Dale F. Eickelman and Jon W. Anderson (eds)

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003

1 The world of Muslim opinion, discourse, talk, and teaching focused by religion and concerning its doctrine, practice and proper role in society. Spokespersons legitimized by conventional systems of learning and their means of production increasingly find themselves complemented and even challenged not just by locally rooted understandings of Islam, with which they are familiar, but also with rival and alternative articulations of belief and practice. New media add new performance genres to those of learned commentary and sermons, drawing in resources and skills of distinctly bourgeois character and settings. Far from limiting the potential audience, these resources and skills represent the expansion of Islamic public spheres that was set in motion by the spread of ediucation.

2. Many local religious ideas and practices in Muslim-majority societies, long taken for granted and understood as Islamic, come under increasing scrutiny with growing familiarity with other Islamic communities and ways of doing things. These change local balances of competing religious authorities.

3. In the larger public spheres in which Muslims are minorities, the dynamics of new media forge and sustain contact and continued interactions between diasporas and homelands. This may strengthen sectarian bonds. It also fosters attention to the fates of emigrants and Muslims in Western countries. It may lead to a great openness, such as expanding the options for women to participate in the wider life of society; in other contexts it may reinforce entrenched ways.

The contributions in the book explore these themes, through theoretical analyses and more particular case studies. Eickelman sees the new media as more participatory than earlier media, either through the access they give for the uninitiated to join conversations, or by the implicit invitation to interpret more generic, less personalized messages bound to particular contexts. Boundaries between public and private communication that once seemed clear are blurred. He considers one of the major impacts of the new media sphere is the reintellectualization of Islamic discourse, as the presentation of Islamic doctrine and discourse in more accessible, vernacular terms contributes to basic reconfigurations of doctrine and practice, away from long-standing conventions of interpretation towards addressing the current experiences of believers. "Those identified as Islamists build their authority not only on personal reputation and knowledge of texts but, increasingly, from a demonstrated practical grasp of social and an ability to share with their audiences a grasp of their daily challenges." (p.13)

This view is shared by Jon Anderson in his chapter on "The internet and Islam's new interpreters." "The Internet is one of these new media, by some measures a new public space, which enables a new class of interpreters, who are facilitated by this medium to address and thereby to reframe Islam's authority and expression for those like themselves and others who come there." (p.46)

The case studies elaborate on some of these themes with more detailed studies of dynamics in particular situations. Many of the things they propose are applicable across religious boundaries, as new media create new sites of religious discourse and in the process transform existing practices through enhancement, addition or competition. A very useful volume.

Table of Contents:

1. Redefining Muslim publics - Dale Eickelman and Jon Anderson
2. The new media, civic pluralism, and the struggle for political reform - Augustus Norton
3.Communication and control in the Middle East: Publication and its discontents - Dale Eickelman
4.The internet and Islam's new interpreters - Jon Anderson
5.The birth of a media ecosystem: Lebanon in the Internet age - Yves Gonzalez-Quijano
6.Muslim identities and the great chain of buying - Gregory Starett
7.Bourgeois Leisure and Egyptian media fantasies - Walter Ambrust
8.From piety to romance: Islam-oriented texts in Bangladesh - Maimuna Huq
9.Civic pluralism denied? The new media and Jihadi violence in Indonesia - Robert Hefner
10.Media idntities for Alevis and Kurds in Turkey - M. Hakan Yavuz

Review by Peter Horsfield