Takfir-Online: Anonymous Encounters Between Islam and Digital Media
Introduction
The last decade has marked social media’s influential role in challenging the established centers of knowledge at a global level. Particularly within oppressive political systems, the question arises whether democratised digital mediation, in its creation of platforms for self-expression and the disruption of regimes in times of political turmoil, has backfired. Videos of all sorts continue to invade the digital sphere, offering an opportunity for the assertion and representation of the self to different audiences. However, with the rise of ‘digital freedom’ came the rise of ‘digital extremism’ in forms of anonymous, and orchestrated, online religious encounters.
In my intended research project, I will demonstrate how self-expression on digital platforms has reshaped notions of freedom and how these platforms have simultaneously been utilised to encourage extremism within young communities i n the Middle East. Specifically I will examine the split between digital productions as forms of liberal self-expression and religious extremism as led by online-Takfiris (1).
Methodology
Who Owns the Digital Vernacular?
My research project will study material in the public domain and in most cases published by parties ‘unknown’ due to censorship. I will use an interdisciplinary, collaborative, ethnographic approach in order to understand the technical and creative attributes of such productions from within, rather than analyzing them as parachuted art-forms.
I plan to curate workshops, analyse data sets and conduct interviews in order to take into consideration the agents of transmission and dissemination (programmers, hackers, animators, designers and online ‘armies’, to name but a few). I also aim to use my design experience2 to create processes that structure my research, to test and iterate my findings, and to design monitoring tools to further understand the dual discourse of simultaneously asserting the self and the counter-self.
Arab Artivism
In “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Gayatri Spivak suggests that the subaltern is denied access to both mimetic and political forms of representation. Spivak’s rhetorical question becomes an important base for analyzing ‘Artivist’ and non-celebrity clips coming from North Africa and the Middle East. Is the subaltern finally speaking? If so, are they speaking in their own language or using the language of their colonial oppressors? Is considering today’s digital ‘artistic’ productions another way of colonizing and classifying the subaltern and thus diluting its voice?
Anonymously Asserting the Self
Online videos circulate amongst Arab speaking communities on a daily basis. While these clips are mostly of a comedic nature, much of the material remains anonymous for it carries subversive political and sexual messages designed and produced by unknown ‘artists’ who use nicknames and encrypted transmission platforms.
While the trilogy of sex, politics and religion prevails, a noticeable presence for queerness paves its way to Arab spectators. Ahmad Al-Shirazy, a Youtuber who reposts clips from his other digital platforms is one of many similar examples of personas considered ‘alien’ to Arab audiences for their unconventional representation of gender. While his videos are voyeuristically entertaining to many, the comments sections are flooded with death threats. Al-shirazy shakes his belly and with it, shakes a lot of cultural taboos, too.
Dance seems like a common thread attracting online attention as multiple videos on Youtube mockingly expose Muslim sheikhs caught in the act of swaying to the beats of ‘Haram’ or Muslim presidents rapping and joking. (2) While mockery dominates non-celebrity clips on the online sphere, a limited number of channels offers content on political mobilisation (3) or alternative religious forms of popular culture in the case of Halal Rap.
Takfiris, Internet Imams and Sheikh-bots
Halal Rap is a mild, yet popular, manifestation of Islam on digital platforms. Deen Squad is a Muslim rapper duo who rerecords popular songs after removing profanities and references to sex and drugs to make them halal, or permissible und er the rules of Islam. Expressing the self amongst Arab-Muslim audiences is thus not only an act of articulation and empowerment under oppressive regimes, but also a double-sided spectrum that leans towards art activism on the one hand and religious activism on the other.
Conclusion
Asserting the self within authoritarian political climates through amateur digital platforms is a phenomenon worth further research. These platforms potentially create safe virtual spaces for the incubation and fostering of ‘Artivism’ in the Arab region. This is crucial especially in times of threatened human rights in Egypt, receding freedom of speech in Lebanon, and the economic dominance of wealthy regimes in the Gulf region that sanction and curate predominantly compliant, passive art and media that cannot, should not and do not question the status-quo.
2019
Published on:
December 26, 2019
#Artivism, #Digital, #Extrimism, #Identity, #Islam, #Mediation, #Memory, #Popular Culture, #Propaganda, #Takfir
This abstract was written as a submission to the ITN MIDA - Mediating Islam in the Digital Age program. It answers the topic on “Art activist (artivist) and non-celebrity clips as expressions of self in North Africa and the Middle East”.
(1) – Takfir: Pronouncement that someone is an unbeliever (kafir) and no longer Muslim. Takfir is used in the modern era for sanctioning violence against leaders of Islamic states who are deemed insufficiently religious. It has become a central ideology of militant groups such as those in Egypt, which reflect the ideas of Sayyid Qutb , Mawdudi , Ibn Taymiyyah , and Ibn Kathir .
Mainstream Muslims and Islamist groups reject the concept as a doctrinal deviation. Leaders such as Hasan al-Hudaybi (d. 1977 ) and Yusuf al-Qaradawi reject takfir as un-Islamic and marked by bigotry and zealotry. (Oxford dict.)
(2) – For instance, Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has been subversively animated as high on hashish as a reaction to his controversial opinions about Egypt’s economic regression.
(3) – Animation by Team Palestina (2014): I have the right to pray in Al Aqsa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDYjpLyZSbA
Takfir-Online: Anonymous Encounters Between Islam and Digital Media
2019
Published on:
#Artivism, #Digital, #Extrimism, #Identity, #Islam, #Mediation, #Memory, #Popular Culture, #Propaganda, #Takfir
This abstract was written as a submission to the ITN MIDA - Mediating Islam in the Digital Age program. It answers the topic on “Art activist (artivist) and non-celebrity clips as expressions of self in North Africa and the Middle East”.
Introduction
The last decade has marked social media’s influential role in challenging the established centers of knowledge at a global level. Particularly within oppressive political systems, the question arises whether democratised digital mediation, in its creation of platforms for self-expression and the disruption of regimes in times of political turmoil, has backfired. Videos of all sorts continue to invade the digital sphere, offering an opportunity for the assertion and representation of the self to different audiences. However, with the rise of ‘digital freedom’ came the rise of ‘digital extremism’ in forms of anonymous, and orchestrated, online religious encounters.
In my intended research project, I will demonstrate how self-expression on digital platforms has reshaped notions of freedom and how these platforms have simultaneously been utilised to encourage extremism within young communities i n the Middle East. Specifically I will examine the split between digital productions as forms of liberal self-expression and religious extremism as led by online-Takfiris (1).
Methodology
Who Owns the Digital Vernacular?
My research project will study material in the public domain and in most cases published by parties ‘unknown’ due to censorship. I will use an interdisciplinary, collaborative, ethnographic approach in order to understand the technical and creative attributes of such productions from within, rather than analyzing them as parachuted art-forms.
I plan to curate workshops, analyse data sets and conduct interviews in order to take into consideration the agents of transmission and dissemination (programmers, hackers, animators, designers and online ‘armies’, to name but a few). I also aim to use my design experience2 to create processes that structure my research, to test and iterate my findings, and to design monitoring tools to further understand the dual discourse of simultaneously asserting the self and the counter-self.
Arab Artivism
In “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Gayatri Spivak suggests that the subaltern is denied access to both mimetic and political forms of representation. Spivak’s rhetorical question becomes an important base for analyzing ‘Artivist’ and non-celebrity clips coming from North Africa and the Middle East. Is the subaltern finally speaking? If so, are they speaking in their own language or using the language of their colonial oppressors? Is considering today’s digital ‘artistic’ productions another way of colonizing and classifying the subaltern and thus diluting its voice?
Anonymously Asserting the Self
Online videos circulate amongst Arab speaking communities on a daily basis. While these clips are mostly of a comedic nature, much of the material remains anonymous for it carries subversive political and sexual messages designed and produced by unknown ‘artists’ who use nicknames and encrypted transmission platforms.
While the trilogy of sex, politics and religion prevails, a noticeable presence for queerness paves its way to Arab spectators. Ahmad Al-Shirazy, a Youtuber who reposts clips from his other digital platforms is one of many similar examples of personas considered ‘alien’ to Arab audiences for their unconventional representation of gender. While his videos are voyeuristically entertaining to many, the comments sections are flooded with death threats. Al-shirazy shakes his belly and with it, shakes a lot of cultural taboos, too.
Dance seems like a common thread attracting online attention as multiple videos on Youtube mockingly expose Muslim sheikhs caught in the act of swaying to the beats of ‘Haram’ or Muslim presidents rapping and joking. (2) While mockery dominates non-celebrity clips on the online sphere, a limited number of channels offers content on political mobilisation (3) or alternative religious forms of popular culture in the case of Halal Rap.
Takfiris, Internet Imams and Sheikh-bots
Halal Rap is a mild, yet popular, manifestation of Islam on digital platforms. Deen Squad is a Muslim rapper duo who rerecords popular songs after removing profanities and references to sex and drugs to make them halal, or permissible und er the rules of Islam. Expressing the self amongst Arab-Muslim audiences is thus not only an act of articulation and empowerment under oppressive regimes, but also a double-sided spectrum that leans towards art activism on the one hand and religious activism on the other.
Conclusion
Asserting the self within authoritarian political climates through amateur digital platforms is a phenomenon worth further research. These platforms potentially create safe virtual spaces for the incubation and fostering of ‘Artivism’ in the Arab region. This is crucial especially in times of threatened human rights in Egypt, receding freedom of speech in Lebanon, and the economic dominance of wealthy regimes in the Gulf region that sanction and curate predominantly compliant, passive art and media that cannot, should not and do not question the status-quo.