ANTHROPOLOGY SOCIAL SCIENCES FACULTY

Being Muslim in the age of

Facebook, Youtube and
Twitter
Anthropological reflections on Media and Religion
Symposium, April 18th-19th
 Being Muslim in the Age of Facebook, Youtube and
Twitter
Anthropological Reflections on Media and Religion

September 2012, Youtube postings of the film Innocence of Muslims sparked manifestations of indignation
all over the world, many African cities included. While at times, the demonstrations were peaceful, Reuters
mentioned that Shi'ite Muslims in the Nigerian town of Katsina burned U.S., French and Israeli flags, and a
religious leader called for protests to continue until the makers of the film and cartoons are punished. The
Islamic Movement in Nigeria organized a protest march in Kano, northern Nigeria, in which thousands
marched peacefully. On 21 September 2012, thousands of Muslims rallied through the roads after Friday
prayers in Dar es Salaam where different speeches, which condemned the film, were provided. Men, women
children and even elders, together made a peaceful march. Elsewhere, like in Cairo, riots occurred and
people were killed. The reactions did not only reflect a concern about respect for Islam communities. Rather,
the protests themselves became moments in which local state actions gained meaning as well. Authorities in
Cairo, for example, are said to have ordered the arrest of seven US-based Egyptian Coptic Christians for
their alleged involvement in the anti-Islam video. In Bamako, on the other hand, protests were scheduled to
take place in front of the American Embassy, but in the end were canceled. According to rumors, protesters
feared that violent interventions by the national army would offer the government the occasion to mobilize
respect for and support of the US.

These events trigger questions concerning the imagination of the West; the representation of Islam; and the
dialectics between politics and social media. We want to invite three prominent anthropologists who have
done extensive fieldwork on media and popular forms of mobilization in three different African countries
where Islam is important: Egypt, Mali and Tanzania.

During a roundtable session, the scholars will address the two following questions:

1. What does it mean to be a Muslim in the global media age? How do media representations, media
practice and media use influence piety, faith and the public manifestation of ones religious identity?

2. And, how do the public manifestations (sometimes violent, sometimes peaceful) by Islam believers
and triggered by media influence their daily interactions with other religious practitioners? How are
these mobilizations inscribed within local conversations with Christian communities and other religious
groups? And, how are these also transformed by inter-religious encounters?

3. What kinds of moral communities are being created throughout the media? To which extent do new
media provide a platform for shaping pious self-understandings and can religious groups draw on these new
technologies to establish and create new collectivities or counter-publics?

From Representation to Mobilization

Anthropologists are turning more and more to the significance of social media. In particular, compelling
research deals with how new media platforms impact lifestyles, construct imagined communities or ethical
communities, and shape agency, fantasies and expectations.
Influential scholars that have set the theoretical background for an anthropology of social media are Benedict
Anderson and Arjun Appadurai. In Imagined Communities (1983), Anderson analysed how the formation of
nations depend to a high degree on innovations in communication technologies, in particular the print press.
By reading journal articles that discuss issues of common interest, national publics came into being.
Newspapers were written in a language its readers shared, and enabled the emergence of a national
consciousness.

Apart from the formation of national groups, media of all kinds are fundamental in the creation and
consolidation of religious groups and the mobilization of transcendental powers as well (Meyer and Moors
2006). Challenging for students of contemporary society is that innovations in communication technologies
such as radio, television and, especially social media, give rise to various kinds of new communities and
publics, new forms of attachment and belonging, and novel ways of experimenting with collective and private
identities. In particular, social media bring to the fore the participatory element of the public. Writing
comments on e-platforms, sharing images and photo-shopping them, blogging or updating ones online
status are practices that bring out the agency of members of these new publics, and that can induce mass
actions.

Appadurais elaboration (1990) on the mediascape draws our attention to the trajectories of print and
electronic media. These travel along fluid and irregular global cultural flows, which cross local and global
boundaries, and produce new realities. Probably best known about the contemporary Muslim mediascape,
because of the widespread media coverage, are the Mohammed cartoons published in Danish newspapers
and, recently, the anti-Islam film produced in the US. These images, originating in Western Christian
societies but immediately dialoguing with Islam leaders and practices of faith mobilize feelings of anger,
frustration, hatred and disgust; they inspire violent confrontations and peaceful dialogues; they force Muslims
and non-Muslims to reflect about the worlds they inhabit, and to take position. These forms of mobilization
may be new; yet, they also stand in local histories of community formation, public dialogue and registers of
faith expression.
Invited speakers:

Prof. Dr. Kelly Askew, associate Professor at the University of Michigan (USA)
Kelly Askew has pursued extensive fieldwork in East Africa along the Swahili Coast of Tanzania and Kenya
on topics relating to music and politics, media, performance, nationalism, socialism, and postsocialism. In
addition to academic work, she is actively involved in film and television production, having worked in various
capacities on two feature films and a number of documentary films. Her publications include two edited
volumes, African Postsocialisms (co-edited with M. Anne Pitcher, Edinburgh University Press, 2006) and The
Anthropology of Media: A Reader (co-edited with Richard R. Wilk, Blackwell Publishers, 2002), articles on
topics ranging from nationalism to gender relations to Hollywood film production, and a book on music and
politics in Tanzania entitled Performing the Nation: Swahili Music and Cultural Production in Tanzania
(University of Chicago Press, 2002).

Prof. Dr. Charles Hirschkind, associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley (USA)
Charles Hirschkinds research interests concern religious practice, media technologies, and emergent forms
of political community in the Middle East, North America, and Europe. Taking contemporary developments
within the traditions of Islam as his primary focus, he has explored how various religious practices and
institutions have been revised and renewed both by modern norms of social and political life, and by the
styles of consumption and culture linked to global mass media practices. His first book, The Ethical
Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics (Columbia 2006), explores how a popular
Islamic media form-the cassette sermon-has profoundly transformed the political geography of the Middle
East over the last three decades. Also see his articleNew Media and Political Dissent in Egypt, Revista
de Dialectologia y Tradiciones Populares 65, 1 (2010): 137-153, in which he situates the Tahrir
manifestations within a longer history of political mobilization and transformations in the Cairene public
sphere.

Prof. Dr. Dorothea Schulz, professor at the University of Cologne (Germany)

Dorothea Schulz research, publications, and teaching are centered on the anthropology of religion, political
anthropology, Islam in Africa, gender studies, media studies, and public culture. She has extensive field
research experience in West Africa, particularly in urban and rural Mali and has recently embarked on a new
research project in Eastern Uganda that deals with Muslim politics of education as well as with intra-Muslim
debate over burial rituals and proper religious practice. Her new book Muslims and New Media in West
Africa: Pathways to God (Indiana University Press, 2011) analyzes Muslim revivalist groups in Mali that draw
inspiration from transnational trends of Muslim moral reform and promote a relatively new conception of
publicly enacted religiosity (significantly displayed in feminized signs of piety).
Full program

THURSDAY APRIL 18TH

3pm-5:30pm
Key Note Round Table with Dorothea Schulze, Kelly Askew & Charles Hirschkind
Place: AV 02.17

3pm: Welcome and introduction

Dr. Katrien Pype (IARA)

3:15 4:15 pm: Keynote on the role of social media and religious groups
Prof. Dr. Charles Hirschkind
Prof. Dr. Kelly Askew
Prof. Dr. Dorothea Schulze

4:15pm 4:45pm: Round table on media and religion with keynote speakers
Moderated by Prof. Dr. Steven Van Wolputte and Prof. Dr. Nadia Fadil

4:45pm 5:30pm: Q&A with audience

FRIDAY APRIL 19TH

9 am 10:30 am (SW02.07) - PhD Seminar with Prof. Dr. Dorothea Schulze

Megan Bartel (University of Calgary) Religious groups and soft power through the internet

Amidst the world of IPhones, Facebook, and Twitter, ever evolving technologies seem to pervade every
crevice of society indeed, they are often inescapable. Some of the most recent and avant-garde
technologies to date are those pertaining to the internet, particularly social media. Social media has
revolutionized the means and the speed by which people are able to communicate. Furthermore, within the
realms of social media, lies the potential for people to effect social and political change.

For the purpose of this work, the language of soft power (a term coined by Joseph Nye), shall be employed.
Nye has defined soft power as the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion.
This paper shall explore the possibility for online religious groups to exercise soft power through the vehicle
of social media insofar as they can rapidly bring together religious actors from around the globe for the
purpose of advocating common goals and ideas, as well as, more specifically, insofar as they might hold
governments and actors in the public and political spheres accountable. I have located three specific online
groups on which this paper shall be focused: Homosexual Christians, Engaged Buddhists, and Muslim
Feminists. Jennifer Earl has provided compelling contributions to scholarship in terms of how the internet
and social media have vastly changed both the platform and the role of social activism in the modern world.
Although her research is not focused on religious groups, Earls work on e-movements and web activism has
the potential to set the stage for my arguments concerning religious groups, specifically. When understood
with respect to the work of Nye and thus translated into the language of soft power and accountability, I think
there is a compelling argument to be made that religious communities might remain politically, socially, and
ethically relevant when they are effectively engaged with the social media world.

Marloes Hamelinck (Utrecht University) Phones, boyfriends and buibuis: Zanzibari women and the
mediation of Swahili Islam

Muslims on the islands of Zanzibar on the east coast of Tanzania, demonstrate a rise in religious practices in
daily life. Public piety and Islamic awareness are expanding both in offline and online spheres. Islamic
knowledge and practice increase mainly due to scholars who gained knowledge in Arabic countries and the
rise of religious mass media. However, mass media and communication technologies are often blamed to be
the main cause in the development of westernization and modernization of the Swahili1 society. This belief is
especially apparent in the older generation of women, who fear that the youth is becoming westernized and
their religious and cultural values are in decline. However, with the rise in technology, and therefore access
to education, young girls have more religious knowledge and dress more religiously conservative than their
mothers did when they were young.

During my current ethnographic fieldwork I focus on ideas about the relations between technology, Islam
and the way women express religiosity and perform social relationships in daily life, both online and offline.
Internet and mobile phones are used to intensify social networks and to express religiosity. Besides, Muslim
women use those technologies in mediating love relationships, their secrets and the moral ethics involved in
navigating those relationships. Young women find ways to negotiate the cultural and religious expectations
of the society they are part of, and embed communication technologies within their daily social lives, creating
a more flexible space to express their identities.

10:45 am 12:15pm (SW02.07) PhD Seminar with Prof. Dr. Kelly Askew

Jitte Brys (SOAS London) Islamic Hiphop in Jakara and social media

This paper investigates the emergence of Islamic fundamentalist rappers and punk-rock musicians in
Jakarta, Indonesia. An important aspect of this research is the way in which these urban middle class
Muslims actively make use of social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Blogspot and YouTube, to spread
their messages of social and political protest. This protest is analysed in two of my case studies where I talk
about a few key figures (mainly rappers and punk-rock singers) in the Islamic underground community,
mostly referred to as Salam Satu Jari or One Finger Movement.2 Muslim artists and supporters who identify
themselves with this movement 1) want to go back to the fundaments of Islam3, 2) feel closely connected to
devote Muslims in other parts of the global world, especially to those who suffer, 3) strongly believe in a

1
The term Swahili is used for the inhabitants of the east African coast, and shares mainly commonalities in the
tremendous diversity and the exchange of cultural practices and believes (Askew 1999: 70).

2
The name Salam Satu Jari or One Finger Movement refers to different symbols and meanings, but the main meaning
is the believe in one God, Allah.

3
This, for example, includes the ban of alcohol/drugs and free sex (sexual intercourse before or outside marriage), no
physical contact between men and women (e.g hand shaking), a simple (non-commercial) lifestyle, the burqa for
women (which is unusual in most parts of Indonesia),..
Zionist conspiracy theory between the US and Israel that is meant to destroy the Muslim world and 4) have
online access to blogs and fan-pages, free mp3 downloads, music videos, concert flyers and information
about gatherings and protest actions,.. Although these Satu Jari Muslims tend to worship a devote and
simple/non-commercial lifestyle, that rejects capitalism and certain negative Western influences (such as
the consumption of drugs/alcohol and the use of condoms), they also prove to be part of a different form of
modernity one in which technology and information plays an important role.

Abderrahman El Aissati (Tilburg University) Tattoos for believers: constructing religious identities
among Moroccans in the Diaspora

This contribution is about how social media and Internet forums allow for stronger (more prominent) identity
markers than off line discourse. The Internet allows inscriptions of individuals to last longer than in offline
modes of conversation, and can enhance the visibility of personal attributes. As such it can speed up the
process of group identification. Although the personal trust needed for group formation is relatively hard to
gain in the online mode, users can build up large support groups as well as tightly knit communities (through
private messaging for example) . I will deal with data that illustrate the richness of the online mode with
respect to religious identity, in particular how social media and Internet forum users present themselves with
respect to marking a religious identity. The data cover instances of graphic uses such as the choice of
avatars and message signatures, and textual uses such as code-switching to Standard Arabic, and the use
of Literary Dutch style.

2:30pm 4pm (SW02.25) PhD Seminar with Prof. Dr. Charles Hirschkind

Iman Lechkar (HU Brussel) Belgian Muslim converts, facebook and the ideal of solidarity and a
human centered formation

The developments of Islam in Belgium cannot be situated outside the global mass media practices. Muslim
(Sunni) converts in Belgium refuse to inscribe themselves in the dominant neo-liberal society and create
specific social and ethical frames to shape formations are that are centered on solidarity and human
wellbeing. Based on Lechkars doctoral thesis on conversion to and within Islam, this paper aims at
presenting the impact of social media on ethical, social and political ideas and commitments. It particularly
investigates how solidarity and human wellbeing is represented, shaped en reinforced through facebook.

Nerina Rustomji (St. John's University) New Media and the Houris of Islamic Paradise

In one of the Danish cartoons published in Jyllands-Posten in 2005, prophet Muhammad yells out to suicide
bombers approaching heaven, "Stop stop we ran out of virgins." References to these pure female
companionscalled hur in Arabic and referred to as houris or "virgins" in Englishhave become so
commonplace that they now represent pervasive assumptions about Islam. While American and European
discourse about Islam is obsessed with the sexual and violent associations of the houri, this figure has
contested meanings that are debated on the Internet. Aside from the many sensational American blogs
about the houris, there are lectures by some Muslim theologians who use the figure of the houri as a
metaphor for purity. There are also contested feminist approaches to the houris, which range from arguing
one position - that houris are a byproduct of male patriarchy and Islamic oppression - to another that all
women transform into pure houris upon entry in heaven and so the figure of the houri reinforces equality.
Meanwhile, jihadis repeatedly use the phrase "marriage with the houris" as a code that signals their intention
to employ violence for strategic aims.

This presentation uses discursive analysis and intellectual history to demonstrate how the dynamic interplay
of new media after September 11th has transformed the classical Islamic houri into a global symbol of Islam.
The significance of the presentation is that it not only shows how varying Muslim religious and political
interpretations use medieval tropes and reconfigure them in global discussion about Muslim piety, but also
accounts for how varying moral communities have turned the houri into a twenty-first century new media
icon.

Aslihan Akkaya (Georgetown University) Devotion and Friendship through Facebook. An

Ethnographic Approach to Language, Community and Identity Performances of Young Turkish-
American Women

Skype session TBC

This research explores how linguistic, media, and semiotic ideologies intersect in the integration of
Facebook as communication media in religious practices of a group of young Turkish-American women
affiliated with a faith-based civic movement, known as the Gulen or Hizmet (volunters service) Movement.
Conducting a three-year long ethnography (2008-2011), I observed these young Muslim womens
participation in various instances of discourse on Facebook in addition to conducting several face-to-face
ethnographic interviews with the group members. Observing the circulation of discourse, specifically the
uses of interdiscursive and hence semiotic processes and mechanisms, I witness the unfolding discourse
and so the mediation of various ideologies that have a great impact on these young Turkish-American
women practices and performances on and off Facebook (Eisenlohr 2010, Gershon 2010, Spitulnik Vidali
2010).

I observed that these young women, after being dispersed to different locations, began to see Facebook as
a vital means to maintain their group ties. Stepping into the ideological realm, I understand that the notion of
friendship is highly influenced by an ideology of tefn (advanced level of religious brotherhood). That is,
true/religious brotherhood is one of the important principles of gaining ikhlas (sincerity) and hence a way to
establish good relations with God; these young women see Facebook as a means to further their
relationship with their sisters and thus establish a good relationship with God.

Influenced by several competing ideologies, these young women negotiated the positive and negative sides
of Facebook in terms of their religiosity. In this negotiation process, they both negotiate Facebook and their
identities as emergent in discourse via practices and performances (Bucholtz and Hall 2004). By means of
distinguishing their Facebook from the popular use of it, they index their difference from the mainstream
users and hence index otherness of their practices and identity.
Practical Information

The event will take place at the Campus of the Social Sciences Faculty
Parkstraat 45
3000 Leuven

Map for more information at: http://soc.kuleuven.be/web/staticpage/1/1/eng/5

Organising commitee:

Katrien Pype (IARA KU Leuven)

Nadia Fadil (IMMRC KU Leuven)
Jori De Coster (IMMRC KU Leuven)

This event is sponsored by IARA (www.iara.be), IMMRC (www.immrc.be), Glen Chair for Intercultural Studies
(KU Leuven) the Faculty of Social Sciences, the PhD School for Humanities and the Flemish Government