Hybrid Muslim identities in digital space: The Italian blog Yalla

Introduction

Anti-Islamic hysteria is everywhere and Muslims are forced (once again) to repeat ‘we have nothing to do with this’ or ‘this is not Islam’ or ‘we firmly condemn all this’, hoping others will believe [us] (Ismahan Hassen, 9 January 2015)

The terrorist attack against Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 forced Europe to reflect on the Muslim presence within its society. In the aftermath of this and other acts of terror on the continent in 2015 and 2016, many Muslims felt the need to dissociate themselves from the ideologies and religiosity of the terrorists. Some Italian Muslims used the online platform Yalla Italia (hereafter Yalla, www.yallaitalia.it) to share their feelings about the Charlie Hebdo attack, as exemplified by the above quote from Ismahan Hassen. While condemning a type of Islam that fosters violence, the Yalla blog voices the frustration felt by second-generation Italians of Muslim faith at the continual need to justify their religiosity in a Western context.

Attacks such as that against Charlie Hebdo seem to confirm a certain vision of Islam as violent, non-democratic, and unwilling to accept European and Christian values – a vision often voiced by xenophobic political parties (Betz and Meret, 2009; Pisoiu, 2013; Savage, 2010). However, Muslims’ daily narratives are often able to reconcile Muslim identities with European values, thus challenging anti-Islam discourses. Through an analysis of the Italian blog Yalla, this article argues against the idea of a monolithic Islam that cannot adapt to European modernity. The blog’s discourses prove that it is possible to articulate hybrid Muslim identities in a way that reconciles Italianness with Islam. The Internet differs somewhat from other media in its ability to provide a space for more nuanced identity negotiations and discourse formations. Yalla shows that through narrative practices positioned in between private and public experiences, Italian Muslims try to challenge stereotypes in order to overcome a sense of marginalization and advocate for social change. In doing so, they are able to create ‘disruptive flows of dissent’ (Echchaibi, 2013) that subvert dominant narratives.

1. Catholicism and secularism in Italy

Italy is a predominantly Catholic country where around 75 percent of the population self-identifies as Catholic and an even higher percentage have been baptized Catholic (Doxa, 2014). Catholicism is deeply embedded in Italian society, politics, and education (Frisina, 2011), and the Catholic Church plays a prominent role in civil society (Garelli, 2007). Furthermore, mainstream media tends to represent Italian identity as intrinsically Catholic (Ardizzoni, 2007).

The overwhelming presence of Catholicism in the Italian public sphere is usually considered to be compatible with the secular character of the Italian state and its recognition of the principle of religious freedom. According to Frisina (2011: 272), this happens because Italian society is based on a ‘Catholic model of secularism’, which is ‘founded on the social representation of Catholicism as the cultural basis of the nation’s identity’. According to this model, Catholic values inspire secular values and act as a wellspring from which the country’s ethics and morality can emerge, thus making them intrinsic elements of Italian history and society (Joppke, 2013; Mancini, 2010).

The ‘Catholic mode of secularism’ stresses the importance of the Judeo-Christian roots of European civilization and indirectly marginalizes minority religions such as Islam. Indeed, while Christianity is generally seen as being able to inspire and validate secular values, Islam is often viewed as unable to respect the separation of religion and politics that is needed to create secular identities in late modernity (Asad, 2003; Casanova, 2004). Italian and European anti-Islamic discourses often stress Islam’s alleged inability to keep out of public and institutional space, describing it as ‘fundamentalist, dangerous and backwards’ (Talhami, 2004: 154). These positions connoting Islam as ‘un-European’ by virtue of its supposed inability to adapt to the continent’s values are symptomatic of anxieties about a changing society whose Muslim population is steadily increasing.

2. Islam in Europe and Italy

Attitudes that reiterate the alleged incompatibility of Islam and Western democracy are often unable to capture the dynamic changes of European society and religiosity. A number of studies have analysed strategies of cultural and social adaptations of Muslims in Europe, as well as the articulation of hybrid identities (Roy, 2013; Tibi, 2010). Similarly, other studies (Arfi, 2010; Jones, 2013; Talhami, 2004; Yeğenoğlu, 2006) show how European identity is not homogeneously based on secularism and Christianity, often formed instead through the exclusion of ethnic and religious groups, thereby creating fear of the ‘Muslim other’.

Muslims are estimated to comprise around 2 percent of the Italian population ¹ (CESNUR, 2014) and Islam is the fastest growing religion in the country (Pace, 2013). Strategies of religious adaptation are visible in Italy among young, second-generation Muslims (Frisina, 2011), and among mixed couples where one partner practices Islam (Cerchiaro et al., 2015). Muslims, especially women, often negotiate their identities by articulating discourses that resist the political use of secularism (Salih, 2004). These processes of identity-negotiation and practice-articulation are often intertwined with a variety of media practices (el-Aswad, 2013). On the one hand, the media contributes to the fear of Islam by offering biased and superficial descriptions of Muslim communities in Italy and by condemning, for example, migration and the construction of mosques (Mezran, 2013; Saint-Blancat and Friedberg, 2005; Vaccari, 2009). On the other hand, second-generation and Muslim Italians use media to negotiate hybrid identities, move beyond stereotypes, and promote integration (Toronto, 2008; Zinn, 2011). Studying the media – and the Internet in particular – allows us to understand the strategies they adopt to articulate identity and adapt socially. This article situates itself within existing scholarship about Islam in Italy and Europe, while taking the innovative approach of analysing Internet discourses.

3. Religious ‘third spaces’ and Muslim blogs

Media have an impact on the negotiation of religious practices and identities. The mediation of religion has a ‘horizontalizing’ impact on religion because it provides spaces for re-thinking authority and symbols. As a result, media have the potential to disrupt the traditional power hierarchies between those who hold truth claims and those who do not; traditional religious authorities lose their role of providing an interpretative framework for symbols, and believers gain greater agency in determining their own religious meanings (Hoover, 2006).

Digital spaces influence religions in late modernity, creating the phenomenon that Campbell (2012) describes as ‘networked religion’. The Internet also has the potential to become a space of ‘lived religion’ (McGuire, 2008) where believers can discuss matters of practice and faith. Moreover, the articulation of religious discourses on the Internet can create a ‘third space’ – a concept which has been employed in different contexts to refer to a space ‘in-between’ physical and metaphorical venues. Bhabha (1990) refers to a ‘third space’ to describe the creation of hybridized cultures and subjectivities in post-colonialism. Hoover and Echchaibi (2014: 13) apply the concept of ‘third space’ to the Internet in relation to the formation of religious communities that encompass new aesthetics and new forms of authority, enabling an ‘engagement with technology, practice, and lived experience’.

Blogs can be considered to be ‘third spaces’ when they articulate non-mainstream identities and resist political pressure. Blogging is a form of digital engagement that has the potential to serve individuals’ and communities’ communication needs and link them to the larger mediasphere, creating alternative venues for grassroots journalism (Echchaibi and Russell, 2009). Blogs can enhance the practices and beliefs of religious groups and individuals because they permit direct and immediate representations of private experiences in the public sphere, in a manner that differs from other media such as television and newspapers. They elicit active engagement with their readers and can form an alternative type of public through the circulation of religious narratives (Lövheim, 2011).

Muslim blogs in the West are often concerned with negotiating secular identities within Islam. For example, the blog Muslimah Media Watch, which is written by Muslim women, promotes alternative media practices to create what Echchaibi (2013) defines as ‘disruptive flows of dissent’. The blog does not aim to radically subverting hegemony, but rather represents a ‘cultural thickening’ in a larger project of cultural change (2013: 2). According to Echchaibi, the effectiveness of blogs should not be assessed in terms of concrete and short-term achievements, but in relation to the fluidity of cultural and social progresses.

In resisting dominant culture through aesthetic and performative spaces, Muslimah Media Watch reflects on the position of Islam within Western modernity. As a result, the blog creates dissent that can bring about long-term changes in the perception of Muslim women within established discursive production; moreover, it articulates ‘hybrid Muslim subjectivities’ (Echchaibi, 2013: 3). In a similar fashion, Yalla Italia aims to create oppositional narratives that challenge stereotypes and help situate the position of Muslim identities in Italian modernity.

4. The Yalla blog

Yalla tells stories of migration and multiculturalism from the perspective of second-generations, a term connoting people who are born or raised in Italy by foreign parents, and whose identity is situated between different religions and cultures. Yalla (meaning ‘Let’s go’ in Arabic) was founded in 2006 by journalist Martino Pillitteri and university professor in Islamic Studies Paolo Branca, both non-Muslims who are personally and professionally interested in the Muslim community in Italy. Pillitteri and Branca started the project because they felt that there was a need for the direct self-representation of Arab-Italians, who lacked a voice in the mainstream media. The fact that Yalla had non-Muslim and non-Arab founders was certainly among its unique characteristics: Yalla also distinguishes itself from other Muslim blogs in Italy because it does not follow official Muslim authorities and targets a multireligious and multicultural audience.

Interviews with Yalla’s founders provided insights into its scope and structure. Yalla started out as a printed publication before becoming a blog in 2011, establishing a presence on Facebook and Twitter in order to circulate its posts. While its bloggers were initially only Muslims from the city of Milan, Yalla has since added contributors from other religions, ethnicities, and Italian cities. The blog used to publish posts on a daily basis, with an average of 2,000 visits every day. However, in 2015 Yalla started to decrease its activity and re-think its identity: in the future, Yalla might become more global in scope, or it might just end (Pillitteri, personal communication, May 29, 2015).

Yalla’s posts attract a wide readership, sometimes generating up to a hundred comments per post. Yalla mainly targets other second-generation Italians and those who are interested in multiculturalism, but the bloggers do not refrain from engaging in digital conversations with anti-Islamic readers. Indeed Pillitteri, who functions as blog’s moderator, usually chooses to publish offensive and racist comments in order to enable discussion and confrontation. The blog format actually allows for the formation of an interactive community of readers who often contribute to the negotiation of Muslim identities. Yalla’s community dimension is enhanced by its collective character: the blog numbers forty collaborators, some of whom are part of the editorial staff, all under the direction of Pillitteri. Apart from Pillitteri, the bloggers are not professional journalists and are usually recruited through second-generation and Arab-Italian associations (Branca, personal communication, 31 May 2015)

The majority of Yalla’s contributors are women. The interviews and blog analysis reveal no clear reason why this is the case, but an explanation could be found in the need felt by Muslim women to express their voices in non-traditional venues. As the blog Muslimah Media Watch exemplifies (Echchaibi, 2013), media can become venues for women to negotiate their religious identity and contrast gender-influenced structures of power. According to Lövheim (2011, 2013), women often create digital ‘ethical spaces’ where they discuss cultural and social norms situated in between private and public experiences. For example, women use the Internet to claim their rights within Islam, challenge mainstream media representations, and discuss gender roles from a Muslim perspective (Piela, 2013; Vis et al., 2011). Yalla’s attention to topics such as women in interreligious couples and the meaning of the hijab is probably motivated by the fact that Muslim women in Italy are further marginalized in their opportunities for self-representation because of their gender.

Yalla welcomes contributors from every background and religion and does not explicitly use the label ‘Muslim blog’. However, since it aims to capture dynamic changes in Italian society, which is currently facing increasing migration from Muslim countries, and since the majority of its contributors self-identify as Muslims, Yalla constitutes a highly informative platform for understanding Islam in Italy. In analysing Yalla, I have explored the interplay between digital space and offline experiences. Why did the bloggers choose a digital platform to articulate their ideas? Which topics are emphasized to describe the experience of Islam in Italy? Which strategies do they employ to overcome social stigma? To address such questions, I performed a qualitative textual analysis of Yalla by analysing posts and readers’ comments from 2011 – when the blog went online – until March 2015, when the blog started to decrease the number of its posts. In addition, I conducted face-to-face semi-structured interviews with the two founders of the blog and four of the bloggers in May and June 2015. I translated quotes and interviews from Italian and used the real names of the bloggers, which is how they sign their posts. The analysis of blog posts and interviews reveals that Yalla provides a platform for topics that are often overlooked by public discourses about Islam in Italy.

5. Results and discussion

Yalla’s posts are written in a storytelling style that the bloggers utilize for describing their daily routine. The aesthetic technique of storytelling is a way of expressing opinions in an indirect manner: the bloggers do not openly advocate religious pluralism, but their personal experiences implicitly point to social and political issues connected with religious integration.

The analysis of posts on Yalla reveals not only a strong effort to overcome marginalization and connect with mainstream society, but also a focus on three main topics that are used as a means of articulating hybrid identities: first, a critique of mainstream media shows the communication potential of digital space; second, narratives about family matters normalize the practice of Islam within Italian culture; and third, advocacy for a quicker naturalization process for Italian citizenship reveals the willingness of Muslims to be recognized as Italians.

Conclusion

Yalla aids the negotiation of hybrid Muslim identities by challenging the stereotype of a monolithic Islam. Yalla is a ‘third space’ because it exists between the private experiences of Muslim Italians and the public perception of Islam, and because it enables bloggers to discuss religious matters beyond traditional authorities. Yalla’s bloggers articulate their identities in a third space that is neither their culture of origin nor the Italian culture, but rather a hybrid space that is inclusive for both. The articulation of hybrid Muslim identities on the Internet is relevant for two main reasons.

First, Yalla describes these hybrid identities as double identities, richer identities which have the potential to improve Italian culture and society. The bloggers express this concept through the description of strategies for overcoming their marginalization within Italian society and normalizing the experience of being Muslim in Italy. By presenting themselves as religiously similar to their Catholic peers, the bloggers paint an unthreatening model of Islam that is compatible with Western values. The bloggers’ critical reflection on religious practices and behaviours enables them to move beyond dichotomies. By telling stories of social integration and solidarity they refuse to be criminalized as ‘bad Arabs’, and by reiterating their educational and professional achievements they equally refuse to be victimized as ‘poor migrants’. Yalla’s identities subvert dominant narrations of Islam by presenting religion and ethnicity as cultural potentials rather than marks of marginalization. Yalla tells stories of second-generations that can not only unproblematically reconcile their Muslim and Italian identities, but whose hybridity allows for a better understanding of multiple cultural, religious, and linguistic codes.

Second, the blog format is crucial in articulating Muslim hybrid identities. Yalla cannot aspire to the same audience as mainstream media, and so it employs a digital space to provide an alternative voice and create a community of readers. In addition, the bloggers use the Internet for its creative potential. Their hybrid identities principally exist in offline spaces and in private spaces of everyday experiences; because a blog allows for a storytelling style, it enables these experiences and identities to be transposed into the public space, where they can be read and reflected upon. In this way, the bloggers gain agency to select certain narratives over others and reappropriate their right to define their own experiences, even if they do not constitute attractive content material for mainstream media discourses. As Echchaibi (2009: 23) writes, ‘[t]he ability to tell your story on your own terms in this case reflects a capacity to challenge a social order by countering its exclusive rights to define your image and identity’. Indeed, while not the only venue of identity articulation, the Internet represents a space where the bloggers can enhance, amplify, and communicate the Muslim identities that exist in offline spaces.

Yalla’s ability to find strategies for overcoming marginalization and using the Internet as a space for storytelling has the potential to send a powerful message to Italian society. Branca usually encourages the bloggers by saying: ‘Don’t tell anything special, you are a message, the fact that you exist is a message because people don’t know you exist’ (personal communication, May 31, 2015). By showing their community of readers that Muslims who have found strategies for adapting their religious principles to their Western lives do indeed exist, Yalla’s bloggers send the implicit message that Italian society needs to acknowledge the presence of Muslim Italians as a resource rather than a threat. This message is political in the sense that it indirectly advocates for social change by creating ‘disruptive flows of dissent’, subverting the dominant narrative of incompatibility between Islam and the West. In doing so, the digital storytelling of hybrid Muslim identities shows that lived experiences can be more explanatory than political and mainstream media discourses against Islam.