A society is comprised of various sects and religions. Of these, Muslims are one of the sect. The people of this religion consider Quran as their holy book. They worship Quran, as it consists of God’s (Prophet Muhammad) teaching. These teaching are recorded in traditional accounts known as hadith. Along with this, manuscripts are also the evidence, which reflects the teachings of Prophet Muhammad. According to Harvey, (2013), Islam is perceived as one of the fastest growing religions of the world. The youth have been found to access fatwas online. Along with this, evidence has also been found about building virtual communities in case of the Muslims. This discussion delves deeper into the representation of Muslims on social media.
According to the research, Muslims have gained popularity in the platform of social media. As a matter of specification, in Arabian countries, Facebook is a common social media platform. The number of users have crossed 45,194,452 users. The next position is gained by Twitter with 2,099,706 users. Based on the statistics, Arab gains the second position after United States in terms of social media usage (Harvey, 2013). This is also in terms of YouTube viewing. Mention of Saudi Arabia needs to be made in this case for possessing 90 million followers for the videos. These aspects project the importance of social media platforms in the life of Muslims.
American war gave rise to Islamophobia, which reflected the various stereotypical representation of Muslims populations on social media. Some of the deliberate attempts to counter Islamophobia yielded positive outcomes. However, some of the encounter compelled the Muslims to encounter stereotypical media representation. Typical example of this can be the portrayal of Sayid Jarrah’s character in Lost. He was the only Muslim character on the show to receive torturous treatment from the Iraqi Republican guards for extracting information from the prisoners (Bleich, Bloemraad & De Graauw, 2015). Data Protection Act (1998) is implemented for portraying the actions as inherently violent in spite of being a member of the anti-terrorism squad.
One of the other examples of radical stereotype of the Muslims is coverage for the Toronto 18 terrorism case. After the alleged arrest of 18 men, the media, in uniform, perceived the issue through themes like terrorism, conversion of the Canadians into Islam through internets and mosques. Male dominance on the women is one of the prominent themes in stereotypical presentation of Muslims on the social media. Criticisms are evident in case of marginalized women for the exposing power to men. Mention can be made of the crimes dramas like CSI or Criminal Minds, where women are portrayed as the victims of patriarchal dominance (Farrington et al., 2017). In case of the police films and television shows, women appearances are reduced for displaying the supreme authority of the male. These issues are flooded with comments, when posted on the social media. Criticism reach to heights, which even reach to the extent of loss of lives and property.
Internet, with its advent, revolutionized the lives of every individual including the Muslims. Mention can be made of websites like Online Islam, which provides quality services to the Ummah community. They could get all the services under one roof. Within these sites, online Fatwas were an attraction. The stage after this resulted in the formulation of orthodox religious practices. Discourse theory can be applied here in terms of gaining an insight into society as a “discursive construction”. Based on this, social media platform becomes the agent towards discovering the behavioural approach of the Muslims towards the events taking place in their surroundings (Jørgensen & Phillips, 2002). Within this, mention can be made of the aspects of conservatism and traditionalism, which binds Muslim within the religious principles. Countering this, principles binds all of the religions in one thread, ensuring that balance is maintained in the society.
Mention can be made of proselytization, which has gained popularity among the Islamic preachers. Typical evidence of this lies in joining the Facebook page of the scholars, who have died. This reflects a conscious approach towards maintaining consistency in traditionalism. Their disciples have started a page in Facebook and appealed the mass public for joining. Through this way, they have emerged successful in transmitting the teachings of scholars to the public. This platform provided opportunity to the Muslims to comment on the news, images and events posted on the timeline. Along with this, Nisa, (2018) points out that evidence is also found for the tweets from general public regarding the Koranic verses and prophetic sayings. In all of the tweets, teachings of Prophet is reflected.
Haj and other occasions are one of the other instances, when Muslims voice out their opinions about the events. The tweet feeds project a virtual spirituality from the members to their families for preserving the sacredness. It has also been seen that Muslims upload photos, and clippings to share their experiences with their family members, relatives and peers. These acts project a sense of community feeling (Törnberg & Törnberg, 2016).
Reference can be cited of Little Mosque on the Prairie’s, where balance is maintained in the portrayal of Islam. Focus on the portrayal of Muslim community in Saskatchewan on the social media was full of praises from the critics. This praise improved the standards of the stereotypical representations of the Muslim communities on various media platforms. Mention can be made of X-Men, where representation of the character Dust gains popularity. The critics are full of praises in social media, as Dust in the film emerges successful in maintaining the sanctity of Islam while fighting the fellow X men (Knott & Poole, 2016).
In order to excavate the representation of Muslims on social media, quantitative and qualitative analysis would be used. Within this, focus would be placed on the aspects of geographical access, methods, theories, authorship, media types and the time when the Muslims indulge in social media. Thematic analysis gains an important position in this methodology. One of the main themes here is that of cyber terrorism. Famous terrorists Al-Qaeda have found to maintain blogs for communicating with the secret agents. Along with this, Farrington et al. (2017) projects that evidence have been found for e-jihads, through which personal accounts on Facebook, Twitter were hacked. One of the striking instances is the cyber-attacks through the blogs, which was named Blogistan.
According to Peach and Vertovec, (2016), considering the case of Arab Spring, they indulged in Islamic movements and political parties. The major drive behind this was denial of access to the public sphere in terms of raising voice against the events taking place in the surroundings. This denial compelled them to turn attention into digital platforms for transmitting the messages to the public. This increased the number of followers and supporters. For example, protests in the Egyptians streets brought to the limelight the Facebook users (Bleich, Bloemraad & De Graauw, 2015). One of the interesting facts is that the usage of Facebook by the Muslims for informing the followers about the schedule. Along with this, evidence is also found for involvement in YouTube, where videos of the protests were released for enhancing the awareness of the audience.
Interviews were conducted on ulamas, who were minority in population, yet they were scholars. Questions pertaining to their involvement towards social media was asked. Within this, Ethical Code of Conduct was implemented for exposing liberal approach towards the individual interest and sentiments of the Muslims. Data Protection Act (1998) was one of the main legal requirement, which was considered while assessing the responses (Knott & Poole, 2016).
The responses from the ulemas pointed to the Indonesian domestic transition, which emerged after the collapse of the New Order. This order altered the fate of the Muslims, as they gained the liberty to use the media of their choice. This was their empowerment, as they attained freedom from the shackles of traditional and orthodox religious practices. Here, discourse theory of social construct is negated in terms of the disobedience towards the principles, as mentioned in the Quran. As per the opinions of Saleem et al. (2017), it was found that ulemas exposed high interest in social media. However, gap was detected, as they failed to point out the significance of social media in dakwah.
However, according to the revelations of The Guardian, prohibitions in case of Muslims regarding raising the voice on social media is reflected. Anything related to Pakistani origin is prohibited in this debates. In this process, social media attains negative aspect, as it was used for threatening the public, who intended to disobey the principles. These threats aggravated the life risk of the Muslims. When the accessed the social media, their responses were tracked. If anything negative was detected, threats hovered around, acting as an interplay with the security and privacy (Verkuyten, 2018).
Conclusion
Social media forms one of an effective platform for the public in terms of voicing out their opinions about the events, taking place in their surroundings. This is irrespective of religion, caste, creed, and colour among others. Mention can be made of the terrorist groups, which snatched the freedom of the Islamic groups regarding voicing out their opinions about the events in the surroundings. Interviews provides an insight into their approaches of the Muslims towards the harsh and orthodox principles imposed on the religion. Monitoring needs to be done for the responses forwarded by the Muslim communities. For this, security policies needs to be adopted for preventing commercialization. Along with this, strict policies are needed for preserving the privacy and security of Muslims.
References
Bleich, E., Bloemraad, I., & De Graauw, E. (2015). Migrants, minorities and the media: Information, representations and participation in the public sphere. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 41(6), 857-873.
Farrington, N., Hall, L., Kilvington, D., Price, J., & Saeed, A. (2017). Sport, racism and social media. Routledge.
Harvey, K. (Ed.). (2013). Encyclopedia of social media and politics. Sage Publications.
Jørgensen, M., & Phillips, J. Louise, 2002, Discourse analysis as theory and method. London, Sage
Knott, K., & Poole, E. (2016). Media portrayals of religion and the secular sacred: Representation and change. Routledge.
Nisa, E. F. (2018). Social media and the birth of an Islamic social movement: ODOJ (One Day One Juz) in contemporary Indonesia. Indonesia and the Malay World, 46(134), 24-43.
Peach, C., & Vertovec, S. (Eds.). (2016). Islam in Europe: The politics of religion and community. Springer.
Saleem, M., Prot, S., Anderson, C. A., & Lemieux, A. F. (2017). Exposure to Muslims in media and support for public policies harming Muslims. Communication research, 44(6), 841-869.
Theguardian.com (2018), Muslim criticism religion left gag debate, Retrieved 13th Dec 2018 from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/05/muslims-criticism-religion-right-left-gag-debate
Törnberg, A., & Törnberg, P. (2016). Muslims in social media discourse: Combining topic modeling and critical discourse analysis. Discourse, Context & Media, 13, 132-142.
Verkuyten, M. (2018). The social psychology of ethnic identity. Routledge.
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