The American network TLCs’ 90 Day Fiancé’s casting and storylines have provided its audience with years of entertainment, mostly at the foreign partner’s expense. The reality television industry has grown exponentially throughout the years, thriving on the drama between characters to gain viewership. However, reality television channels, such as Bravo …
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Hagia Sophia: An Analytical Overview of Religious and Media Argumentation (Arabic)
Scroll down for the Arabic abstract. Turkey’s Council of State, the highest Turkish administrative court, handed down its decision on July 10, 2020 regarding Hagia Sophia. The council reversed the monument’s status from a museum back into a mosque as from July 24, sparking heated debates between those in favor …
Read More »BOOK REVIEW | America & Islam: Lawrence Pintak’s Holy Grail?
Award-winning journalist-cum-academic Lawrence (Larry) Pintak has been on a mission for years trying to explain Islam to Americans, with his latest volume nailing it in the age of hysterical xenophobia and white supremacy. The cover of America and Islam: Soundbites, Suicide Bombs and the Road to Donald Trump sets the …
Read More »Book Review | Preaching Islamic Renewal: Religious Authority and Media in Contemporary Egypt
The impacts of new media have long fascinated scholars of contemporary Muslim societies. Beginning from the premise that new media configurations portend the “fragmentation” of religious authority (Eickelman and Anderson 1999; Anderson 2003), such works often display a curious mix of euphoria and anxiety about the “democratizing” potential of new …
Read More »Undoing Stereotypical Representations in Arab and Muslim Cinemas: Challenges, Interruptions, and Possibilities
Abstract Troubled by a history of misconceptions on Western silver screens, Arab and Muslim filmmakers have kept their cinematic productions thematically close to the reality of their postcolonial cultural and social conditions, while trying to represent their communities in complex ways. In many efforts of artistic excellence, the films they …
Read More »Picturing Law and Order: A Visual Framing Analysis of ISIS’s Dabiq Magazine
Abstract The rise of ideologically-driven lone actor terrorist attacks, coupled with the use of Internet-circulated media products as sources of inspiration, raises the need to understand the message strategies embedded in media campaigns of groups like ISIS. To better understand “enforcers” of ISIS’ interpretation of Shari’a law on the global …
Read More »Sources of Resilience in Political Islam: Sacred Time, Earthly Pragmatism, and Digital Media
Patience. [The member] should have plenty of patience for enduring afflictions if the enemies overcome him. He should not abandon this great path and sell himself and his religion to the enemies for his freedom. He should be patient in performing the work, even if it lasts a long time. …
Read More »International Media Discourse on the Crisis of Rohingya Muslims (Arabic)
Scroll down for the Arabic abstract. This research tackles the crisis of the Rohingya Muslims in the discourse of foreign websites, aiming to analyze the structural features of the selected websites' discourse. It mainly analyzes the websites discourse pillars and their declared positions towards the crisis. This was conducted by …
Read More »REVIEW | Islam for Journalists (And Everyone Else)
Most American journalists probably know little about covering Islam accurately, fairly, ethically and contextually amid rising levels of xenophobia, hate speech and “fake news” in the U.S., but help is on the way. In 1980, I arrived in Beirut as CBS News Middle East correspondent. My qualifications for covering this complex …
Read More »Roots of Religious Extremism: The Muslim Brotherhood and the Four Faces of Tyranny
One way of getting to the “root causes” of terrorism and religious extremism in the Middle East is to examine the thinking of the mother organization of all groups and movements espousing violence and terrorism. Fortunately, the history of the Muslim Brothers is well researched. The revelations of the organization reflect a great deal of inconsistencies between the general and the specific: public pronouncements and specific documents, theory and practice, English and Arabic.
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