From audio tapes to video blogs

The delocalisation of authority in Islam

Dados Bibliográficos

ID6305136
AutoresNabil Echchaibi (University of Colorado System, autor correspondente)
Ano2011
Volume17
Fascículo1
Páginas25-44
Data de publicação2011-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoNations and Nationalism (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1345-5078 • E-ISSN: 1469-8129
EditoraWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1469-8129.2010.00468.x
OpenAlexW1775252362
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas36
Referências citadas7

Today, a new breed of charismatic and media-savvy religious figures are reinvigorating internal debates on Islam by drawing large audiences across the Muslim world and the Muslim diaspora in the West. Using satellite media, websites, blogs and video blogs, these new religious celebrities are changing the nature of debate in Islam from a doctrinaire discourse to a practical discussion that focuses on individual enterprise as a spiritual quest. These leaders have become religious entrepreneurs, with sophisticated networks of message distribution and media presence. From Amr Khaled and Moez Masood, two leading figures of Arab Islamic entertainment television, to Baba Ali, a famous Muslim video blogger from California, Islam has never been more marketable. Satellite television and the internet are becoming fertile discursive spaces where not only religious meanings are reconfigured but also new Islamic experiences are mediated transnationally. This delocalisation of Islamic authority beyond the traditional sources of Egypt and Saudi Arabia is generating new producers and locales of religious meaning in Dubai, London, Paris and Los Angeles. This article examines the impact of celebrity religious figures and their new media technologies on the relativisation of authority in Islam and the emergence of a cosmopolitan transnational audience of Muslims. I ask if this transnational and seemingly apolitical effort is generating a new form of religious nationalism that devalues the importance of national loyalties

Creed · Diaspora · Entertainment · Islam · Media studies · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · The Internet · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Gender Studies · History · Islamic Studies and History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies