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The Idea of Islamic Media: The Qur'an and the Decolonization of Mass Communication

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2020

Yasmin Moll Open the ORCID record for Yasmin Moll [Opens in a new window]
Yasmin Moll*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, 101 West Hall, 1085 S. University Ave, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 48109-1382, USA
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: ymoll@umich.edu
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Abstract

The emergence of Islamic television in the Arab Middle East is usually explained as part of a Saudi media empire fueled by neoliberal petro-dollars. This article, by contrast, takes seriously the role ideas played alongside changing political economies in the origins of the world’s first Islamic television channel, Iqraa. Focusing on the intellectual and institutional career of “Islamic media” (al-i’lām al-Islāmī) as a category from the late sixties onwards in Egypt, I argue that Islamic television is part of a broader decolonization struggle involving the modern discipline of mass communication. Pioneering Arab communication scholars mounted a quest for epistemic emancipation in which the question of how to mediate Islam became inextricable from the question of what made media Islamic. Drawing on historical and ethnographic research, I show how the idea of Islamic media involved a radical reconceptualization of the Qur'an as mass communication from God and of Islam as a mediatic religion. This positing of an intimate affinity between Islam and media provoked secular skepticism and religious criticism that continue to this day. I conclude by reflecting on how the intellectual history of Islamic media challenges dominant framings of epistemological decolonization as a question of interrogating oppressive universalisms in favor of liberatory pluralisms.

Keywords

Islamic televisiondaʿwamedia studiesdecolonial epistemologiesArab intellectual historyIslamEgyptSaudi Arabia
Type
Article
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , November 2020 , pp. 623 - 642
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 The conference took place at the triennial convention of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY). WAMY is an affiliate of the Saudi-based Muslim World League, one of the most significant transnational institutions of religious propagation in the postcolonial period. See Aydin, Cemil, The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), 173–226Google Scholar.

2 Qutb, Muhammad, al-Iʿlam al-Islami wa-l-ʿAlaqat al-Insaniyya: al-Nazariyya wa-l-Tatbiq (Riyadh: World Assembly of Muslim Youth, 1979), 161Google Scholar. After multiple arrests, Qutb left Egypt in 1971 to teach in Saudi Arabia. He became a leading thinker in reformist ṣawḥa (awakening) circles. See Lacroix, Stephane, Awakening Islam: The Politics of Religious Dissent in Saudi Arabia, trans. Holoch, George (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 51–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 The conference presenters included the Azhari shaykh Muhammad al-Ghazali, then chair of the department of daʿwa, or religious propogation, at King Abdulaziz University in Mecca, head of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood ʿUmar al-Tilmisani, the noted Palestinian-American religious studies scholar Isma`il al-Faruqi, and Muhyi al-Din ʿAbd al-Shukur from the Association of Muslim Social Scientists of North America.

4 Qutb, al-Iʿlam al-Islami, 148. Although he was prolific, Qutb never published a book on Islamic media. His published oral comments at the conference resonate with his earlier written work on Islamic art; Manhaj al-Fann al-Islami (Cairo: Dar al-Qalam, 1963).

5 See Spadola, Emilio, The Calls of Islam: Sufis, Islamists, and Mass Mediation in Urban Morocco (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2014)Google Scholar.

6 Author interview with Muhammad Sallam, 6 March 2011, Cairo.

7 I conducted fieldwork on Islamic television production at Iqraa in Egypt between 2010 and 2013. For in-depth discussion of this ethnographic research, see Moll, Yasmin, “Television Is Not Radio: Theologies of Mediation in the Egyptian Islamic Revival,” Cultural Anthropology 3, no. 22 (2018): 233–65Google Scholar; and Moll, Yasmin, “Subtitling Islam: Translation, Mediation, Critique,” Public Culture 29, no. 2 (2017): 333–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar. At the start of my fieldwork, there were ninety-six religious channels (Islamic and Christian) broadcasting in Egypt from four satellite operators, eighteen of which were transmitting on semi–government-owned Nilesat. The number of channels on Nilesat in 2010 was 539. The immediate aftermath of the 2011 revolution saw even more private satellite television channels established, with a wide range of interests and missions. The re-entrenchment of authoritarianism following the 2013 coup has extended into the private media sector through acquisitions by the military's security apparatus.

8 Popular Salafi channels in Egypt during this time included al-Nas, al-Rahma, and al-Hikma, associated at various times with the Salafi preaching triumvirate of Muhammad Hassan, Abu Ishaq al-Huwayni, and Muhammad Yaʿqub.

9 An influential articulation of this emphasis is found in Eickelman, Dale and Anderson, Jon, eds., New Media in the Muslim World: The Emerging Public Sphere (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

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12 See, for example, Muhammad ‘Adawi, “al-Qanawat al-Diniyya: Hamm bi-l-Layl wa Mushaqa bi-l-Nahar,” al-Shuruq, no. 504, 19 June 2010; Rim ‘Izz al-Din and Duaʿaʾ al-Najjar, “Fawdat al-Qanawat al-Fadaʾiyya al-Diniyya . . . li-Maslahat Man?” al-Jumhuriyya, 21 October 2010; Atif al-Nimr, “al-Damir al-Watani,” al-Akhbar, 22 October 2010; Jabir ‘Asfur, “Inqadh al-Thaqafa al-Misriyya,” al-Ahram, 1 November 2010.

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19 See Rugh, William, Arab Mass Media: Newspapers, Radio and Television in Arab Politics (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004)Google Scholar.

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21 Shah, Hemant, The Production of Modernization: Daniel Lerner, Mass Media, and the Passing of Traditional Society (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011)Google Scholar.

22 ʿAbd al-Halim Sayyid and Ibrahim Mikha'il Hifz Allah, al-Nas wa-l-Tilifiziyun (Cairo: Anglo-Egyptian Bookshop, 1963). The postcolonial revolutionary period further naturalized the assumption that mass media should have broader, collective goals. However, it was entrepreneurs and enthused amateurs who undertook the country's first radio transmissions in the 1920s. Only retrospectively did Egyptian media historians criticize their motivations for “material gain” as opposed to “public interest”; Boyd, Douglas, “Egyptian Radio: A Tool of Political and National Development,” Journalism Monographs 48 (1977): 1–33Google Scholar.

23 Hamza's first publication was a translation of and commentary on an essay by noted Orientalist H. A. R. Gibb on Islamic literature; “al-Adab,” in al-Turath al-Islami (Cairo: Matba'at Lajnat al-Ta'lif wa-l-Tarjama wa-l-Nashr, 1936). Hamza's debut book was a biography of an 8th-century Abbasid litterateur and Persian fable translator; Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (Cairo: Dar al-Fikr al-ʿArabi, 1936).

24 Egypt's first journalism departments were established in 1935 at the American University in Cairo and Fuad I's journalism and translation institute in 1939.

25 For example, drawing on his literary history training, Hamza painstakingly traced the Egyptian newspaper article's distinctive rhetorical evolution since the 19th century. Whereas, Hamza pointed out, standard press histories focus on who wrote what when, he wanted journalism students to appreciate that how Egyptians wrote also was important; Adab al-Maqala al-Suhufiyya fi Misr, al-Juz’ al-Awwal (Cairo: Dar al-Fikr al-ʿArabi, [1950] 1958). In 2018, the Egyptian General Book Authority reissued the eight volumes of this widely respected work in three parts and reprinted several other books of Hamza.

26 This civic imperative extended beyond radio and television to cinema. See Gordon, Joel, Revolutionary Melodrama: Popular Film and Civic Identity in Nasser's Egypt (Chicago: Middle East Documentation Center, 2001)Google Scholar.

27 Hamza, ʿAbd al-Latif, al-Sahafa wa-l-Mujtamaʿ (Cairo: Dar al-Qalam 1963), 3, 123Google Scholar. The development of socialistic knowledge animated many disciplines in the post-Mithaq period; see Crabbs, Jack Jr., “Politics, History and Culture in Nasser's Egypt,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 6, no. 4 (1975): 386–420CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Hamza, al-Sahafa wa-l-Mujtamaʿ, 4.

29 Hamza, ʿAbd al-Latif, al-I'lam la-hu Tarikhuh wa Madhahibuh (Cairo: Dar al-Fikr al-‘Arabi, 1965), 149Google Scholar.

30 ʿAbd al-Latif Hamza, Qissat al-Sahafah al-‘Arabiyya (fi Misr): Mundhu Nasha'taha ila Muntasif al-Qarn al-‘Ashrin (Baghdad: Matbaʿat al-Maʿarif, 1967). Hamza conceived this book as the first installment of a comprehensive history covering all Arab countries and written by leading media scholars from each. Hamza's contribution was an expansion of his earlier book al-Sahafa al-Misriyya fi Mi'a ‘Am (Cairo: Dar al-Qalam, 1960), written at the request of the Ministry of National Guidance and aimed at the general reader. Hamza summarizes “100 years of Egyptian journalism,” safely ending in 1928. As expected, he framed Egyptian journalism as a heroic struggle for national dignity against colonialist machinations and Egyptian newspapers as exemplifying “how the press can participate with all its power in the building of nations and communities” (3–4). Nevertheless, the book's conclusion singles out freedom as the only condition necessary for the press to continue to play this role.

31 Hamza, Adab al-Maqala, 9.

32 Official plans for establishing this new faculty in collaboration with the media and education ministries were announced in 1962. The faculty did not get its own building on the campus of Cairo University until the new millennium.

33 Hamza, al-Sahafa wa-l-Mujtamaʿ, 130.

34 Hamza, Qissat al-Sahafa, 13.

35 Hamza, al-Iʿlam la-hu Tarikhuhu, 8.

36 Although much has been made of the dominating influence of US scientism on Arab communication studies, Hamza looked to the trailblazing German journalism scholar Otto Groth (1875–1965). See Hepp, Andreas, Cultures of Mediatization (London: Polity Press, 2013)Google Scholar for a discussion of Groth.

37 See Kassab, Suzanne, Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in Comparative Perspective (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009)Google Scholar, especially ch. 3.

38 Hamza,al-I'lam la-hu Tarikhuhu wa Madhahibuhu, 45.

39 Al-Maktaba al-Ishtirakiyya, Qa'ima Bibliyugrafiyya Mukhtara (Matbaʿat Dar al-Kutub, Cairo 1967).

40 Merhavy, Menahem, “Arab Socialism and Ecumenical Tendencies in Egypt, 1962–1970,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 43, no. 4 (2016): 484CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 ʿAbd al-Latif Hamza, al-Iʿlam fi Sadr al-Islam.

42 Ibid., 5.

43 Ibid., 6.

44 “The Influence of Islam on Communication Behavior in the Middle East,” CU/BASR/Box 22, June 1951, 5. This memo is from the archives of Columbia University's media research center, where Daniel Lerner worked.

45 Ibid., 6–7.

46 The postwar period saw an uptick in media theorizing across religious traditions but especially in Anglo-American Protestantism. For an annotation of this Christian media scholarship, see Soukup, Paul, Christian Communication: A Bibliographical Survey (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

47 Halevi, Leor, Modern Things on Trial: Islam's Global and Material Reformation in the Age of Rida, 1865–1935 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The ethico-legal discourse of public interest (maṣlaḥa) was key to the religious sanction of a variety of media technologies and forms in Egypt during the first half of the 20th century. See Abdelfattah, Heba Arafa, “The Maslaha of Film Production in Pre-Revolutionary Egypt, 1896–1952: A Sanctioning Apparatus or Covert Censorship?” Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies 2, no. 2 (2017): 1–37Google Scholar.

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49 el-Shakry, Marwa, “The Exegesis of Science in Twentieth-Century Arabic Interpretations of the Qur'an,” in Interpreting Nature and Scripture: History of a Dialogue, ed. M., Jitse van der Meer and Scott Mandelbrote (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 505Google Scholar. Significantly, the first magazine to carry the name al-Islam was published from 1894 to 1912 in Egypt to support Rashid Rida's School of Preaching and Moral Guidance, which aimed to make religious discourse more “responsive” to the challenges of the age. This magazine was the successor to the first Arabic-language journal to explicitly speak from an “Islamic voice,” al-‘Urwa al-Wuthqa, founded in Paris in 1884 by Muhammad ʿAbduh and Jamal al-Din al-Afghani. It “blazed the way for pious journalists to use their papers for preaching religious ideas,” serving as a unique Islamic outlet among the “modernist-secular Arabic publications of the time”; Ayalon, Ami, The Arabic Print Revolution: Cultural Production and Mass Readership (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 Hamza, al-Iʿlam fi Sadr al-Islam, 39.

51 Ibid., 8.

52 Husayn, Hatim, Idiulujiyyat al-Iʿlam al-Islami (Amman: Dar Usama li-l-Nashr, 2011), 41, 52Google Scholar.

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55 Albo, Moshe and Meital, Yoram, “The Independent Path of Shaykh al-Azhar Abdel Halim Mahmud,” Die Welt des Islam 54 (2014): 159–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 Zeghal, Malika, “Religion and Politics in Egypt: The Ulema of al-Azhar, Radical Islam and the State (1952–94),” International Journal of Middle East Studies 31, no. 3 (1999): 377CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Zeghal shows that Mahmud had his own religious reformist agenda for al-Azhar and indeed for the Egyptian state, whose policies Mahmud was not afraid to publicly confront and criticize. Far from being the exclusive concern of the political opposition, Islamization was promoted by elite and ordinary actors within internally diverse state institutions. See Rock-Singer, Aaron and Brookes, Steven, “Reading the Ads in al-Daʿwa Magazine: Commercialism and Islamist Activism in al-Sadat's Egypt,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (2018): 1–18Google Scholar, https://doi.org/10.1080/13530194.2018.1500272.

57 Imam, Ibrahim, al-‘Alaqat al-‘Amma wa-l-Mujtamaʿ (Cairo: Anglo-Egyptian Bookstore, 1957)Google Scholar.

58 Author interview with Tuhami Muntasir, 18 December 2018, Cairo. Muntasir was a member of the second graduating cohort from al-Azhar's media department, and his career included hosting religious programs on state and private channels, including Iqraa.

59 At his death, Imam was memorialized as “the dean of Arab media”; “Obituary of Dr. Ibrahim Imam Mahmud,” al-Ahram, 3 July 2000. Imam's wife (and former student) was ‘Awatif Husayn, editor in chief of Wakalat Anba’ al-Sharq al-Awsat.

60 Al-Tahami (d. 2017), who also became dean of the media faculty in 1985, wrote an early work on media and socialism titled al-Iʿlam wa-l-Tahhawul al-Ishtiraki (Cairo: Dar al-Maʿarif, 1966).

61 Ibrahim Imam, “al-Taslsul al-Shuyuʿi fi Dirasat al-Iʿlam,” al-Ahram, 14 January 1980, 13. Imam here deplores the Marxist revisionist critique of prominent Egyptian religious figures such as Muhammad ʿAbduh and its ostensible “declaration that those who think differently are traitors.” According to Di Capua, Egyptian university professors at the height of Nasser's cultural revolution in the 1960s spoke of “an atmosphere of bigotry, moral cowardice and fanaticism” and complained that those “who did not embrace socialism experienced the treatment”; Gatekeepers, 304.

62 Imam, Ibrahim, al-Iʿlam al-Islami, al-Marhala al-Shafhiyya (Cairo: Anglo-Egyptian Bookstore, 1980), 3–4Google Scholar.

63 Author interview with Muntasir, 18 December 2018.

64 See Boyd, Douglas, “The Story of Radio in Saudi Arabia,” Public Telecommunications Review (1973): 53–60Google Scholar.

65 ‘Abd al-Qadir Hatim, Mudhakkirat ʿAbd al-Qadir Hatim, Ra'is Hukumat Harb Uktubir (Cairo: al-Hay'a al-ʿAmma li Qusur al-Thaqafa, 2016), 147–48. The religious endowments minister was not the only one to object to television: the education minister felt the money would be better spent on schools, and the agricultural minister worried that television would diminish farmers’ productivity (146–48). Hatim also remembers popular preachers such as Shaykh Kishk forbidding the purchase of television sets and declaring him, as the architect of state television, to be “in the hellfire” (153). In contrast, he recounts productive conversations with Shaykh Muhammad al-Ghazali about “new preaching styles” and media (305). Hatim would much later write his own book on media, Islamic, al-Iʿlam fi al-Qur'an al-Karim (Cairo: Egyptian General Book Authority, 2000)Google Scholar.

66 Imam, Ibrahim, “al-Khatima,” in al-Iʿlam fi Sadr al-Islam, ʿAbd al-Latif Hamza (Dar al-Fikr al-‘Arabi, 1971)Google Scholar.

67 Authentication was the signature methodology of the Islamization of knowledge (aslimat al- maʿarifa) project, which took off in the late 1970s not just in the Arab world but also in Europe and Southeast Asia, where it was institutionalized in universities such as the International Islamic University Malaysia. For an overview, see Stenberg, Leif, The Islamization of Science: Four Muslim Positions Developing an Islamic Modernity (London: Coronet, 1996)Google Scholar. For accounts of how knowledge and Islamization played out in specific contexts, see Abaza, Mona, Debates on Islam and Knowledge in Malaysia and Egypt: Shifting Worlds (London: Routledge, 2002)Google Scholar; and Salomon, Noah, For Love of the Prophet: An Ethnography of Sudan's Islamic State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), ch. 3Google Scholar. On Iran, see Doostdar, Alireza “Varieties of Islamic Social Science,” Know: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge 2, no. 2 (2018): 229–247Google Scholar.

68 Imam, “al-Khatima.”

69 Imam, al-Iʿlam al-Islami. There is a long history of Muslims coming to see various domains of knowledge—from grammar to medicine—as a collective obligation of faith (farḍ kifāya) “on which the survival and well-being of a community depend”; Dalal, Ahmed, Islam, Science and the Challenge of History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 113.Google Scholar

70 Ghalwash, Ahmed, al-Iʿlam fi al-Qurʾan, (Alexandria: Sayyid Rifʿat li-l-Tabaʿa wa-l-Nashr, 1986), 15Google Scholar.

71 al-Sawi, Ahmad and Kandil, Hamdy, Teaching and Training Institutions of Mass Communication in the Arab World (Riyadh: Riyad University Press, 1978), 22Google Scholar.

72 Author interview with Muntasir, 18 December 2018. In 2011, the media department became its own faculty at al-Azhar.

73 The UNESCO report notes that a third of the Cairo University mass communication professors were teaching abroad in 1976–77; al-Sawi and Kandil, Teaching and Training, 15.

74 ‘Abd al-Halim Muhyi al-Din, al-Iʿlam al-Islami wa Tatbiqatuhu al-ʿAmaliyya (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khanji, 1980).

75 Yusuf, Muhammad Khayr Ramadan, al-Iʿlam al-Islami: Bibliyugrafiyya bi-l-Kutub wa-l-Rasa'il wa-l-Buhuth al-Jamiʿiyya (Riyadh: Dar Tuwayq al-Nashr wa-l-Tawziʻ, 1993)Google Scholar. Perhaps based on the conjunction of “public opinion” and “Islam” in the title, this bibliography lists as the first book on Islamic media Muhammad ʿAbd al-Raʾuf Bahnasi's al-Ra'y al-‘Amm fi al-Islam (Cairo: Muʾassasat al-Kutub al-Masri, 1966). However, the book is not concerned with public opinion as a media concept nor referenced by its contemporaneous or subsequent Arab media scholars.

76 Ghalwash, al-Iʿlam fi al-Quran; Sayyid Muhammad Sadati al-Shinqiti, Usul al-Iʿlam al-Islami wa Ususuhu: Dirasa Tahliliya li Nusus al-Akhbar fi Surat al-An'am (Riyadh: Dar ‘Alam al-Kitab, 1986).

77 Qur'an 39:27.

78 Ghalwash, al-Iʿlam fi al-Quran, 15.

79 Qutb, “al-Iʿlam al-Islami,” 161.

80 Larsson, Goran, Muslims and the New Media: Historical and Contemporary Debates (Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2011)Google Scholar.

81 See Ayish, “Communication Studies.”

82 Muhammad Abu Bakr Hamid, “ʿAbd al-Qadir Tash: Falsafat Hayatihi wa Aʿmalihi wa Riyadatuhu fi al-Iʿlam al-Islami,” Majallat al-Jazira, 17 July 2006, http://www.al-jazirah.com/culture/17072006/aoraq28.htm.

83 In his dissertation, Tash presents the familiar Islamist idea of Islam as a “comprehensive religion” with claims beyond what would be recognized as a “religious” sphere in the secularized West. For media, he cites Hamza's 1971 book for evidence; Abdulkader Tash, “A Profile of Professional Journalists Working in the Saudi Arabian Daily Press,” (PhD diss., Southern Illinois University–Carbondale, 1983).

84 See for example Shohat, Ella and Stam, Robert, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (London: Routledge, 1994)Google Scholar; Curran, James and Park, Myung-Jin, eds. De-Westernizing Media Studies (New York: Routledge, 2002)Google Scholar.

85 This approach reflected the wider zeitgeist that was shaped by critiques of media dependency and one-way news flows from the West to the Rest that coalesced around New World Information Order debates at the United Nations. These critiques informed the research and teaching agendas at Carbondale during Tash's time; Tash's media program attracted many students from the global South; author Skype interview with Sharon Murphy, 9 July 2018 (Murphy chaired Tash's doctoral dissertation committee).

86 ‘Abd al-Qadir Tash, “Hal Nahtaj ila Qana Fada'iyya Islamiyya?” in al-Thaqafa wa-l-Iʿlam wa-Ma Baynahuma (Jeddah: Sharikat al-Madina al-Munawwara li-l-Tibaʿa wa-l-Nashr, 1997): 97–104.

87 Ibid., 100, 102.

88 ʿAbd al-Qadir Tash, “al-Markaz al-ʿAlami li-l-Iʿlam al-Islami: Hulm Hal Yatahaqqaq?” in al-Thaqafa, 119.

89 ʿAbd al-Qadir Tash, “al-Itar al-Thaqafi li-l-Iʿlam al-Islami,” in al-Thaqafa, 82–83.

90 ʿAbd al-Qadir Tash, “Masʾuliyyat al-Sahafa al-Islamiyya fi Tarshid Masirat al-Sahwa,” in al-Iʿlam wa Qadaya al-Waqiʿ al-Islami (Riyadh: Obekan Publishing, 1995).

91 Galal, Ehab, “Saleh Kamel: Investing in Islam,” in Arab Media Moguls, ed. Sakr, Naomi (London: Bloomsbury, 2015)Google Scholar.

92 Author interview with Muntasir, 18 December 2018.

93 Abdul Qader Tash, “Islamic Satellite Channels and Their Impact on Arab Societies: Iqra Channel; A Case Study,” Arab Media and Society, 1 November 2004, https://www.arabmediasociety.com/islamic-satellite-channels-and-their-impact-on-arab-societies-iqra-channel-a-case-study.

94 The new preachers (al-duaʿā al-judud) are so named because of their novel styles of television preaching. During my fieldwork in the 2010s, the trio of Amr Khaled, Muʿizz Masʿud and Mustafa Husni were the most famous, and all three have had programs on Iqraa.

95 See Samantha Shapiro, “Ministering to the Upwardly Mobile Muslim,” New York Times, 30 April 2006.

96 Khaled Hroub puts it starkly: “The motives behind the foundation of the very first influential religious channel, Iqra', in 1998 were almost exclusively commercial”; “Introduction: Religious Broadcasting; Beyond the Innocence of Political Indifference,” in Religious Broadcasting in the Middle East, ed. Khaled Hroub (London: Hurst, 2012), 283. For similar arguments on new preachers such as Amr Khaled, see Patrick Haenni and Hussam Tamam, “Chat Shows, Nashid Groups and Lite Preaching: Egypt's Air-Conditioned Islam,” Le Monde Diplomatique, September 2003; and, more recently, Kenney, Jeffrey, “Selling Success, Nurturing the Self: Self-Help Literature, Capitalist Values and the Sacralization of Subjective Life in Egypt,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47, no. 4 (2015): 667CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

97 This inattention extends to other Arab intellectual projects and is symptomatic of the global asymmetry of knowledge production. See Jens Hansenn and Max Weiss, eds., Arabic Thought against the Authoritarian Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the Present (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

98 Industry-generated audience assessments are scarce in the region, but a 2009 survey puts viewer preference for religious channels at 10 percent in Egypt and 7 percent in Saudi Arabia, far behind movies, at 20 and 22 percent respectively; Dubai Press Club, Arab Media Outlook 2009–2013: Inspiring Local Content; Forecasts and Analysis of Traditional and Digital Media in the Arab World (Dubai: Dubai Press Club, 2010), https://fas.org/irp/eprint/arabmedia.pdf.

99 Ayish, “Communication Studies,” 474. Elsewhere Ayish devotes a paragraph to “Islamic communication,” characterizing it as “no more than an exposition of how mass media could be used to propagate Islamic ideas and concepts around the world. Such efforts fell short of meeting the minimum requirements of model building in theoretical and methodological terms”; “Cultural Studies in Arab World Academic Communication Programmes: The Battle for Survival,” in Arab Cultural Studies: Mapping the Field, ed. Tarik Sabry (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012), 94.

100 Sabry, Tarek, “Arab Media and Cultural Studies: Rehearsing New Questions,” in Arab Media: Power and Weakness, ed. Hafez, Kai (New York: Continuum, 2008), 238Google Scholar.

101 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 16Google Scholar.

102 Rudolph, Suzanne Hoeber, “The Imperialism of Categories: Situating Knowledge in a Globalizing World,” Perspectives on Politics 3, no. 1 (2005): 5–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

103 Sreberny-Mohammedi, Anabelle, “On Reading ‘Islam and Communication,’” Media, Culture and Society 15 (1993): 667Google Scholar. She is responding to a January 1993 special issue of Media, Culture and Society on the subject of “conceptions of communication as they are theorized by Muslims” (emphasis in original).

104 Khiabany, Gholam, “De-Westernizing Media Theory or Reverse Orientalism: ‘Islamic Communication’ as Theorized by Hamid Mowlana,” Media, Culture and Society 25 (2003): 415–22Google Scholar.

105 Salomon, For Love of the Prophet, 67, 188.