Vol. 14, Iss. 2, 2020

Complete issue as PDF

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

15 Dec 2020

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

15 Dec 2020

“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

15 Dec 2020

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

15 Dec 2020

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)

15 Dec 2020

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

15 Dec 2020

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

15 Dec 2020

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