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Viewing Islam: Islamic Satellite Television and the Ethics of Entertainment
Abstract
Drawing on fieldwork with media producers working for Iqraa and Al-Resalah, this paper examines the idea of “Islamic entertainment” put forward by these two popular Islamic satellite channels airing Arab regional networks. I argue that instead of viewing Islamic piety and consumer entertainment as inherently at logger-heads, a consideration of both the content and infrastructure of new Islamic satellite media shows that within these matrices the exemplary Muslim is not he who shuns entertainment or consumerism to preserve his piety, but rather he who becomes pious through consuming. Piety is re-imagined as an authentic mode of consumption, rather than an authentic alternative to it. While some observers of these new Islamic media practices and their “lay” actors have characterized it as a trivialized “Islam-lite” I show how such a claim fails to see how within Islamic frames of reasoning entertainment, leisure and pleasure can have a disciplinary rationality. Rather than positing an inherent or normative binary between consumer entertainment and religion, a more interesting question to explore would be what ethic and theory of entertainment and leisure are reasoned within an Islamic frame of reference. Indeed, Islamic channels such as Iqraa or Al-Resalah do not see entertainment as an object of prohibition, but rather as an object of regulation – their project does not ask if entertainment is permissible, but what kind of entertainment should be allowed, and what evaluative criteria should be marshaled in making these decisions. Far from being located at a tense interstice with a pious ethic, within this discourse entertainment is necessary to bolster Islam as a viable alternative to dominant secular mediascapes.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Arab States
Sub Area
Media