Abstract
Introduction
Post 9/11 US, a series of developments such as the war on terror, the murder of the Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, the London and Madrid bombings, the attacks in Paris and Nice, the Brussels airport and metro bombings, the rise of ISIS, the mediatization of jihadi extremism, radicalism, and violent atrocities of Islamist groups (Pennington and Krona, 2019) significantly strengthened the hand and popularity of those who claim that Islam is inherently prone to terrorism and violence. In addition to that, the rising far-right movement in Europe and the U.S., the strengthening of anti-immigrant and anti-minority policies, and the populist upsurge have provided an impetus to anti-Islamic sentiments in different parts of the world. These developments reheated the well-known essentialist projections regarding the role of religion in the clash between civilizations. Religious radicalism and extremism both in their Islamic and Christian forms rested on a similar assumption that the clash was between the pristine forces of good and evil (Stavrakakis, 2004). At the heart of these arguments lies ‘essentialism’, the idea that some certain qualities are essential and intrinsic to Islam. Essentialism refers to transhistorical and transgeographical fixations and simplifications regarding Islam.
Understanding Islam and the East through such simplistic categories, schemes, and oppositions has been criticized for a long time. Said's (1978) pathbreaking critical narrative on orientalism deconstructed the West's contemptuous portrayal of the East and the relations of domination and exploitation hidden behind these portrayals. Asad (1993) challenged universal definitions of religion, frozen in time, and asserted that these definitions are products of culturally specific discursive processes. Similarly, Sayyid (1997) questioned the unity and transhistoricity of ‘Islam’ and ‘Islamism’ as such and focused on the specific discursive articulations of Islam to different political projects. These approaches go beyond essentialist readings of the place of religion in politics or daily life and create opportunities for intricate articulations and reinterpretations of different temporal and spatial settings. They also move us away from the culturalist readings of Islam and enable us to see the material and symbolic relationships behind the different manifestations of Islam as a belief, ideology, and way of life. The two books reviewed in this essay can be considered as powerful objections to essentialist, culturalist, and orientalist readings of Islam: Lawrence Pintak's meticulous journalistic piece America and Islam: Soundbites, Suicide Bombs, and the Road to Donald Trump and Merve Kayıkcı and Leen d’Haenens’ edited volume European Muslims and New Media. Although they differ in their themes, approaches, scopes, qualities, and genres, both books are the product of an extremely nuanced view of the manifestations of Islam in politics and daily life. While Pintak discusses the anatomy and antinomies of recent anti-Islamism in the U.S., Kayıkçı and d’Haenens’ edited volume focuses on the contribution of new media technologies to the emergence of plural interpretations of Islam. Both volumes, however, tackle the place of (new)-media in Islam in two distinct Western contexts.
America, Islam and the road to Donald Trump
The very first sentence of America and Islam is a quotation from Donald Trump: ‘Islam hates us’ (p. 1). Pintak's purpose in this book is not just to show how distorted and simplistic this view is. He also wants to prove that ‘Trump was the almost inevitable product of a long history of misguided policies and misleading assumptions about Islam’ (p. 1). However, Pintak also notes that the 2016 Republican primary legitimized anti-Muslim rhetoric in unprecedented ways and degrees. America and Islam is a very detailed and lively journalistic depiction of 2016 and its aftermath. The book is composed of four parts: ‘Politics: The Muslim bogeyman’, ‘(Mis)perceptions: Separating fact from fiction’, ‘Policies: Seeing black and white in a sea of gray’, and ‘Prospects: Islam beyond Trump’. The first part, ‘Politics’ deals with the framing of Islam primarily by the news media. The second part ‘(Mis)perceptions’ is on the myths and stereotypes about Islam in the United States. ‘Policies’ focuses on the realpolitik of Islamic radicalism and the role of the United States in the process. ‘Prospects’ focuses on new voices of Islam and the Americanization of Islam beyond Trump.
Pintak notes that stereotypes, distortion, and oversimplification are the basic characteristics of the U.S. media's portrayal of Islam. Recent literature on media and populism shows how the U.S. and European mainstream media fed the right-wing populist frenzy primarily for commercial reasons (Mazzoleni, 2003). Political journalism was undermined by increased market orientation. Hard news and serious political content were replaced with the competition over sensational, easily digestible political content aimed at attracting the attention of the audience. The situation got worse with ‘the entangling of political actors, topics, and processes with the entertainment culture’ (Nieland, 2008, p. 3659). The ‘old’ and ‘new’ media promoted a new ‘cultural-low’ (Ostiguy and Roberts, 2016), fueling the anti-elitist discourse of populism, and pampering the tastes and values of the ordinary citizen.
Pintak states that politicians and the media reduced the complexity of social and political issues into a sound-bite by refusing to see Islam and Muslims in their complexity and portraying Islam as a monolith. Several media strategies are used in this simplification process. One strategy is silencing or ignoring the critical and alternative voices within Islamic traditions in the U.S. For instance, voices within the Muslim community who denounce violence cannot find enough place in the media. Another strategy is the over-representation of violent acts by Muslim actors. Pintak compares the disproportionate news coverage of two events, the Boston Marathon bombing by Muslim perpetrators (20% of all coverage related to terrorism in the period of the study) and the 2012 massacre of six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin (3.8%). Pintak reaches the following conclusion: ‘That was because news editors and producers in New York and Washington, DC, knew their audiences: “Islamic” terrorism generated headlines and ratings, short of blowing up the Oklahoma City Federal Building, the actions of white racists rarely produced many eyes on the screen’ (p. 65). The third strategy is decontextualizing and essentializing “Islamic” terror by ignoring the social, historical, economic factors which led to organized terror and violence. Pintak notes that ‘the West had been creating the circumstances that bred “Islamic” terrorism since the final days of the Ottoman Empire’ and adds ‘particularly America, had created the circumstances that helped fuel the cause of violent Muslim extremists through a combination of cynical self-interest, a thirst for oil and geopolitical naivety’ (pp. 101–2).
Pintak's work is valuable for showing us that ‘people are not born terrorists but become terrorists’ (p. 139), and certain social, cultural, economic, political structures make them so. In making this argument one must also be careful not to ignore individual, moral responsibility and legitimize any form of violence. I believe Pintak succeeds in this respect by pointing to the importance of ‘voices of reason’ (p. 211) rising in the U.S primarily among American Muslims who stress the importance of critical thinking in fighting against extremism, and to ‘American Islam’ as a whole, which is holistic, diverse, always tolerant and tolerated. It seems that the media will fulfill an essential critical public responsibility by moving away from stereotypical, mistaken, sensational, and decontextualized frames when dealing with Islam and terrorism.
European Muslims and new media
Perhaps the best way of challenging a simplistic, stereotypical, and essentialist approach to social phenomena, including religion, is to focus on its daily and practical manifestations. The intricacies, multiplicity and complexity of real-life resist simplistic generalizations. ‘The studies on everyday life are valuable’, notes Kayıkçı, because they ‘show how Muslims make sense of their lives from the perspective of what Muslims “do” and “make”’ (p. 15). European Muslims and New Media is an important book focusing on the emerging forms of new media technologies and how they reflect on Muslim experiences in Europe. The book starts with an introductory article by Kayıkçı, followed by two parts comprising three articles each, and a conclusion by d’Haenens. The headlines of the two parts give us an idea about two major questions that the book tackles: the problem of religious knowledge and authority in the age of new media; and new Islamic narratives and discourses constructed in and through new media practices. In all articles ‘mediatization’ (Hepp, 2013) ‘public sphere’ (Habermas, 1991), and ‘alternative publics’ (Fraser, 1990) appear as common and frequent themes. By Kayıkçı's words, the chapters in the edited volume focus on subjects such as ‘marriage and intimacy, inter-ethnic relations, knowledge pursuit, conversion, community building, but also relatively newer phenomena such as blogging, “online jihad” and traveling for jihad, the public image of Muslims in the media and its public reception, Facebook as a self-expressive platform, and virtual communities’ (pp. 9–10). According to the contributions, social media provides European Muslims with novel counter-, -alternative, and subaltern-public spheres within which they live and experience Islamic authentically, inform the ‘Muslim self’, and construct Muslim identities.
As noted, the problem of religious authority is an important theme crosscutting several chapters in the book. Khamis, in ‘The Internet and New Communication Dynamics among Diasporic Muslims’, discusses some of the challenges posed by the internet among diasporic Muslim communities such as the question of religious authority or obtaining authoritative religious knowledge in the age of the internet (p. 35). Accordingly, although the internet provides the young, diasporic Muslims with ample opportunities to learn about their faith, spread their belief, allow others to learn about their local cultures, and expose themselves to new cultures, there are also several challenges and paradoxes. One threat, according to Khamis, emerges through opening the door for dissemination of unauthoritative religious knowledge by possibly unqualified and untrained individuals. ‘This, in turn, invites the danger of spreading flawed, inaccurate, or incomplete religious information or advice’ (p. 39). Multiple, diverse, and new interpretations of Islam that emerged in cyberspace ‘invites the danger and poses the threat of having a cacophony of incoherent, unauthoritative, or untrustworthy sources of religious knowledge production’ (p. 44). The problem with Khamis's argument is its overstress on the threats of loss of authority, equation of authoritative information with true and reliable information, and underestimation of the emancipatory potentials of ‘cacophony’. Jetvic's chapter in the book ‘Reforming Islam Online’ can be considered as a bright case study that shows that new communication milieus may encourage the democratization of knowledge and religious lifestyles through bypassing the traditional authority of ulema (religious scholars). Jetvic problematizes the rapid adaptation of new technology among Muslim communities in Europe with an ethnographic study of IslamBosna and asks the following question: ‘who does reforming and how are these new Islamic authorities shaping the religious practices of young Bosniaks living in the diaspora?’ (p. 54). Jetvic states that this process represents a current phase in a much longer and more complex history of reforming Muslim tradition. The following quotation from Jetvic's contribution might be useful for understanding the content of this reform: Safet, who has been visiting the website since 2007 and sees it as vital in ‘ending the monopoly of local leaders on accessing and interpreting the sources’ believed that the appeal of reformers lies in their ability to reclaim the ‘epistemological promise’ of the earlier ideologies and retrieve the absent teachings of the Qur’an as exemplified by the Prophet. He told me that IslamBosna provided a platform which allowed him to speak freely about the role of these reformers in a way ‘he simply couldn't with his local mosque leaders’ who are engaged in constant and apparently trivial debates, e.g., proper prayer technique, that say little about ‘how to live one's life in a non-Muslim society and the specific challenges posed by those circumstances’. (p. 60)
In the last article of the first part, van der Ploeg focuses on ‘Dutch Muslim Youth Bloggers’ and how they challenge the national discourse on Islam. van der Pload shows how blogs created a subaltern public sphere in which dominant anti-Islam discourses are challenged and alternative discourses are produced. Accordingly, the blogs (i) helped young Muslims to express a multifaceted identity opposing the dominant Muslim stereotype; (ii) provided a space where Muslim youth articulate their experiences and personal stories; (iii) are used as conduits to reverse racism through humour and sarcasm, (iv) provided a platform for engaging with the dominant public.
Three chapters in the second part of European Muslims and New Media, focus on creation of discourses through narratives and images. Carvalho's chapter ’Kids in the Green Lands of the Khilafat’ tries to understand ‘how self-proclaimed jihadists build up a Jihadist narrative on Tumblr through communication strategies that use imagery, aiming at an effective grass-rooted oriented engagement and recruitment of children into the Jihadist ideology’ (p. 93). Carvalho analyzes the discursive strategies in representing children as actual Jihadist fighters. In ‘Worlds Apart?’ Berbers, d’Haenens, and Koeman explore the relationship between the news framing of ‘Syria Fighters’ online discussion forums. Through a meticulous and detailed framing and content analysis, the article questions the impact of news frames on individual feelings and attitudes toward Islam. In ‘#Muslim?’, Frissen, Ichau, Boghe, and d’Haenens problematize the mediatization of Muslim religiosity through a visual analysis of Instagram posts. The key term of the article, ‘mediatization’ refers to ‘a social change process in which media have become increasingly influential in and deeply integrated into different spheres of society’ (Strömbäck and Esser, 2014, p. 4). Citing from Hjarvard, three processes that characterize mediatization of religion are (i) media's increasing role as a primary source of religious information and discussion about religion, (ii) the increasing effect of media on religious practice and experience, and (iii) transference of social and cultural functions of religious institutions to media. Departing from these points, the article tries to reveal the ‘thematic and symbolic imagery associated with Islam and Muslims within an online visual culture’ (p. 145). The detailed content analysis reveals that the most dominant ‘visuals’ in Instagram paradoxically appear to be texts. Secondly, a substantial share of symbols that researchers came across were related to female religious identity. Finally, the authors see a tension between individual, concrete representations of religious identity and appearance, and more abstract religious themes and ideas.
America and Islam and European Muslims and New Media are two timely and lively contributions that bring fresh and critical perspectives to media studies. While Pintak's journalistic work might be considered as an excellent source for communication scholars who study media frames (Tewksbury and Scheufele, 2009), Kayıkçı and d’Haenens’ edited volume sheds an ethnographic and sociological light on new Muslim generations in Europe in the age of mediatization.