THE TALK: RITUAL AND MEDIA IN MOROCCO<br> <br> There is a rigorous Muslim discourse on the nature of Islam. While western think tanks parse the elements of "Islamic political philosophy," Muslim scholars engage in their own robust debate over whether or not "Islamic institutions" encourage democracy. Muslim scholars and Muslim civil society have also begun a Weberian discussion of the relation between Muslim culture and economic/political development.<br> <br> At the same time, Muslim governments and ministries of religious affairs shape public discourse of Islam via formal religious rituals such as mosque sermons and feast observances, and also via less ritualistic and more social talk shows and other programs on television and radio. These programs include both traditional talking heads-interview programs similar to the classic nineties Friday afternoon conversations with Sheikh Sha'arawi on Egyptian television and a new tele-evangelical versions of these classics such as the Egyptian virtual rock-type star Khalid Amr. Another genre is social talk shows where youth call in with questions about social and devotional life. A third genre is a m%uFFFDlange of the first two: a kind of theological-social talk show whose topics range from theological exegesis to interfaith dialogue. Guests at the third genre include scholars, theologians, and comparative religion experts.<br> <br> This paper analyzes ritual and media in Morocco to determine how their construction supports an official discourse of religious moderation and tolerance. These were recorded and/or observed over three years (2005-2008) while the author lived in Morocco. Public festival and ritual events include children-centric Quranic recitation competitions, which in Morocco have recently included both girls and boys. An important Ramadan event us the Royal Causeries, the seminars offered for the King before iftar and nationally televised. Moroccan radio and television youth talk shows reach out to vulnerable, disempowered youth. In these programs, professors and theologians discuss how to live a true Muslim life and entertain questions via internet and phone from predominately youthful viewers. Questions range from the "piety" issues such as the meaning of various Quranic verses or the correctness of ritual practice to the "social" questions such as the proper way to select a spouse or to deal with cheating at school. Moroccan inter-faith programs feature dialogues with religious scholars from other faiths as well as interviews with Muslims living aboard in non-Muslim countries about the way they follow their religion there.

This paper focuses on the life of Ali Kemal Sunal, arguably the funniest and most prolific comedian in Turkish cinematography, and the making of ?aban-the Cow, his “immortal” comic cinema character who became almost identical with him. In the hard times of the 1970s and 1980s when the political polarization between the Left and Right divided especially the young generation, economic turmoil stratified Turkey into upper and middle-classes, and cultural confrontation between the high and popular culture became the norm, Sunal’s ?aban-the Cow showed, and to some extent convinced his audience, that the accommodation between political radicals, solidarity between classes, and fraternity between sub-cultures, all of which seemed hardly possible, were possible. In twenty years (1973 to 1999), ?aban acted in ninety-two movies and four TV series. In almost all, ?aban plays a naive, poor, and burlesque character. However, behind the naive, poor, and burlesque nature of this character lay a more sophisticated, optimist, lucky, goodwilled and patriotic personality who is ready to sacrifice himself for “others,” be it neighbors, a village or the nation. Considering the social and cultural discourse it belongs, this paper suggests, ?aban-the Cow is representative of what I call a sui generis Turkish “reculturation,” “deotherization,” and cultural consolidation of Turkish revolution project based on Ataturk’s vision. In brief, this paper attempts to convey a sense of not only ?aban’s legacy but also the confluence of ?aban’s achievements and cultural implications, and the genre it is a part of. Contemporary newspapers, interviews, the movies and documentaries are consulted to this end.

In 1949, my aunt Hamama immigrated to Israel from Yemen and gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. When she returned to the immigrant camp from the hospital, the nurse who had accompanied her in the ambulance took the baby from her arms and told my aunt to step down. When she turned her back, the ambulance and her baby disappeared, never to be seen again. This is one of hundreds of stories known collectively in Israel as “The Yemenite Babies Affair.” During the mass immigration to Israel of the 1950’s, hundreds if not thousands of babies disappeared from immigrant absorption camps throughout Israel. Since then, the affair has surfaced several times, in each case causing a public outcry that was quickly suppressed and forgotten. Despite accusations that these babies were kidnapped and adopted by European Jews or sold to Jewish families abroad, the state of Israel failed to properly investigate the matter. The government’s subsequent silence on the story was total. This paper uses a cultural studies approach to examine issues of race, ideology, and representation (Hall; 89, 97; Said; 78; Shohat; 89) as manifested in the mainstream media discourse of this affair. The case study is especially interesting because it involves questions of representation of minority groups and women, where the national state, in the name of unity, ignores differences in order to create what Benedict Anderson (1996) calls “imagined community”. As argued by such diverse scholars as Swirski (1986), Shohat (1989) and Chetrit (2003), Zionist leaders of the Israeli nation state have used a ‘melting pot’ philosophy to construct a notion of unity, but at the time, freely expressed racist opinions about Mizrahi Jews and pushed them into the margins. The paper focuses on media coverage of the Yemenite Babies Affair, as this case study raises two important issues concerning the public sphere. The first is the contradiction between Zionism as practice and an ideology, and the second is the role of the media in constructing Zionist discourse, especially with regard to the conflict between the state and the minority group of Arab-Jews. I argue that the Arabness of the Yemenite immigrants and other Oriental Jews, along with the overall rejection of the immediate Arab environment, turned them into the ultimate “others” in Israeli society, thus leading to the massive silencing and whitewashing of this story by the government and the media.

Through a process of selective appropriation, Arabic texts from newspapers and other media sources, especially television, expressing hostility to Israel or Jews are translated for Western audiences. In these translations, Arabic discourse is represented as expressing a pervasive anti-Semitism, creating a monochromatic impression of Arab society as populated by dangerous, unregenerate bigots. Such representations ignore other writings and media representations of a more inclusive tone. The translations of texts, while accurate, ignore the context of the discourse and the synecdochic and hyperbolic properties of Arabic rhetoric. This paper contests the discourse of Arab anti-Semitism by interrogating representations of Arab anti-Semitism, largely in the writings of Israeli scholars, which are then echoed in western media and quasi-scholarly treatises, exploiting the highly charged symbolism of Arabic versions of well-known anti-Semitic canards and tracts such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Mein Kampf; by a quantitative content analysis of discussions of Jews, Judaism, and Zionism appearing in the Arabic language press of Egypt, Lebanon and Syria, utilizing databases of two Arabic newspapers and the search capacities of various Arabic newspaper internet sites; and by examining the representations of local Jewish communities from Arabic newspapers, periodicals, television programs, and the writings of intellectuals. In those last, local communities are represented as having formed integral elements of national life. In the presence of this, it is clear that what is at play is not classic anti-Semitism, and those attempting to depict Arabic discourse as anti-Semitic do so for tendentious purpose of their own. Representative references: Baker, Mona. 2006. Translation and Conflict: A narrative account. London: Routledge. Lebanese National Broadcasting Network. 2003. ???? ?????. El Naqqash, Ragaa. 2004. ????? ?? ???? ????? ??????? al-Ahram 5 December 2004 Penslar, David. 2007. “Anti-Semites on Zionism: From indifference to obsession,” in Jeffery Herf, ed., Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism in Historical Perspective: Convergence and Divergence. London, New York: Routledge. 1—19. Sirag, Hussein. 2002. ??????????? ????? ?????: ??? ??????? ? ????? ??????? October 1 December 2002 Wistrich, Robert. 1991. Antisemitism: The longest hatred. London: Methuen. Yadlin, Rivka. 1989. An Arrogant and Oppressive Spirit: Anti-Zionism as Anti-Judaism in Egypt. Oxford, New York: Pergamon ??? ?????? ????. ????. ???? ???: ?? ???????? ??? ??????. ??? ?????? ????? ????. ????. ???????? ????? ? ???????. ??? ?????? ???????? ??? ??????. ???? ?. ?? ?????? ???????? ????????. ??? ?????? ???????? ??? ??????. ???? ?. ????????????: ????????? ? ????????. ??? ??????