Hodges- Revolution 2.0- A Software, Not Hardware Upgrade

Muslim Youth and the 9/11 Generation, 2016

Anthropological inquiries into mass media and Islam, particularly with regard to da‘wa practices, have demonstrated the significance of “staging” strategies of public religious personalities (Salvatore 1998), as well as the diverse ways in which mass-mediated Islam facilitates the sustenance of lay audiences’ moral disposition (Hirschkind 2006). I build on these studies and shed light on the youthful aspirations and challenges of educated Egyptian Muslims engaging in da‘wa activities. I illustrate how Amr Khaled’s televised preaching facilitates the production of other Islamic religious commodities such as the exclusive da‘wa workshops in Cairo organized by Fadel Soliman (b. 1966) of Bridges Foundation. Taking into account the nexus of new media, the education industry, and the global political economy, I thus analyze how a strategic segment of young Egyptians were called upon to communicate with non-Muslims of the West about ways of being Muslim in the post-9/11 era.

Media Watch, 2020

In recent years, Arab academia inspected the phenomenon of new preachers of Islam, especially in Egypt, predicted on such notions as new liberalism, selfhelp, and salvation. This study contributes to the scholarship by examining the postmodern characteristics of Mustafa Hosni’s discourse, as appears in his new media materials. Drawing upon insights from media cultural studies, the paper examines the mini-narratives of a tolerant, non-violent Muslim discourse as opposed to the customarily hostile Muslim meta-narratives. Further, the study analyses all sorts of pastiche that render Hosni’s discourse hybrid, glocal, and coexistent. It uses qualitative discourse analysis to shed light on the nexus between forms of religious discourse and the logic of media consumption in Muslim late neo-liberal capitalism

This study analyzes how the owner of the Facebook Arabic page “We Are All Khaled Said” both catalyzed and took advantage of opportunities in the Egyptian political climate in order to help promote the country’s 2011 revolution. Using a content analysis of posts on the Facebook page before and throughout the Egyptian revolution, the case study finds that the owner of the page, Wael Ghonim, served as a long-term trainer or coach, educating his online followers about the abuses of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s regime and helping them gradually become more comfortable with political activism, so that when a triggering event—the Tunisian revolution—occurred, he was able to move his followers into the streets to protest. Two other particularly successful tactics were utilized by Ghonim: He capitalized on a powerful personal story—that of a young man brutally killed by the police—in order to elicit emotion and help others identify with the cause, and he used lofty rhetoric to convince his followers that their actions could actually make a difference. The case study disproves Gladwell’s (2010) claim that social media is a platform for shallow and networked interactions, finding both that the grievances and ideas shared on this page were remarkably substantive and that the movement was not a network but rather a hierarchy, led by Ghonim until his imprisonment. The study suggests that social media is a more powerful platform for promoting political change than previously appreciated and offers important lessons for political activists.

Comparative Islamic Studies, 2021

International Journal of E-Politics, 2011

New forms of information technologies are revolutionizing politics in the Muslim World. This article presents political analysis of the complex global and historical socio-cultural impact of new media specifically social media by exploring two cases, i.e., the green movement during the Iranian presidential elections during 2009 and al-Qaeda’s radicalism in the virtual world. The analysis finds that Islam and Muslim societies are compatible with new forms of information technologies and that the difference between real and virtual is blurring in the modern Muslim World.

Islam Realitas: Journal of Islamic and Social Studies

This study offers insights into the transformation of social media platforms as an alternative to the digital public sphere for Muslim society in Aceh. The communicative action theory by Habermas is used as approach to respond to this challenge. Descriptive quantitative analyses were used to expose religious discourse about Islam amongst young Muslims in Aceh. The results show that WhatsApp has proven to be the most popular among social media platforms. WhatsApp has functioned as a new public sphere for Muslim society in Aceh and has evolved into an essential part of mediated Islamic discourse in the digital era. In this regard, WhatsApp has created a universal public sphere, available to Muslim society as dialogic communication in Aceh. This research concludes that the Muslims in Aceh are not merely users of WhatsApp. They can also be digital preachers who can build individual narratives as a part of the religious struggle to increase their piety.Kajian ini dilakukan untuk memberik...

This article is a contribution to the debate about the role of the Internet in mobilizations for political and social change, drawing on interviews and observations during the Egyptian revolution. We propose distinguishing between the use of the Internet as a tool by those seeking to bring about change from below, and the Internet's role as a space where collective dissent can be articulated. We argue that it is important to go beyond three sets of polemics. First, we argue for transcending the debate between utopian and dystopian perspectives on the role of the Internet in political change. Second, we propose a shift away from perspectives that isolate the Internet from other media by examining the powerful synergy between social media and satellite broadcasters during the January 25 uprising. And finally, we call for an understanding of the dialectical relationship between online and offline political action.

The mainstream media, when covering the story of the Arab Spring in general, and Egypt in particular, has looked mainly at the role played by the internet, and internet activists. In particular, they singled out social networking sites and the new media distributed through them, as the key factor in propelling Egyptians to rise up. They are not wrong to highlight this, as without doubt such technologies, and their courageous application, did help ferment the massive protests that have rocked Cairo since the 25th of January last year. What's more, this form of online, horizontal organisation, on this massive scale, is something new and momentous, which should be inspiring for people the world over, and terrifying for the elites who rule us. However, as of course they couldn't discuss any serious revolutionary theory (almost all of which is Marxist and therefore taboo), they have told only half of the story. The whole story of this revolution, like that of all revolutions, is one of class coalitions. In the decade leading up to 2011, the baton of rebellion was passed back and forth repeatedly between two distinct categories of political actors. One category is that of the bourgeois groups, led by intellectuals and activists, focussed in Cairo and Alexandria, and focussing on political rights and broad systematic changes. Perhaps the most seminal of these is the Egyptian Movement for Change, better known by its slogan Kifaya (meaning "enough"). Kifaya's agitation, particularly around the time of the 2005 elections, were perhaps the first signs that despite the massive security apparatus of the Mubarak regime, Egyptians were still able to organise protests on issues including the extension of Mubarak's term, speculation of a transfer of power to his son Gamal, and the generally corrupt and stagnant state of the Egyptian nation. As Kifaya faltered and fell by the way side, the second category-working class groups-organised around economic demands, often quite local, and strongest in the industrial cities of the Nile Delta and along the Suez Canal, began to rise. These in turn inspired more bourgeois activists, and an increasingly intense feedback loop was created. Nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than by the story of the April 6 th Facebook group. April 6th was one of the main groups-along with We Are All Khalid Said-who called for protests on January 25, which had been until then, known as police day. As a result, after Mubarak's fall, the group's leadership, in particular Ahmed Maher, became among the most sought after celebrities in Egypt, with