Anthropological insights are not produced or constructed through reasoned discourse alone. Often they appear to be given in "leaps of faith" as the anthropologist's conceptual grasp upon the world is lost. To understand these peculiar moments, we adopt the Kierkegaardian concept of religious faith, not as certitude in some transcendental principle, but as a deeply paradoxical mode of knowing, whose paths bend and twist through glimpses of understanding, doubt, and existential resignation. Pointing to the ways in which such revelatory and disruptive experiences have influenced the work of many anthropologists, we argue that anthropology is not simply a social science, but also a theology of sorts, whose ultimate foundation might not simply be reason but faith.
This paper asks whether an exploration of responses to visual media in neo-orthodox Islam could provide new answers to the recurrent queries regarding the value of images in visual anthropology. It proposes that the photographic image shares a curious resemblance to the bodies of people possessed by invisible spirits called jinn. The image as a failed example or model of reality works like the possessed body as an amplifier of invisibility pointing towards that which cannot be seen, depicted visually, or represented in writing. This suggests a negative epistemology in which images obtain their value not from the adequacy of their correspondence to perceived reality, but rather from the ways they fail to exemplify that which they appear to depict.Let us consider an image from a YouTube video entitled '7000 year old jinn inside man' , ( Fig. 1). 1 Several features about this image may strike us as peculiar. A man with a thick black beard dressed in a white jalabiya and a turban sits to the right of the image frame. The dress and physical appearance suggest that this could be a Muslim of some dedication -a shaykh perhaps, a person with religious training and authority. While looking out towards the lower left corner, presumably speaking to a person who sits outside the frame, the shaykh points his finger directly at the face of another man sitting behind him to the left side of the image frame. This man is dressed in dark trousers and a white shirt. He is wearing a white cap of the sort many Muslims use for praying -a taqiyya. His eyes are covered by large sunglasses but he appears to stare directly back at the shaykh, pointing at his face. A green speech bubble translates the shaykh's words. He is telling us that the person he is pointing at is in fact a jinn and that 'the jinn has just told us that jinn are able to possess humans' .The image presents us with an example in at least two senses. The person wearing the black sunglasses is allegedly a case example of jinn possession -an instantiation of the type of event in which invisible agencies take residence in the visible world. The example, in this sense, works as an illustration of a range of phenomena that can be grouped within the category of spirit possession.
Fakta og fiktion om muslimer i danske medierMediernes forenklede daekning af islam, voldelig ekstremisme og integrationsproblemer har gennem de seneste år resulteret i en raekke ukonstruktive politiske tiltag. I denne artikel ser vi naermere på mediernes daekning og den politiske debat i køl-vandet på terrorangrebet i København i februar 2015 og TV2's serie af dokumentarprogrammer om forholdene i danske moskeer fra marts 2016. Disse to eksempler illustrerer, hvordan mediernes daekning ikke blot har skabt en voldsom, følelsesbetonet og forplumret politisk debat, men også har medvirket til at eskalere de problemer, man har ønsket at afdaekke. Som forskere er vi bekymrede for denne udvikling, hvor vi ser en stigende tendens til, at både private og licensbetalte nyhedsmedier prioriterer sensation, drama og frygt over saglighed. Desuden vaekker det vores bekymring, at landets lovgivere tilsyneladende lader sig diktere af mediernes daekning. De to eksempler, vi diskuterer i denne artikel, har således både resulteret i nye lovtiltag og aendringer af eksisterende lovgivning. Ikke desto mindre er det svaert at se, hvordan politikere skulle reagere anderledes. Politikerne bliver ligesom almindelige borgere påvirket af mediernes daekning og er nødt til at vise handlekraft i forhold til de problemer, medierne skildrer. Men hvis mediernes daekning af
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