The American network TLCs’ 90 Day Fiancé’s casting and storylines have provided its audience with years of entertainment, mostly at the foreign partner’s expense. The reality television industry has grown exponentially throughout the years, thriving on the drama between characters to gain viewership. However, reality television channels, such as Bravo …

Issue 30, summer/fall 2020 https://doi.org/10.70090/OMR29RMA Scroll down for the Arabic abstract. Turkey’s Council of State, the highest Turkish administrative court, handed down its decision on July 10, 2020 regarding Hagia Sophia. The council reversed the monument’s status from a museum back into a mosque as from July 24, sparking heated …

Award-winning journalist-cum-academic Lawrence (Larry) Pintak has been on a mission for years trying to explain Islam to Americans, with his latest volume nailing it in the age of hysterical xenophobia and white supremacy.  The cover of America and Islam: Soundbites, Suicide Bombs and the Road to Donald Trump sets the …

Issue 27, winter/spring 2019 https://doi.org/10.70090/IVM27PIR The impacts of new media have long fascinated scholars of contemporary Muslim societies. Beginning from the premise that new media configurations portend the “fragmentation” of religious authority (Eickelman and Anderson 1999; Anderson 2003), such works often display a curious mix of euphoria and anxiety about …

Issue 27, winter/spring 2019 https://doi.org/10.70090/IBL27SRA Abstract Troubled by a history of misconceptions on Western silver screens, Arab and Muslim filmmakers have kept their cinematic productions thematically close to the reality of their postcolonial cultural and social conditions, while trying to represent their communities in complex ways. In many efforts of …

Issue 25, winter/spring 2018 https://doi.org/10.70090/KDCW18VF Abstract The rise of ideologically-driven lone actor terrorist attacks, coupled with the use of Internet-circulated media products as sources of inspiration, raises the need to understand the message strategies embedded in media campaigns of groups like ISIS. To better understand “enforcers” of ISIS’ interpretation of …

Issue 25, winter/spring 2018 https://doi.org/10.70090/RH18SRPI Patience. [The member] should have plenty of patience for enduring afflictions if the enemies overcome him. He should not abandon this great path and sell himself and his religion to the enemies for his freedom. He should be patient in performing the work, even if …

Issue 25, winter/spring 2018 https://doi.org/10.70090/DAHS18RM Scroll down for the Arabic abstract. This research tackles the crisis of the Rohingya Muslims in the discourse of foreign websites, aiming to analyze the structural features of the selected websites' discourse. It mainly analyzes the websites discourse pillars and their declared positions towards the …

Most American journalists probably know little about covering Islam accurately, fairly, ethically and contextually amid rising levels of xenophobia, hate speech and “fake news” in the U.S., but help is on the way. In 1980, I arrived in Beirut as CBS News Middle East correspondent. My qualifications for covering this complex …

One way of getting to the “root causes” of terrorism and religious extremism in the Middle East is to examine the thinking of the mother organization of all groups and movements espousing violence and terrorism. Fortunately, the history of the Muslim Brothers is well researched. The revelations of the organization reflect a great deal of inconsistencies between the general and the specific: public pronouncements and specific documents, theory and practice, English and Arabic.