Jihadi Audiovisuality And Its Entanglements

Explores the use of images, sounds and videos in Jihadi media and how people engage with them.

Describing the Islamic State’s ideologues as ‘entrepreneurs of identity’, this book explores how the group defined categories of social identity and used them as tools of communicative and cognitive structuring. Based on a wide dossier of original texts, speeches, images, and videos, the book examines how these ideologues have built a symbolic repertoire around the black flag as well as ideas and social practices such as the dictum to command good and forbid wrong, the supervision of public behaviour, and the oath of allegiance to the Caliph.

Preaching, a practice composed of and accompanied by a myriad of different activities, is an essential element of Muslim religious life both within and beyond mosques. As such, Islamic preaching is a common means of religious promulgation and knowledge transfer, of pastoral guidance and uplift, but also of communication between believers, and as a source of negotiating religious normativity, power relations, and societal topics. Given the centrality of preaching in Muslims' religious life, this collective volume presents contributions on various aspects of performance, text, space, and materiality of Islamic preaching in history and present. The interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary framework captures Islamic preaching as it unfolds in its social setting. The volume aims at representing the inner-Islamic diversity by depicting the practice of preaching as it came about in different times and geographical locations, shedding light onto Friday gatherings and sermons (ḫutba), and other forms of preaching (e. g. waʿẓ), be it during Ramadan, at religious feasts and commemorations, or on personal occasions such as weddings and funerals. Therefore, each chapter offers a different insight into the interwoven character of sermons' contents, the preacher him/herself, and the audience by emphasising the role of their bodily performance, of the temporality and spatiality of preaching, and of the objects and items involved.

Hearing Islam introduces the global religious tradition of Islam through its rich history of sounds and music. The book explores how the centrality of sonic practices and experiences within Islamic traditions stems largely from the orality of the Qur’an and the importance of recitation, while arguing that sound can provide a productive point of entry to human cultures in general. Its tripartite structure guides the reader through the foundations of Islamic traditions and sounds; theoretical frameworks of orality, listening, and deafness; and some of the major types of sonic practices and genres related to Islam, such as chanting the Islamic poetic tradition, South Asian qawwali, and hip-hop. This cutting-edge textbook is the go-to volume for students of Islam and sound, Islamic studies, religion and sound, and the practice of Islam.

This book explores the online strategies and presence of Salafi-Jihadi actors in the Nordic as well as the international context. Global Salafi-jihadism has been at the epicentre of international focus during the past decade. This book explores how the Swedish and other Nordic Salafi-jihadist sympathisers have used social digital media to radicalise, recruit, and propagate followers in relation to foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs) and online communities. The chapters in this volume unpack different perspectives of Salafi-jihadi communications strategies, as well as how the international Salafi-jihadi community has constantly reconfigured and adapted to changing security conditions. The case studies of the Nordics constitute a microcosm of wider Salafi-jihadi narratives in relation to the rise and fall of the Islamic State’s so-called ‘digital caliphate’. This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism studies, counter-extremism and counter-terrorism, social media and security studies.

This second collective volume of the series The Presence of the Prophet explores the growing importance of the figure of the Prophet Muhammad for questions of authority and power in early modern and modern times. The authors provide a rich collection of case studies on how Muhammad’s material, spiritual, and genealogical heritage has been claimed for the foundation of Muslim empires, revolutionary movements, the formation of modern nation states and ideologies, as well as for communal mobilization and social reform. This novel comparative, and diachronic study, which is unique for its wide coverage of regional cases and perspectives, reveals diverse political representations of the Prophet in an increasingly globalised struggle over the control of his image between secularization and sacralization. Contributors Gianfranco Bria, Rachida Chih, Christoph Günther, Gottfried Hagen, Jan-Peter Hartung, David Jordan, Soraya Khodamoradi, Jamal Malik, Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen, Alix Philippon, Martin Riexinger, Stefan Reichmuth, Dilek Sarmis, Renaud Soler, Jaafar Ben El Haj Soulami, Florian Zemmin.

The Middle East's digital turn has renewed hopes of socio-economic development and political change across the region, but it is also marked by stark contradictions and historical tensions. In this book, Mohamed Zayani and Joe F. Khalil contend that the region is caught in a digital double bind in which the same conditions that drive the state, market, and public immersion in the digital also inhibit change and perpetuate stasis. The Digital Double Bind offers a path-breaking analysis of how the Middle East negotiates its relation to the digital and provides a roadmap for a critical engagement with technology and change in the Global South.

The second edition of The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Popular Music provides an updated, state-of-the-art analysis of the most important themes and concepts in the field, combining research in religious studies, theology, critical musicology, cultural analysis, and sociology. It comprises 30 updated essays and six new chapters covering the following areas: · Popular Music, Religion, and Performance · Musicological Perspectives · Popular Music and Religious Syncretism · Atheism and Popular Music · Industrial Music and Noise · K-pop The Handbook continues to provide a guide to methodology, key genres and popular music subcultures, as well as an extensive updated bibliography. It remains the essential tool for anyone with an interest in popular culture generally and religion and popular music in particular.