Intertextuality and Constructing Islamic Identities Online

Abstract

This chapter explores, from a sociolinguistic perspective, the role that the Internet plays in the online discursive construction of the Islamic religious identity of an enlightener. It does so by examining chatroom conversations between a man with a disability from the Islamic Arabian country, Oman and individuals of diverse religious backgrounds and nationalities with whom he frequently chats. The chapter illustrates how an enlightener identity is constructed through juxtaposing two contrastive religious identities: a liberal identity (when interacting with other Muslims) and a far more traditional one (when interacting with non-Muslims). The findings of the study suggest that the Internet is helping transform many Islamic discourses from being “authoritative,” i.e., unquestioned, to being “internally persuasive,” i.e., open for debate (Bakhtin, 1981). The analysis also reveals how the Internet is offering new possibilities regarding the constitution of an Islamic identity while additionally posing increasingly poignant questions about the role of Islamic religious leaders in this digital age.

Divine impoliteness: How Arabs negotiate Islamic moral order on Twitter

“…Within Arabic Islamic contexts, technology is found at the center of social and religious activism. Examples include Omanis' use of cassette tapes to disseminate religious sermons to the masses in the 1980s (Eickelman 1989), young women's use of mobile technology in the Arabian Gulf to challenge Arab gender norms in the 1990s (Al Zidjaly and Gordon 2012), Arabs's Habermasian digital religious and political debates in the 2000s (Eickleman and Anderson 2003), and their appropriation of Yahoo chatrooms and the WhatsApp chatting messenger to revisit sociocultural concerns and reconstruct Arab identity from the bottom up (Al Zidjaly 2010Zidjaly , 2014Zidjaly , 2017a. Across these examples and platforms, Arabs have continually, creatively, and surreptitiously used emerging technologies to circumvent their society's limits on free expression and enact political and social activism (KhosraviNik and Sarkhoh 2017;Nordenson 2018;Sinatora 2019aSinatora , 2019bSumiala and Korpiola 2017;Zayani 2018).…”

“…Across these examples and platforms, Arabs have continually, creatively, and surreptitiously used emerging technologies to circumvent their society's limits on free expression and enact political and social activism (KhosraviNik and Sarkhoh 2017;Nordenson 2018;Sinatora 2019aSinatora , 2019bSumiala and Korpiola 2017;Zayani 2018). Therefore, as demonstrated by my decade-long ethnographic examination of Arab identity on social media, from the inception of new media technology (and, in particular, Yahoo chatrooms), Arabs have appropriated social media platforms as a tool to incite social and political change by turning traditionally nonnegotiable discourses into ones which are open for discussion (see Al Zidjaly 2010, 2019a, 2019b, 2020. Further examining the extent of such activities would help fill a critical gap in digital discourse research, given the centrality of Arab identity to international concerns (Nordenson 2018) and the complexity of Arab identity based on religion (versus language or geography; Lewis 2001).…”

“…In this paper, I explore the linguistic strategies used by a group of Arabs on Twitter in responding to an aggravating tweet that questions a ubiquitous cultural practice. To do so, I build on research that has identified the role that intertextual references play in facework and identity negotiation in digital Arabic contexts (Al Zidjaly 2010, 2017b, 2019aBadarneh 2019;Badarneh and Migdadi 2018;Labben 2018) 1 . Specifically, I draw upon a relational approach toward impoliteness (Locher and Watts 2005) and the concept of moral order (Kádár 2017a), defined as situated cultural norms (Graham 2018) or a set of ideas and beliefs arranged into an ordered whole or ritualistic practice.…”

Disability, Discourse and Technology

“…The needs and aspirations people have regarding their social lives remain a significant factor driving technology decisions, especially since we quite often underestimate what consumers can in fact do with the technologies constructed for them (Annable et al, 2007). This necessitates conceptualizing the discourse on technology to include the consumers in defining and controlling technology, especially in the current social media age: It is a call for a reshaping of the research on disability and technology, as I argue in Al Zidjaly (2010). To understand the exact relationship of technology to disability, it is critical to identify specific technology-related actions that people with disabilities recognize as being of use to them personally and to examine them contextually.…”

“…This was an early step in creating a diversity of religious views, questioning religious authority and distributing religious knowledge. Such steps, in turn, have led to the creation of self-authorized new interpreters of religious texts and the creation of many new religious identities (Al Zidjaly, 2010), including the enlightener identity-the focus of this chapter.…”