Excommunicating Saudis? A New Fracture Emerges in Islam

wsj.com, Excommunicating Saudis? A New Fracture Emerges in Islam, 22 Sep 2016 "Political conflicts in the Middle East between the Saudi-led camp of Sunni powers and a rival Shiite camp led by Iran have already morphed into a religious war. Now, a theological dispute within Sunni Islam is causing another regional political rift—a result of an initially obscure conference in Russia’s Chechen Republic."

Terrorism and Social Media conference

TASM, Terrorism & Social Media Conference CFP to be held at Swansea University next year.

BRISMES 2016: 'Networks: Connecting the Middle East through Times, Space and Cyberspace'

I am currently at the BRISMES 2016 Conference, which is being hosted in Lampeter. There's a wide range of papers, on the themes associated with 'Networks: Connecting the Middle East through Times, Space and Cyberspace'. I'm giving a paper, along with some of my postgrads.

The programme can be found here.

Updates: @OfficialBrismes, @garybunt, and religionTSD on Facebook

International Society for Media, Religion and Culture conference

I gave a paper on 4th August entitled 'Islamic Big Data' at the International Society for Media, Religion and Culture conference in Canterbury, Kent. This was part of a panel I convened on Contemporary issues in Islam. It also featured Mona Abdel-Fadel ("'Frustration Creates Miracles': Islamist Women Activists before, during and after the Egyptian Uprisings"); Ibrahim Abusharif ("Arab Spring, Media and Islam"); and Vit Sisler ("Playing with Representations of Islam in Arab and American Video Games"). It was great to see the presentations from the rest of the panel, and to get several interesting questions afterwards. 

Arab cyberactivism

AFP, Arab cyberactivism faces 'unprecedented attack', 24 Jan 2014 "Today there is an unprecedented attack against activists in general and cyberactivists in particular," said Hisham al-Miraat, advocacy director at the Global Voices, an international network of bloggers, translators and citizen journalists.

CFP: 'Religion in Cyberspace 2013'

CFP: 'Religion in Cyberspace 2013', 11th international conference Cyberspace 2013 held in Brno, Czech Republic, 22-23 November 2013. [PDF]

Conference: Digital Methodologies in the Sociology of Religion Conference

Digital Methodologies in the Sociology of Religion Conference - University of Derby, 16 November 2012 "Digital methodologies have altered how we articulate our values, display our allegiances and enact our multi-faceted identities. Increasingly Sociology must function in digital contexts and using digitial methods. Religion and belief have also been 'digitized' and have a significant online presence on social networking websites, discussion forums and in online personal profiles."

Youth and Citizenship in the Digital Era: Critique of an Emerging Phenomenon

jadaliyya.com, Youth and Citizenship in the Digital Era: Critique of an Emerging Phenomenon "In a clip that is quite telling of how far relations between digital-savvy youth and power structures have come; the botched, now incarcerated, heir to Egypt’s throne, Gamal Mubarak, was asked a question on his view regarding the youth of Facebook. The young Mubarak dismissed the question mockingly by asking another reporter to answer it causing the audience to burst out in a fit of laughter. That was prior to the 25 January 2011 Egyptian Revolution. Today, as the leaked photograph of Egypt’s state security (right) illustrates, power structures no longer have as much time to laugh about as they dedicate resources to monitoring the Facebook profiles of young activists and their social media activities."

Report of a conference held earlier this year.

CFP: Religions on the web (Le religieux sur Internet)

Religions on the web (Le religieux sur Internet) | Network for New Media, Religion and Digital Culture Studies:

Annual conference of the French Association of Social Sciences of Religion (AFSR)

4 - 5 February 2013

Arab Media Forum

Arab Media Forum, Dubai Press Club Launches Fourth Edition of Arab Media Outlook, 30 Apr 2012 "Recent events in the Arab world have generated a relatively positive impact on the regional media, raising the bar on the quality of news reporting, accelerating the engagement with digital platforms and firmly placing the region on the strategic map of global media houses, announced Maryam Bin Fahad, Executive Director, Dubai Press Club."

Also see Kuwait Times, Media Forum addresses issues in shadow of ‘Arab Spring’

The Forum takes place 8-9 May in Dubai. The report will be made available then. One of the sessions is on ‘Religious Discourses in Arab Media: The Expected Role” (which I would have liked to have sat in on).

The Twitter feed is #AMF2012 from which I got the following info:

"نادي دبي للصحافة ‏ @DubaiPressClub

• Close

You may download the 4th edition of the Arab Media Outlook by clicking on the following link : " http://bit.ly/JoMOeW " #AMF2012#Dubai"

Net filtering issues

rsf.org, New Internet filtering system condemned as backdoor censorship, 2 Dec 2011 "An Internet content filtering system that Turkey’s Information Technologies and Communications Authority (BTK) introduced on 22 November is proving controversial both domestically and abroad. The outcry has coincided with a conference on the Internet in Turkey that began in the southwestern city of Izmir on 30 November."

Call for Papers: Religion in Cyberspace

Just picked up this - please respond directly to the organisers:

RELIGION IN CYBERSPACE 2011

Call for Papers

"We cordially invite you to participate in the workshop 'Religion in Cyberspace 2011' which will take place at the 9th international conference Cyberspace 2011 held in Brno, Czech Republic, 25-26 November 2011.

Illustrative topics

religious normative frameworks in cyberspace, networking diasporas, religious collaborative environments, on-line counseling, on-line fatwas and cyber muftis, new religious movements, religious discourses in cyberspace, methodology of online-religion research, rituals in cyberspace etc.

Note: Authors of accepted papers will be invited to submit their papers for peer review to Masaryk University Journal of Law and Technology (MUJLT - mujlt.law.muni.cz).

Important dates

Abstract submission deadline: 31 July 2011 Notice on acceptance deadline: 31 August 2011 Full papers deadline: 31 December 2011

Abstract formal requirements

Range: max. 1.500 characters incl. spaces

Submission: on-line at www.cyberspace.muni.cz

'Researching Islam and Muslims Online'

I just gave my presentation on 'Researching Islam and Muslims Online' - part of the 'Beyond Islamic Studies: De-essentializing the Study of Muslim Societies' conference here at Michigan State Uni. I focused on archiving issues, and approaches to the information overload connected with cyber Islamic environments. There was some useful feedback which I'll try to integrate into the book of the conference.

"Arab Women in the Face of Challenges of the Information Society"

AICTO, Hannan Taha, globalarabnetwork.com, Tunisia Hosts Conference on Arab Women and Information Society, 27 Sep 2010 "The Conference, held by the Arab Information and Communication Technologies Organisation (AICTO), aims to thoroughly look at means that would help reinforce equality between men and women, and assist Arab women, notably through the multiple uses of information and communication technologies (ICTs), to fully play their role in stimulating their countries' development processes and in developing a lasting information society."

This sounds like a useful conference, so it will be helpful to monitor the findings. Hopefully, we can see some blogging from it ... More information can be found here:  Arab Information and Communication Technologies Organisation

The programme is here [pdf]

WOCMES 3

Still in Barcelona. I missed the first part of Peripheries Become Centers: New Media Borderlands in the Middle East (chair: Dale Eickelman). I did catch Tsuyoshi Saito discussing “Homelands and Home Pages: Contemporary Amazigh Identity in Southern Morocco”; this is an important but under-represented area of research, so I hope to read more in due course. Then Heather Browne discussed aspects of Facebook in Cairo: there were some important updates on recent events (some of which I have blogged here). Yves Gonzalez-Quijano was the discussant, and provided an informed summary: he has edited a new book on Arabic cyberspace (in French) which I'll be reviewing here soon.

This afternoon, I chaired a session New Media in the Middle East Revisited: Networked Audiences and Digital Communities organized by Vit Sisler. We'd put this together over the past few months. It was a very hot lecture theatre! It was good to hear Jon Anderson on “Networked Audiences". Ho Wai-Yip talked about “Speaking to the Arab Street beyond the Great Fire Wall: China’s Arabic International Channel as a New Silk Road Station”: it included some discussion on al-Qaradawi's visit to China, and its representation on China TV, and some interesting material on the new international media approach of China. Vit gave a paper on “Digital Heroes: Video Games and Identity Construction in Iran”, with some important examples of Iranian computer games industry developments: I think his paper will be published somewhere in due course. I discussed in my paper some new elements of my research, focusing on mobile platforms and apps - my article on apps will be out in a couple of weeks time, I understand, on Cyber Orient. I'm thinking of putting a podcast of my presentation out on this site, probably next week (as I forgot the lead to my recorder - so much for digital immediacy!). It's been useful to find out the levels of interest in cyber-activities in this conference. The place has been very busy.