Role of new media in Islamic identities

Ashley Slovinski

Issue date: 3/19/08 Section: News

Web sites displaying Islamic fundamentalists' content were unveiled to 60 audience members by Dale F. Eickelman, Ph.D. He focused on how new media affects Muslim identity and how it is perceived. Speaking March 13 in the Crown Center Auditorium, Eickelman discussed the importance Islamic fundamentalists place on having a friend film a suicide bomber's hajj - the mandatory pilgrimage to Mecca in Islam - as well as showed a Web site depicting a falsified photograph of radical Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr in front of the Grand Canyon.

Eickelman, a professor of Anthropology and Human Relations at Dartmouth College, is the author of publications on Islam and the relationship Islamic countries, especially Morocco, have with new media, Eickelman lectures on both topics in universities and institutes throughout the U.S., the Middle East and the Netherlands.

"An understanding of new media changes our meaning of community," Eickelman said.

He also spoke about real virtuality, which means that what goes on in the virtual world of cyberspace very much affects the real world. In real virtuality, a person can use a simple camera phone to take a snapshot of an event and post it on the Internet, leading to international exposure such as the scandal of torture and prisoner abuse in the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq that made worldwide headlines from a single picture taken with a cell phone.

"I think it's pretty incredible how the common person can contribute to the media and the spread of it," freshman Lily Cox said, about the idea of real virtuality. "With technology today, current events travel and reach the public faster and easier than ever before."

Eickelman talked about how the rise of cheap, public access to the Internet through Internet cafés gives more and more people, especially in the Middle East, access to the Internet. Also, blogs and online communities such as LiveJournal and MySpace give even the least technically savvy person an outlet to publish anything he or she wants online. Anyone can be a movie producer now by posting something on YouTube or publish an online news journal through a blog. Eickelman used the example of a Dutch-made, anti-Islamic movie that has its own Web site to advertise it coming soon to YouTube.

"[The movie advertisement] was really interesting to me since they were using negative publicity to their advantage, although it is still drawing attention to the Islamic religion, whether negative or not," Giannaras said.

According to Eickelman, however, this also causes blurred communication. Propaganda becomes harder to distinguish because anyone has the ability to publish information on the Internet. Anti-Islamic movements can gain momentum through the Internet. Mediums such as anti-Islamic movies can be shared via the Internet, posted on public sites for anyone to see. New Web sites are created every day, and the Web is becoming increasingly harder to censor, even by the government.

Eickelman describes the Internet as "a marketplace of ideas and identities." He says this is more than just a metaphor, as real virtuality allows people to use different types of media to communicate their message.

© Copyright 2009 The Phoenix

Article Link