practice and sociality. The article concentrates on two phenomena: Islamic preachers and their affective-cum-economic relationship with their followers who are often organized in Islamic study groups; and online Qur’an…

Article

Digitally Mediated Art in the War Zone: The Aesthetics of Resilience in Yemen

Digitally Mediated Art in the War Zone: The Aesthetics of Resilience in Yemen
Nurgul Oruc Article The current civil war in Yemen has been largely ignored by mainstream media, with the majority of coverage spotlighting the military aspect of the conflict. Yemeni artists challenge this absence of narratives reflecting the suffering of thousands of Yemeni men, women, and children by exposing the actual situation to the outside world through various artifacts shared on digital media platforms. Despite the significance of contemplating…

Article

“The Script Does Not Respond” – Arabic Script’s Difficulties in the Digital Realm. A Visual Approach

“The Script Does Not Respond” – Arabic Script’s Difficulties in the Digital Realm. A Visual Approach
Alina Kokoschka Article This article examines different layers of the problematic visual representation of Arabic as a writing system in the digital realm. It starts with the often false, sometimes severely distorted representations of Arabic script. Although most obvious in daily office work and strolls through Latin-Arabic Linguistic Landscapes, this phenomenon has not yet been systematically looked into. The many unintended and often unnoticed misrepresentations that lead to…

Article

Muslim Online Prayer in a Sociocultural Context

Muslim Online Prayer in a Sociocultural Context
Wael Hegazy Article The article argues that the debate over the online prayer is not just an ordinary fatwa issued by religious scholars for the Muslim Ummah, but it rather goes through a complicated process of social, identarian, cultural, authoritative, and transnational caveats. The physicality entailed by this debate over the online prayer shows how the place of worship along with the physical presence in it while performing…

Article

Comment: The Lebanese Uprising in the Digital Age

Comment: The Lebanese Uprising in the Digital Age
Karim Merhej, Elina Qureshi Comment On October 17, 2019, following the announcement of a tax to be placed on calls made via the mobile communication application WhatsApp, thousands of Lebanese citizens took to the streets to protest against this arbitrary decision. The protest quickly morphed into a country-wide uprising in which citizens from all walks of life participated. Digital technologies were heavily used by both protesters and counter-revolutionary forces. This…

Comment

Review: Cyber Sufis: Virtual Expressions of the American Muslim Experience (Islam in the Twenty-First Century)

Review: Cyber Sufis: Virtual Expressions of the American Muslim Experience (Islam in the Twenty-First Century)
Wael Hegazy Book Review If you have made up your mind that the embodied rituals are the main dominant phenomenon in modern Sufism and the cyberspace can only contribute to the marginalization of religious experience, this book is out to persuade you otherwise. This is an ethnographic study that investigates the virtualization of Sufi rituals, religious education, spiritual practices, and public outreach adopted by the Inyati Sufi order. It…

Book Review

Review: The Media World of ISIS

Review: The Media World of ISIS
Orwa Ajjoub Book Review The Islamic State group (IS) has grabbed the world’s attention as one of the most dangerous and gruesome terrorist organizations in history. The group has been studied from different disciplines such as political science, history, and theology. Michael Krona and Rosemary Pennington’s edited volume, The Media World of ISIS, is an attempt by media studies scholars to explore different aspects and dimensions of the IS…

Book Review

Review: Methods for Studying Video Games and Religion

Review: Methods for Studying Video Games and Religion
Anders Ackfeldt Book Review The edited volume Methods for Studying Video Games and Religion (2017) by Vít Šisler, Kerstin Radde-Antweiler, and Xenia Zeiler takes the study of religion and video games seriously and recognizes the widespread usage of religious themes in the world of games. The book can be read as an exposé of the state of research in the field of Game Studies with the specific focus on…

Book Review

Slamming the “Continuing” Moroccan Revolution: Noussayba Lahlou’s Bittersweet Verses

30 Jun 2020

Slamming the “Continuing” Moroccan Revolution: Noussayba Lahlou’s Bittersweet Verses
Maha Tazi Article In this article, I am interested in looking at women‘s current mobilization techniques in Post-Arab Spring North Africa. To do so, I draw from the existing literature on the case of Egypt which identifies women’s contemporary resistance in creative disobedience patterns – that is women’s art activism that advocates, concomitantly, for social justice and gender equality. In my attempt to fill an existing gap in…

Article

The Rise of Fourth-Wave Feminism in the Arab region? Cyberfeminism and Women’s Activism at the Crossroads of the Arab Spring

30 Jun 2020

The Rise of Fourth-Wave Feminism in the Arab region? Cyberfeminism and Women’s Activism at the Crossroads of the Arab Spring
Maha Tazi, Kenza Oumlil Article This article explores the emergence of fourth-wave feminism in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region in the context of the Arab Spring, which was a series of uprisings that followed the self-immolation of Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi in December 2010 and spread through several countries in the MENA region. The uprisings protested authoritarian regimes and called for democracy, freedom, and social justice. Fourth-wave feminism finds…

Article

Knowledge Disembodied: From Paper to Digital Media

30 Jun 2020

Knowledge Disembodied: From Paper to Digital Media
Abdullah Ibrahim Omran Article Print and digital media are believed to have shaken religious authority in the Muslim world, essentially because they popularize and pluralize Islamic knowledge. But how exactly did these novel technologies affect the nature of knowledge production and the behavior of scholars and the public? The pages that follow explore the historical relationship between technological developments and the production and transmission of knowledge over the course…

Article

Authoritarianism, Digital Dissidence and Grassroots Media in the Middle East and North Africa region

20 Dec 2019

Authoritarianism, Digital Dissidence and Grassroots Media in the Middle East and North Africa region
Josepha Wessels Editorial As an introduction to this special issue of CyberOrient, this text provides an insight into ongoing research in studies of digital layers of revolutions, digital communication, and dissidence in the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) region. Providing a short overview of the latest developments of uprisings and street demonstrations in the region, the text reflects on similarities and differences between the various revolts currently…

Editorial

Deterritorializing Cyber Security and Warfare in Palestine: Hackers, Sovereignty, and the National Cyberspace as Normative

20 Dec 2019

Deterritorializing Cyber Security and Warfare in Palestine: Hackers, Sovereignty, and the National Cyberspace as Normative
Fabio Cristiano Article Cybersecurity strategies operate on the normative assumption that national cyberspace mirrors a country’s territorial sovereignty. Its protection commonly entails practices of bordering through infrastructural control and service delivery, as well as the policing of data circulation and user mobility. In a context characterized by profound territorial fragmentation, such as the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT),1 equating national cyberspace with national territory proves to be reductive. This…

Article

Techies on the Ground: Revisiting Egypt 2011

20 Dec 2019

Techies on the Ground: Revisiting Egypt 2011
Laila Shereen Sakr Article This article studies social media and popular social movements in the early 21st century in the Middle East and North Africa, with a focus on Egypt. Rather than ethnography or political theory exclusively, I employ a data analytics of analyzing tweets, posts, and blogs to describe the political culture of social media. And then I perform the results under the guise of the Arabic-speaking cyborg…

Article

“The Best Damn Representation of Islam:” Muslims, Gender, Social Media, and Islamophobia in the United States

“The Best Damn Representation of Islam:” Muslims, Gender, Social Media, and Islamophobia in the United States
Stine Eckert, Sean Kolhoff, Jade Metzger-Riftkin, Sydney O’Shay Wallace Article Islamophobia reached new heights during the 2016 United States presidential election. We applied the theory of intersectionality to 15 in-depth focus group interviews conducted in gender-separated groups with 61 Muslim participants (41 women, 20 men) in South East Michigan between October 2016 and April 2017 to understand the role of gender in their responses regarding Islamophobia during the 2016 United States presidential election and Trump’s…

Article

Cultural Adoption Through Online Practices Across Social Media Platforms: The Case of Saudi Women

Cultural Adoption Through Online Practices Across Social Media Platforms: The Case of Saudi Women
Ghayda Aljuwaiser Article This article reports ongoing qualitative research into Saudi women’s online practices across several social media platforms (SMP). It is based on eight semi-structured interviews conducted between March and September 2015 with four Saudi women from different cities in Saudi Arabia. This work’s findings address the knowledge gap between the accelerating consumption of SMP and the limited existing scholarly literature to understand empirically the relationship between…

Article

Echoes of Populism and Terrorism in Libya’s Online News Reporting

Echoes of Populism and Terrorism in Libya’s Online News Reporting
Letizia Lombezzi Article This article focuses on news reporting in Libya, assessing both official and citizen journalism. Special attention is paid to online resources, primarily spontaneous posts written in Arabic. Social media shows the emergence of citizen journalism together with so-called User-generated Content. Both have proved capable of creating legitimacy. Political inclinations, including Islamic ideology and its religious claims, are presented, supported, or criticized by ordinary citizens who…

Article

American-Muslims’ E-Jihad: Trumping Islamophobia in the Trump Era

American-Muslims’ E-Jihad: Trumping Islamophobia in the Trump Era
Sahar Khamis Comment Islamophobia, or the irrational, exaggerated fear of Islam and Muslims, has been on the rise lately in the United States, especially after President Trump came to office. Some of the worst Islamophobes launched their campaigns online, using the Internet as a platform to spout hatred and fuel anger and discrimination against immigrants and minorities, in general, and Muslims, in particular. In an effort to counter…

Comment

Behind the Screen: the Syrian Virtual Resistance

10 Nov 2017

Behind the Screen: the Syrian Virtual Resistance
Billie Jeanne Brownlee Article Six years have gone by since the political upheaval that swept through many Middle East and North African (MENA) countries begun. Syria was caught in the grip of this revolutionary moment, one that drove the country from a peaceful popular mobilisation to a deadly fratricide civil war with no apparent way out. This paper provides an alternative approach to the study of the root causes…

Article

Big Data in the MENA Region: The Next Path towards Socio-economic and Cultural Development

10 Nov 2017

Big Data in the MENA Region: The Next Path towards Socio-economic and Cultural Development
Ilhem Allagui, Mohammad Ayish Article As elsewhere, big data is perceived as central to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) nations’ socio-economic and cultural development. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, by virtue of its advanced information technology infrastructure, relevant knowledge economy policies and flexible free government and market orientations, stands at the forefront of MENA’s big data integration. This article discusses selected sectors in the GCC region that…

Article

Transnational Religious Practices on Facebook

10 Nov 2017

Transnational Religious Practices on Facebook
Seyedeh Behnaz Hosseini Comment Access to cyberspace by Yezidi populations has given this group a platform for rebuilding their religious identity, which, in turn, has enabled them to challenge existing geographic, political and cultural constraints in Iraq. The Yezidi in Iraq have to live with the threat of discrimination and even violence. On the Internet, self-identification as Yezidi is done much more freely. The rise of the Yezidi in…

Comment

Middle Eastern Women’s ‘Glocal’: Journeying between the Online and Public Spheres

Middle Eastern Women’s ‘Glocal’: Journeying between the Online and Public Spheres
Dina Hosni Article Despite the fact that the Arab Spring did not necessarily materialize with the political effects anticipated by some of its activists, it has brought into the spotlight the significance of the role of women in direct connection to the online space. In this respect, the article addresses the online world as Middle Eastern women subcultural capital in their traversal to the public sphere, which is…

Article

Saudi Women and Socio-Digital Technologies: Reconfiguring Identities

Saudi Women and Socio-Digital Technologies: Reconfiguring Identities
Hélène Bourdeloie, Sara Houmair, Caterina Gentiloni Silveri Article Drawing on research conducted in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, this paper explores the specific uses of digital technologies by Saudi women. It shows how these women – whose gender identity is strongly constrained by a host of social and religious norms characterizing Saudi society – make use of digital technologies, and particularly mobile telephones. The various applications available for mobile telephony open up to them a…

Article

Science and Islam Videos: Creating a Methodology to Find “All” Unique Internet Videos

Science and Islam Videos: Creating a Methodology to Find “All” Unique Internet Videos
Vika Gardner, Salman Hameed Article This methodology article explores the process through which we sought to catalogue videos addressing natural science and Islam on the Internet comprehensively. This data was then used to select videos for inclusion in the Center for the Study of Science in Muslim Societies’ Science and Islam Video Portal (www.scienceandislamvideos.com), which evaluates the videos based on their representations of science, Islam and history. As a growing…

Article

Youth Activism and Social Networks in Egypt

Youth Activism and Social Networks in Egypt
Ahmed Tohamy Article The arrival of the Internet-based technologies has made the work of professional activists much more effective and has attracted the attention of society and observers, if only because their internal and external communications became much cheaper and harder to be monitored. The new social networking technologies have provided the youth with new channels for participation and empowerment. This became true in a part of the…

Article

Constructing and Consuming Gender through Media

Constructing and Consuming Gender through Media
Mona Abdel-Fadil Editorial Gender is constructed, performed and consumed through media in multiple ways. In this special issue of CyberOrient, we aim to bring together research on a range of Middle Eastern and Muslim cultural media products. In addition, a couple of the articles and essays shed light on the ways in which gender and gender activism may be enacted online in a variety of ways. The overarching…

Editorial

Performing Piety and Perfection: The Affective Labor of Hijabi Fashion Videos

Performing Piety and Perfection: The Affective Labor of Hijabi Fashion Videos
Kristin Peterson Article This article examines the work of a popular Muslim woman on YouTube, Amena Khan, who has attracted over 310 thousand subscribers to her channel and runs a successful online boutique. While Amena’s hijab tutorials and lifestyle videos might appear to be just about superficial topics like fashion or makeup, this article argues that she does actual labor to not only produce an aesthetic style but…

Article

Let’s Talk About Sex: Counselling Muslim Selves Online

Let’s Talk About Sex: Counselling Muslim Selves Online
Mona Abdel-Fadil Article Islam Online Arabic, and particularly the counselling service Problems and Solutions, received harsh critique for being too ‘open’ or even ‘un–Islamic’ in their views and dealings with sensitive topics, not least with regards to sexuality. The counselling service Problems and Solutions can be considered the emblem of Islam Online’s efforts to unite secular and Islamic perspectives and relate to contemporary Muslims’ real lives and problems.…

Article

When Shaming Backfires: The Doublespeak of Digitally-Manipulated Misogynistic Photographs

When Shaming Backfires: The Doublespeak of Digitally-Manipulated Misogynistic Photographs
Olesya Venger Article This study examines the case of an iconic digitally-manipulated news photograph, a controversial product of political propaganda featuring Majid Tavakoli, a student leader of the Iranian opposition in 2009, human rights activist, and political prisoner. The photograph depicts Mr. Tavakoli wearing a chador, traditional women's clothing in Iran, and appears to be digitally manipulated with the help of image-editing software. Published during the "Green Movement"…

Article

Satellitization of Arab Media: Perceptions of Changes in Gender Relations

Satellitization of Arab Media: Perceptions of Changes in Gender Relations
Anne Sofie Roald Article This article explores how students living in East Amman in Jordan perceive a link between global television entertainment and social changes, particularly changes in gender relations. The study relies on a questionnaire distributed among university students in Amman in 2009 and 2010 with 946 Muslim respondents, and focus group discussions and individual interviews with 44 Muslim students living in East Amman in 2013. The theoretical…

Article

Contextualizing Internet Studies: Beyond the Online/Offline Divide

Contextualizing Internet Studies: Beyond the Online/Offline Divide
Jon Nordenson Comment This essay discusses the issue of contextualization in studies of online platform usage and online material. It argues that a separation between online and offline cannot be sustained, as social media users relate to many different online and offline contexts simultaneously. Why protagonists make use of online platforms, which platforms they use, how they make use of them, who they seek to reach, and so…

Comment

Five Questions About Arab Women’s Activism Five Years After the ‘Arab Spring’

Five Questions About Arab Women’s Activism Five Years After the ‘Arab Spring’
Sahar Khamis Comment The Arab world witnessed unprecedented waves of revolt in 2011, which have taken the whole world by surprise, and led to many unexpected outcomes and varying results. Five years after this wave of revolt, it becomes necessary to examine its wide array of effects, especially on certain groups who played a significant role in the midst of these uprisings, such as youth and women. This…

Comment

A Safe Refuge? Minorities and the State in Iranian Cyberspace

A Safe Refuge? Minorities and the State in Iranian Cyberspace
James Marchant, Bronwen Robertson Editorial The Iranian state has consistently restricted spaces in open society for minorities to express their identities, especially where such identities are construed as representing a threat to the religious, political and sexual orthodoxies promulgated by the clerical establishment. As a result, many members of assorted Iranian minority groups have taken to cyberspace to build communities, articulate self- and group-identities, organise to overcome discriminatory practices, and…

Editorial

Online Social Research in Iran: A Need to Offer a Bigger Picture

Online Social Research in Iran: A Need to Offer a Bigger Picture
Ali Honari Article Given the limits of in-country and survey research in closed societies, the World Wide Web – in particular online forums - offers an alternative field for observing and understanding these societies and their development. However, the praise given to the Internet’s role in bringing about political change in Arab uprisings and the 2009 elections post protests has resulted in a tendency in the existing literature…

Article

Arab Iranians and Their Social Media Use

Arab Iranians and Their Social Media Use
Ahmed Al-Rawi, Jacob Groshek Article Arab Iranians have a special status in Iran and the Middle East. Due to their Arab origins, they are sometimes viewed as the “other” for being different from ethnic Persians, while many Arab countries regard them as the “other” as well perceiving them as being Iranians more than Arabs. This study investigates the media landscape and conflict that is linked to the Ahwazi Arabs with…

Article

A Page and Its Politics: Situating Kullinā Khālid Saʿīd in Egypt’s Ideological Landscape at the Time of Revolution

A Page and Its Politics: Situating Kullinā Khālid Saʿīd in Egypt’s Ideological Landscape at the Time of Revolution
Rasha Abdulla, Thomas Poell, Bernhard Rieder, Robbert Woltering, Liesbeth Zack Article In discussions concerning the importance of social media in the 25January revolution, a central role is given to the “Kullinā Khālid Saʿīd“ [We’re all Khaled Said] Facebook page. Using an advanced data collection and extraction application called Netvizz, a research team consisting of Arabists and Media studies specialists has collected and analysed all of the posts and comments exchanged through the page. This data set…

Article

2011 Tahrir Square Demonstrations in Egypt: Semantic Structures That Unify And Divide

2011 Tahrir Square Demonstrations in Egypt: Semantic Structures That Unify And Divide
Hakim Khatib Article While literature has focused on political, economic and social indicators to understand the shifts, or rather the fragmentationsof the political scene in Egypt, the role of semiotic constructions was significantly if not totally neglected. This article investigates whether the demands and messages produced by protesters of Tahrir Square in January 2011 have played a role in processes of unification and fragmentation of Egyptians. Following Roland…

Article

Problematizing Cyber Warfare

Problematizing Cyber Warfare
Helga Tawil-Souri Editorial This special issue of CyberOrient engages with the relationships between "cyber" and "real" battlespaces, the mediatization of war, the need to expand our definition of warzones, and the importance of asking who participates in wars, to what ends, using what kinds of technologies, and for what purposes. Taken together, the five essays demonstrate the expansion and blurring of the spaces of war. As importantly, they…

Editorial

Violence and Visibility in Contemporary Syria: An Ethnography of the “Expanded Places”

Violence and Visibility in Contemporary Syria: An Ethnography of the “Expanded Places”
Donatella Della Ratta Article This article reflects on the relationship between visibility and violence as redefined by the combined action of warfare and networked communication technologies. Drawing on the author's own ethnography conducted in Syria in 2010, and on anonymous YouTube videos, it introduces the concept of “expanded places” to look at sites that have been physically annihilated; yet, at the same time, they have been re-animated through multiple…

Article

The Shifting Nature of Cyberwarfare in Middle Eastern States

The Shifting Nature of Cyberwarfare in Middle Eastern States
Emily Fekete Article While some theorists make the claim that “kinetic and traditional military power are losing importance to symbolic and media power,” in reality the present military situation is complicated by the variety of tactics used by both governments and civilians in multiple and overlapping war zones. The Middle East has recently been the center of enormous military and media attention regarding the use of many forms…

Article

Islamophobia in Online Arab Media

Islamophobia in Online Arab Media
Ruth Tsuria Article What is Islamophobia? A popular term among many newspapers articles, politicians’ speeches and scholarly texts, it is rarely clearly defined. Although the concept of ‘Islamophobia’ is difficult to define it has been a source of heated discussion in academic work, public diplomacy, government policy and news media. Governments, social think tanks and various scholars have attempted to define Islamophobia in order to counter incidents of…

Article

Visual Representation, Propaganda and Cyberspace: The Case of the Palestinian Islamist Movements

Visual Representation, Propaganda and Cyberspace: The Case of the Palestinian Islamist Movements
Attila Kovacs Article The article analyzes the changing position of the visual representation in the context of Islam from the starting point set up in the Qur’an and more specifically in the prophetic tradition to the theoretical positions of Islamic reformism and radicalism and the practice of Islamism movements. To understand this changing relationship is crucial for the research of ideology and propaganda of the contemporary Islamist movement.…

Article

Presenting the Glossy Look of Warfare in Cyberspace – The Islamic State’s Magazine Dabiq

Presenting the Glossy Look of Warfare in Cyberspace – The Islamic State’s Magazine Dabiq
Christoph Günther Comment Since Ramaḍān 1435 (June/July 2014), the so-called ‘Islamic State’ (dawlat al-islāmiyya, IS), the ‘State of the Caliphate’ (dawlat al-khilāfa), publishes a periodic magazine entitled Dabiq. This glossy outlet, produced and distributed by al-Ḥayāt, one of the movement’s media organizations, is widely disseminated on the Internet and forms part of IS’s advancement in the field of the media. Published in English and other European languages, it…

Comment

The History of Telephony in the Non-West

The History of Telephony in the Non-West
Burçe Çelik Editorial This special issue of CyberOrient deals with the history of telephony in the non-west. Although the comprehensive histories of different media technologies in the west have been well covered in the existing media and history literature, the roles that these imported technologies played in the non-west have not been elaborated in detail. The telephone as a technology of communication took up differing roles in private…

Editorial

The Introduction of Telephone into Turkish Houses: Private Space, Borders of the Neighborhoods and Solidarity

The Introduction of Telephone into Turkish Houses: Private Space, Borders of the Neighborhoods and Solidarity
Gülengül Altıntaş Article This essay is based on the data collected in a two-year research project (between 2010–2012), under the title Telephony And Turkish Modernization: Social History of Telephone Since The Ottoman Era (1881–2010), which was primarily concerned with the social history of telephone in Turkey during is peculiarly long history of implementation and dispersal. The project was conducted as oral history and archive research, and a comparative…

Article

The Telephone and the Social Struggles in Turkey: An Overview of a Social History of a Communication Technology

The Telephone and the Social Struggles in Turkey: An Overview of a Social History of a Communication Technology
Burçe Çelik Article This essay presents an overview of social history of telephone technology in Turkey, by taking the user-perspective to its center. As part of the set of essays in this special issue dealing with the history of telephony in the non-west, this essay seeks to explore how the telephone has become part of social practices of people, how it has integrated into the social struggles of…

Article

Mobile Revolution: Toward a History of Technology, Telephony and Political Activism in Egypt

Mobile Revolution: Toward a History of Technology, Telephony and Political Activism in Egypt
Kira C. Allmann Article This article examines the use of everyday mobile technologies, and mobile telephony in particular, in political activism and protest during the 2011 Egyptian uprisings and throughout its continuing aftermath. The Arab revolutions have their own, now familiar, nomenclature, derived from the semantics of revolution and the digital age. Much of the language used to describe and analyze events in the Middle East has emphasized the…

Article

Reflections on Oral History: Four Cities on the Social History of Telephone Technology in Turkey

Reflections on Oral History: Four Cities on the Social History of Telephone Technology in Turkey
Burçe Çelik, Derya Gurses Tarbuck Comment Throughout the history of the Turkish Republic, the telephone has collectively been perceived as a technology of modernity, progress, wealth and cultural capital. Yet due to a deteriorated infrastructure, which has hindered penetration of the telephone to the entire country, only a small segment of society was able to install a telephone in their private dwellings as well as in their place of business. This…

Comment

Review: Technology and National Identity in Turkey. Mobile Communications and the Evolution of a Post-Ottoman Nation

Review: Technology and National Identity in Turkey. Mobile Communications and the Evolution of a Post-Ottoman Nation
Petr Kučera Book Review Technology and National Identity in Turkey is a social study of technology or, more precisely, of the cultural, historical, social, psychological and individual contexts, attitudes, and practices connected to and resulting from the use of mobile phones in Turkey. It also looks into the ways this technology has been 'domesticated' or 'nationalized' and links it to the shaping of national identity.

Book Review

Arab Women’s Changing Identities, Activisms and Resistances in a Changing Region

Arab Women’s Changing Identities, Activisms and Resistances in a Changing Region
Sahar Khamis Editorial The wave of uprisings which swept the Arab world in 2011 did not just instigate a "political awakening" that has shaken the power structures in a number of Arab countries and resulted in dictators fleeing their countries, resigning from office, or facing brutal death. Rather, it also instigated a "social awakening" that has shaken Arab societies' commonly held assumptions about gender roles and women's ability…

Editorial

Gendering the February 20th Movement: Moroccan Women Redefining: Boundaries, Identities and Resistances

Gendering the February 20th Movement: Moroccan Women Redefining: Boundaries, Identities and Resistances
Houda Abadi Article The Arab Spring opened up social and political spaces for women to make demands for gender quality, political and social reform, human rights, and equality. It has produced, changed and reinvigorated contestations around space, citizenship, femininity, religion, and sense of belonging, as women played an increasingly significant role in the revolutionary processes and developments in the region. This article will analyze the online and offline…

Article

Sowing the Seeds of The Message: Islamist Women Activists Before, During, and After the Egyptian Revolution

Sowing the Seeds of The Message: Islamist Women Activists Before, During, and After the Egyptian Revolution
Mona Abdel-Fadil Article This article focuses on the activities and experiences of a group of Islamist women activists, socialized within the ranks of Islam Online Arabic (IOL). These activists engaged in a range of significant social, political, and media practices, before, during and after the ousting of Mubarak; as individuals, as journalists, as counsellors, as agenda setters and creators of media campaigns. Drawing on longitudinal and ethnographic research,…

Article

The Saudi Blogosphere: Implications of New Media Technology and the Emergence of Saudi-Islamic Feminism

The Saudi Blogosphere: Implications of New Media Technology and the Emergence of Saudi-Islamic Feminism
Philip Tschirhart Article The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia serves as a protector of the social, cultural, and religious epicenters of the Islamic faith; Mecca and Medina. While other Islamic autocracies have fallen in the wake of the Arab Spring, Saudi Arabia and its religious and political elite remain. However, threats to their legitimacy are growing. Especially relevant are increasing calls for women’s rights. The Saudi Arabian public sphere…

Article

Women and Media: Libyan Female Journalists from Gaddafi Media to Post- revolution: Case Study

Women and Media: Libyan Female Journalists from Gaddafi Media to Post- revolution: Case Study
Fatima El Issawi Article This article examines the representation of women in Libyan national traditional media before, during and after the February 2011 revolution that led to the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime. What roles did female journalists assume within national traditional newsrooms and how did these roles evolve from activism in the defense of women’s causes and the official revolutionary ideals of the former regime to spreading the…

Article

“My Life is More Important Than Family Honor:” Offline Protests, Counter-Cyberactivism, and Article 308

“My Life is More Important Than Family Honor:” Offline Protests, Counter-Cyberactivism, and Article 308
Sarah A. Tobin Article In summer 2012, protests erupted in Jordan in light of several high-profile enactments of Article 308 of the Penal Code, or “Rape Law,” that allows rape charges to be dropped if the perpetrator agrees to marry the victim, which were organized offline and aimed to create a groundswell of public support for changing gender inequities in society rather than political and legal structures. Users of…

Article

Social Media As an Opportunity to Bahraini Women

Social Media As an Opportunity to Bahraini Women
Nada Alwadi Comment Since the uprising in February 2011 the Bahraini female activists but also ordinary Bahraini women have emerged as new leaders in the society, and this due to the increasing role of social media. Their ideas, voices and activities have been receiving stronger support from within their - often conservative - communities. It is now more accepted by the public that the democratic transition cannot be…

Comment

Orchestrating Hip-hop Culture Online: Within and Beyond the Middle East

Orchestrating Hip-hop Culture Online: Within and Beyond the Middle East
Anders Ackfeldt Editorial This current issue of CyberOrient brings together academics active at Scandinavian universities focusing on hip-hop from different aspects and fields. From different perspectives the authors seek to make sense of the impact, functions and dynamics of Middle Eastern and/or Islamic representations in hip-hop music online, both within and beyond the Middle East.

Editorial

Muslimhiphop.com: Constructing Muslim Hip Hop Identities on the Internet

Muslimhiphop.com: Constructing Muslim Hip Hop Identities on the Internet
Inka Rantakallio Article Although music is not clearly permissible (halal) nor prohibited (haram) in Islam, many young Muslims today make hip hop music and also portray Muslim identities in their lyrics. The article discusses a case study of how Muslim identity and Muslim hip hop are constructed discursively on an American web site entitled Muslimhiphop.com. The site features Muslim artists from multicultural backgrounds from several different countries. The…

Article

Hanouneh style resistance. Becoming hip-hop authentic by balancing skills and painful lived experiences

Hanouneh style resistance. Becoming hip-hop authentic by balancing skills and painful lived experiences
Andrea Dankic Article The aim of this article is to examine the dialogically constructed authenticity between an independent hip-hop and reggae artist and her audience and how this construction in turn influences the music-making process, art production and artist identity. It is argued that authenticity is constructed by the artist deconstructing the expected connections between on the one hand particular cultural belongings, lived experiences and ethnic origins, and…

Article

“I Am Malcolm X” – Islamic Themes in Hip-hop Video Clips Online

“I Am Malcolm X” – Islamic Themes in Hip-hop Video Clips Online
Anders Ackfeldt Article The Internet provides a space for new interpretations and conversations concerning religious practices to take place without the direct interference of religious authorities. The intention of this article is to highlight one vivid aspect of this development, Islamic themed hip-hop video clips distributed online. The visual aesthetics, the selection of pictures (or no pictures), themes and storylines supplementing the musical message can be used to…

Article

”I Wanna Be a Dark-Skinned Pork Roast” – and other stories about how ‘dark’ Danish rappers negotiate otherness in their marketing and music productions

”I Wanna Be a Dark-Skinned Pork Roast” – and other stories about how ‘dark’ Danish rappers negotiate otherness in their marketing and music productions
Kristine Ringsager Article This article explores processes of experienced otherness as it is represented in stories told by Danish rappers with Middle Eastern background. Referring to stories about ‘being stopped’ the article illustrates how these rap artists, because of their visible otherness, are forced to navigate in a discursive landscape that affects their becoming of subjects as well as rap artists. The article discusses how otherness experienced in…

Article

Global Story

Global Story
Mark LeVine Comment Hiphop has long been described as a quintessentially globalized music. Similarly, it has been understood as a unique window into the lives', fears and dreams of young people across the Arab and larger Muslim worlds for most of the post-September 11 era. Since young Tunisians revolted against long time dictator Zine El Abidin Ben Ali to the music of El General (or so the story…

Comment

Review: Religion and Hip Hop

Review: Religion and Hip Hop
Kalle Berggren Book Review The book under review brings together the category of religion, Hip Hop cultural modalities and the demographic of youth. Bringing postmodern theory and critical approaches in the study of religion to bear on Hip Hop cultural practices, the book examines how scholars in religious and theological studies have deployed and approached religion when analyzing Hip Hop data.

Book Review

Review: Turkish Metal – Music, Meaning and Morality in a Muslim Society

Review: Turkish Metal – Music, Meaning and Morality in a Muslim Society
Johan Cato Book Review The book is divided into seven chapters that deal with a variety of topics related to heavy metal, Turkey and Islam. The topics include questions concerning gender, nationalism, media coverage and satanic panic. The book is based on a broad range of materials, which include in-depth interviews with musicians and metalheads active on the scene, interviews with journalists and documentary analysis in the form of…

Book Review

Online and Offline Continuities, Community and Agency on the Internet

Online and Offline Continuities, Community and Agency on the Internet
Jon W. Anderson Article How the Internet spawns community and gets its features into offline life is a recurring problem met in searches for “impacts” of its successive iterations in the Middle East and arises particularly in assessing equivocal findings most recently about social media in the Arab Spring uprisings. But the problem is more methodological than ontological: it lies in viewing the Internet through a media lens on…

Article

The Earth Is Your Mosque (and Everyone Else’s Too): Online Muslim Environmentalism and Interfaith Collaboration in UK and Singapore

The Earth Is Your Mosque (and Everyone Else’s Too): Online Muslim Environmentalism and Interfaith Collaboration in UK and Singapore
Lisa Siobhan Irving Article The environmentalist group Wisdom in Nature (WIN) and the online network Project ME: Muslims and the Environment have been chosen for analysis, from the UK and Singapore respectively, to illustrate examples of Muslim environmentalists who use the Internet, as a complement to community-based activism, to raise awareness of environmental concerns among both Muslims and non-Muslims. I will explore how WIN and Project ME seek to…

Article

Telling the Truth about Islam? Apostasy Narratives and Representations of Islam on WikiIslam.net

Telling the Truth about Islam? Apostasy Narratives and Representations of Islam on WikiIslam.net
Daniel Enstedt, Göran Larsson Article This article analyses six apostasy narratives published on WikiIslam.net and examines how Islam is represented and understood in them. The narratives contain self-referential and autobiographical components, and the truth-claims made in them are often based on the narrator’s own experiences as a former Muslim. From the six testimonies it is clear that Islam is presented in a negative and biased way, as summed up in…

Article

Digital Images and Visions of Jihad: Virtual Orientalism and the Distorted Lens of Technology

Digital Images and Visions of Jihad: Virtual Orientalism and the Distorted Lens of Technology
Raymond Pun Comment Since the aftermath of September 11, Western media have repeatedly lampooned and echoed the term "jihad" as a principle of the Islamic faith, arguing that this term inspires Muslims to wage wars against the west and modernity. The studies of jihad as a core belief of radical Islamic groups are numerous; the term is not a new phenomenon; it is mentioned in the Quran at…

Comment

Review: Arabités numériques. Le printemps du Web arabe

Review: Arabités numériques. Le printemps du Web arabe
Luboš Kropáček Book Review The book under review examines the phenomenon of the Arab Spring in greater depth, which step by step takes into consideration all relevant political, social, cultural and technical aspects of the complex nature of the Arab e-revolutions. They were revolutions (the term is favoured by the Arabs) without leaders, their role being played by modern media. The ideas of anti-establishment protest were conceived and discussed…

Book Review

Review: Media, Power, and Politics in the Digital Age. The 2009 Presidential Election Uprising in Iran

Review: Media, Power, and Politics in the Digital Age. The 2009 Presidential Election Uprising in Iran
Zuzana Krihova Book Review In the light of the recent presidential elections in Iran, a collection of academic essays - Media, Power, and Politics in the Digital Age - edited by Professor Yahya Kamalipour provides us with a unique retrospection. It allows us to follow the dramatic and controversial 2009 elections in Iran, while exploring some more universal topics such as the interplay of media, power and politics, or…

Book Review

Review: iMuslims: Rewiring the House of Islam. Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks

Review: iMuslims: Rewiring the House of Islam. Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks
Vit Sisler Book Review The book has an overwhelming scope, ranging from methodological and theoretical issues related to the research of Islam in cyberspace to detailed analysis of particular and diverse segments of the cyber Islamic environments such as the Islamic blogosphere or the use of the Internet by jihadi movements. The author clearly demonstrates his command of the subject by the vast number of examples, mainly websites, blogs…

Book Review

Cyberactivists Paving the Way for the Arab Spring: Voices from Egypt, Tunisia and Libya

Cyberactivists Paving the Way for the Arab Spring: Voices from Egypt, Tunisia and Libya
Sahar Khamis, Mohammed El-Nawawy Article The wave of Arab revolutions and uprisings that has been shaking all corners of the Arab Middle East since 2011 and that has come to be known as the Arab Spring owed a major portion of its success to online activism. The spark that ignited these revolutions in the offline world was ignited by the Arab cyberactivists’ well-coordinated campaigns, calling for the toppling of corrupt…

Article

Mythical Roots, Phantasmic Realities and Transnational Migrants: Yemenis Across the Gulf of Aden

Mythical Roots, Phantasmic Realities and Transnational Migrants: Yemenis Across the Gulf of Aden
Samson A. Bezabeh Article This article analyzes the relationship between transnational migration, state-based religious cosmologies and new electronic media. It illustrates the way mythical realities and a Christian cosmology have structured the existence of the Yemeni diaspora. In analyzing the way mythical realities have been deployed, I seek to understand how old ways of creating boundaries have been redeployed in electronic landscapes. Much has been written regarding the interface…

Article

The Time of Concluding the Contract in E-Commerce from Islamic Legal Perspective

The Time of Concluding the Contract in E-Commerce from Islamic Legal Perspective
Abdulrahman Alzaagy Article The issue of when a contract between face-to-face parties is deemed to be concluded presents no legal difficulty to deal with in conventional dealings. However, the borderless nature of the Internet presents questions as to when a contract is deemed to be irrevocably formed and therefore raises questions regarding contract validity. As a general rule, a contract is formed when there is an exchange of…

Article

Tweeting like a Pigeon: The Internet in the Arab Revolutions

Tweeting like a Pigeon: The Internet in the Arab Revolutions
Miriyam Aouragh Comment The extraordinary uprisings since December 2010 represented the long-prepared transformation from fatalism to people power. The online–offline dialectic allowed the revolution to be mediated with global ramifications - from Wisconsin to Barcelona to Athens. This techno-social nexus forms a crucial element of the overall push and pull factors and this contribution reassess the "Net Worth" from a critical perspective. The fetishizing flora and fauna labels…

Comment

Review: Von Chatraum bis Cyberjihad: Muslimische Internetnutzung in lokaler und globaler Perspektive

Review: Von Chatraum bis Cyberjihad: Muslimische Internetnutzung in lokaler und globaler Perspektive
Göran Larsson Book Review The book titled Von Chatraum bis Cyberjihad: Muslimische Internetnutzung in lokaler und globaler Perspektive, edited by Matthias Brückner and Johanna Pink, focuses on different aspects of the Islamic and Muslim presence on the Internet. It is divided into three subsections. The first focuses on Internet use in the Islamic world, the second on trans-locality and the Internet, and the third on global Islam.

Book Review

Review: Blogistan: The Internet and Politics in Iran

Review: Blogistan: The Internet and Politics in Iran
Zuzana Krihova Book Review Sreberny and Khiabany's book Blogistan deals with various paradoxes and contradictions of Iranian policy towards the information and communication technologies (ICTs). Placing the Iranian blogosphere within the rapidly modernized telecommunication sector and looking at the democratic potentials of the Internet being suppressed by Iranian state policies, Blogistan reveals how the contradictions between the development of ICTs and its state's control as well as tension between…

Book Review

The Net Worth of the Arab Spring

The Net Worth of the Arab Spring
Ines Braune Editorial When I was asked to be the guest editor of the current issue of CyberOrient, I realized this is a welcome opportunity to arrange and re-sort some aspects, points, and arguments about the role of the media during the Arab Spring. In the course of the events late in 2010 and early in 2011, I felt enthusiastic and overwhelmed - not primarily as a scholar…

Editorial

Political Activism 2.0: Comparing the Role of Social Media in Egypt’s “Facebook Revolution” and Iran’s “Twitter Uprising”

Political Activism 2.0: Comparing the Role of Social Media in Egypt’s “Facebook Revolution” and Iran’s “Twitter Uprising”
Sahar Khamis, Mohammed El-Nawawy Article Social media, particularly blogging, Facebook and Twitter, have played a key role in instigating, accelerating and even organizing some of the uprisings and revolutions that have been taking place all over the Middle East. This role has been effective in galvanizing the youth and empowering them in their fights against repressive regimes and their plight for more freedom and independence. This study looks into the…

Article

Al Jazeera’s Framing of Social Media During the Arab Spring

Al Jazeera’s Framing of Social Media During the Arab Spring
Heidi A. Campbell, Diana Hawk Article This study investigates how Al Jazeera framed social media in relation to the revolutions and protests of the “Arab Spring” within its broadcast media coverage. A content analysis of Arabic language broadcasts appearing from January 25th through February 18th 2011, covering the protests in Tahrir Square, was conducted using the Broadcast Monitoring System (BMS) and Arab Spring Archive. Through this analysis we see a number…

Article

Remixing the Spring!: Connective leadership and read-write practices in the 2011 Arab uprisings

Remixing the Spring!: Connective leadership and read-write practices in the 2011 Arab uprisings
Donatella Della Ratta, Augusto Valeriani Article This article discusses the connections between the unfolding of the 2011 Arab uprisings and the “culture of the net”. Being far from overestimating the role that Internet has played in the uprisings, we propose to look at it not as an ensemble of tools, applications and technologies; but as a specific set of values, behaviors, skills and strategies that define the cultural dimension of the…

Article

Beyond the Soapbox: Facebook and the Public Sphere in Egypt

Beyond the Soapbox: Facebook and the Public Sphere in Egypt
Anton Root Article The question of the internet as a forum for political debate is continuously contested. My research grows out of such scholarship but focuses specifically on Facebook as a virtual public sphere in Egypt. Based on an analysis of a note posted by Wael Ghonim during the January 25 uprising on the Facebook group ‘We are all Khaled Said,’ I discuss the structural and technological benefits…

Article

Egyptian uprising: Redefining Egyptian political community and reclaiming the public space

Egyptian uprising: Redefining Egyptian political community and reclaiming the public space
Anup Kumar, Mervat Youssef Comment The purpose of this paper is to understand and explain the emergence of a public sphere and the articulation of a new Egyptian identity. We argue that the Egyptian revolution, catalyzed by the social media, was possible because the young men and women succeeded in reclaiming the public space from the apparatuses of the post-colonial state. There was a contest between the protesters and the…

Comment

Review: The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Information Technology and Political Islam

Review: The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Information Technology and Political Islam
Jon W. Anderson Book Review Howard's book The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy focuses on the relation between ITCs and civil society and democracy in the Muslim world. It assembled a database of indicators (for Internet availability, access, policy, ownership, structures and uses) cross-referenced to common standard measures of democratization and development for 75 countries with substantial Muslim populations.

Book Review

Review: The Arab Revolution: The Lessons from the Democratic Uprising

Review: The Arab Revolution: The Lessons from the Democratic Uprising
Marek Cejka Book Review Filiu's book The Arab Revolution: The Lessons from the Democratic Uprising provides an overview of the context of the indirect circumstances of the Arab Spring and also takes into account the related sociological and psychological factors, which makes the book more interdisciplinary. It focuses on events in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya but also covers other parts of the MENA region.

Book Review

Affinities of Dissent: Cyberspace, Performative Networks and the Iranian Green Movement

Affinities of Dissent: Cyberspace, Performative Networks and the Iranian Green Movement
Babak Rahimi Article This paper argues that the role of Internet activism in the Green Movement, a social protest movement that emerged after the contested 2009 presidential elections in Iran, lies in the creative configuration of complex networks that primarily interact through meaning-laden performances that carve out spaces of dissent. For social movements, especially under authoritarian rule like the Green Movement, cyberspace presents a kind of social space…

Article

Speaking of Invasion: Narratives over Arabs in Eksi Sozluk, a Virtual Community in Turkey

Speaking of Invasion: Narratives over Arabs in Eksi Sozluk, a Virtual Community in Turkey
Zeynep Oguz Article Since the day it was founded, Eksi Sozluk (sour dictionary) has been one of the most popular virtual communities in Turkey, fostering cultural and political discussions and acting as a public sphere. This paper examines contested narratives of hostility and hospitality over Arabs in Eksi Sozluk in order to trace the making of subjectivities in Turkey. I illustrate the ways Arab tourists are orientalized through…

Article

Islamic Shura, Democracy, and Online Fatwas

Islamic Shura, Democracy, and Online Fatwas
Jens Kutscher Article Publications on the Islamic shura concept – Arabic and English – usually include a comparison with present-day liberal democracy. This paper addresses the issue of shura and democracy from the perspective of Muslim communities residing in non-Islamic countries. How do muftis in their online fatwas respond to questions whether Islam and democracy can be reconciled? How do they address the issue of shura? This paper…

Article

The King, the Mufti & the Facebook Girl: A Power Play. Who Decides What is Licit in Islam?

The King, the Mufti & the Facebook Girl: A Power Play. Who Decides What is Licit in Islam?
Khalid Chraibi Comment Saudi Arabia enforces a ban on woman driving on the grounds that it is prohibited by sharia law. Women’s associations have actively denounced this ban for years, arguing that it was the only Muslim country which had such a peculiar interpretation of Islamic law. A power play is taking place online on this subject between the ulema (who support the ban), the Saudi authorities and…

Comment

Review: Die Fotografie im Osmanischen Reich

Review: Die Fotografie im Osmanischen Reich
Göran Larsson Book Review Besides its value as an excellent introduction to the early history of photography in the Ottoman Empire, Nimet Șeker’s book Die Fotografie im Osmanischen Reich provides the reader with valuable insights into Muslim debates about images and Islamic theology and the transformation of the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Book Review

The Islam-Online Crisis: A Battle of Wasatiyya vs. Salafi Ideologies?

The Islam-Online Crisis: A Battle of Wasatiyya vs. Salafi Ideologies?
Mona Abdel-Fadil Article Islam Online has been one of the most prominent and stable Islamic websites since it was founded in 1997. However, in March 2010 Islam Online suffered a major crisis, which has come to be known as 'the IOL-Crisis'. This is a suitable case for exploring whether multiple layers of authority are at play in online religious communities(Campbell 2007). At the time of the crisis, I…

Article

Overcoming the Digital Divide: The Internet and Political Mobilization in Egypt and Tunisia

Overcoming the Digital Divide: The Internet and Political Mobilization in Egypt and Tunisia
Johanne Kuebler Article The potential of the Internet as a political tool intrigues scientists and politicians alike. Particularly in the Middle East, the most frequent narrative is that the mere availability of alternative sources of information will empower political actors that are marginalized by the traditional media controlled by authoritarian regimes. Indeed, the protest movements in authoritarian countries interact creatively with this new medium to get their message…

Article

Beyond the Traditional-Modern Binary: Faith and Identity in Muslim Women’s Online Matchmaking Profiles

Beyond the Traditional-Modern Binary: Faith and Identity in Muslim Women’s Online Matchmaking Profiles
Anna Piela Article Finding a suitable partner in both diasporic and non-diasporic settings proves increasingly challenging for young Muslims, especially those unable or not wanting to search within their kinship networks. At the same time, religious matchmaking websites are becoming increasingly common especially among Muslim women. As studies of Muslim matchmaking sites tend to focus on the ever-popular topic of the headscarf and its associations in the matchmaking…

Article

New Media and Social-political Change in Iran

New Media and Social-political Change in Iran
Mohammad Hadi Sohrabi-Haghighat Article The increasing penetration of new communication technologies into everyday life has attracted a growing interest in the social, economic and political implications of these technologies. Most studies have looked at Western democratic societies and the literature on the developing countries is unfortunately small in comparison. In 2009 Iran witnessed a political upheaval in the aftermath of the presidential election in which the Internet was utilized…

Article

e-Islam: the Spanish Public Virtual Sphere

e-Islam: the Spanish Public Virtual Sphere
Arturo Guerrero Enterría Article The increasing presence of Islamic content in cyberspace has made it possible for an ever-expanding Muslim public space to be established. This process is connected to the phenomenon of globalisation, which in turn has generated a process of growing glocalisation, wherein content in cyberspace has not only been globalised – making it accessible from any Internet platform around the world – but opening a channel…

Article

Review: Islam Dot Com: Contemporary Islamic Discourses in Cyberspace