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Conference Presentations by Vika Gardner

“Childhood studies”, a field in European history, is largely unknown in Islamic studies. Nur al-... more “Childhood studies”, a field in European history, is largely unknown in Islamic studies. Nur al-Din ʿAbd al-Rahmān Jāmi (d. 898 AH / 1492 CE), author of Bahāristān, wrote the work to educate his son. Although it is doubtful that he intended to address constructions of masculinity and sexuality in the work explicitly, we may read across the text to draw out the implicit messages about masculinity and sexuality represented there. This article presents a single literary text as an individual example for how we might begin to read such a text for information on these topics. Because of Jāmi’s popularity across the Turkic and Persianate lands, the work may have had influence far beyond its temporal and geographic context.

Keywords: Sufism, Naqshbandiyya, Herat, Central Asia, historiography, childhood, adolescence, sexuality, love, fifteenth century

Aḥmad b. Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Kāsānī, popularly known as Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam, the greatest master, is... more Aḥmad b. Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Kāsānī, popularly known as Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam, the greatest master, is regularly articulated in contemporary literature on the Naqshbandiyya as “the” leader of the Naqshbandiyya at the end of his life. And yet Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam himself does not articulate the group of which he is a part as being the Naqshbandiyya, but its precursor, the Khwājagān (the masters). His shrines, one in Dehbid, outside of Samarqand, and another in Kasan-sai, in the Ferghana Valley, built in the past decade, create a factual set for the actual human being, while the works he wrote have taken on a life of their own, traveling well outside of the space within which he lived and died in the end of the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth centuries. During his actual life, Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam’s connections which political leaders and contrasts with other religious figures were relatively common for the elite among the Naqshbandiyya and the Khwājagān. However, no attention has been paid to how the narratives in Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam’s treatises shifted according to the site of its readership or copying. Thus, while the idea of Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam remained fixed as far as we know, one might argue that his writings have shifted and changed over time. This essay will look at one such work, Tanbīh al-salāṭīn (Admonition of the Kings) to begin to tease out some of these shifts, and contextualize it in the sociopolitical spheres of his time. One of the primary reasons for examining this material closely is that Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam’s intellectual progeny seem to have developed in two separate spheres: One centered in Bukhara on Muḥammad Islam Juybari (d. 1563), the other centered on Lutfullah Chusti (d. 1571) in Tashkent and eastward. As one sees in the Naṣīhat al-sālikīn, different copies of the manuscripts show traces of their point of origin, as when one manuscript (ms. 1443) says to “go to Tashkent”, and another (Kattakhanov ms., more on these below) says “came to Tashkent”.

Muslim media resounds with a plethora of voices interpreting scripture to “revitalize” Islam and ... more Muslim media resounds with a plethora of voices interpreting scripture to “revitalize” Islam and facilitate its engagement with diverse groups. These media and the well-known figures who employ them incorporate discursive threads that at times emphasize constructions of science, debunking or accepting science that may be constructed as “Western” or “Qurʾānic”, or even both. Today’s public, Muslim and non-Muslim, is increasingly online watching and making -- or at least spreading -- such videos. This paper will discuss one of the most popular personalities in contemporary science and Islam videos, the Mumbai-based Muslim televangelist, Dr. Zakir Naik. Videos which include him -- representing him as being trained as a medical doctor -- number in the hundreds in many languages of south and southeast Asia and Europe. Naik opens his “Qur’an and Modern Science” lectures, which he has been giving since at least 1996, with a presentation on the Big Bang that I will place within the context of the larger discussion of Islam and science.

Muslim media resounds with a plethora of voices interpreting scripture to “revitalize” Islam and ... more Muslim media resounds with a plethora of voices interpreting scripture to “revitalize” Islam and facilitate its engagement with diverse groups. These media and the well-known figures who employ them incorporate discursive threads that at times emphasize constructions of “science”, debunking or accepting science that is often also constructed as “Western” or “Qurʾānic”, or even both. Muslim televangelists such as Zakir Naik present these discourses, utilizing them to augment traditional scriptures in order to gain additional fame. This renown then is constructed as providing them with an authority to speak for and to Muslims globally. For some, this process is part of the democratization of Qurʾānic interpretation that is often connected within various Salafi belief systems, although it is not only found among them.

Although terms like “televangelism” suggest satellite television, these media are increasingly found in online videos, on YouTube and other platforms, where they are consumed on cell phones and computers alike, expanding access well beyond home-based television. The spreadability of these materials, through re-editing and spoofing as well as copying to new platforms or channels, such as embedding them in other social media, suggests that both the media and the discourses enclosed in them do offer extensions to traditional sources of authority.

This paper examines the scientific discourses used by Zakir Naik in online videos that were collected as a part of our research into videos on science and Islam. Zakir Naik was presented in more videos in our catalogue -- three times as many as the next closest figure -- making his use of this discourse an important element in Muslim cultures worldwide. Several prior scholars have noted use of Zakir Naik’s materials in Ethiopia, Bangladesh, and Norway. The recurring use of his “Qurʾān and Modern Science: Compatible or Incompatible?” in venues around the world demonstrates the interest in the topic. This includes leading with science-related ideas in a Oxford Union appearance (UK) in 2011, demonstrating at least Naik’s belief in its continuing relevance culturally. In addition, Naik’s presentation of the same material in Dubai during Ramadan of 2013/1434 demonstrates his popularity in the central Islamic lands as well. We argue that his material both incorporates and rejects “Western” ideas in order to both build his own brand and develop ways for Muslims in non-majority geographic regions to build certainty into their faith.

Bibliography
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Mårtensson, Ulrika. 2014. “Harakî Salafism in Norway: ‘The Saved Sect’ Hugs the Infidels.” The Nordic Welfare State 8i:190-222.

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Mosemghvdlishvili, Lela, and Jeroen Jansz. 2013. “Framing and praising Allah on YouTube: Exploring user-created videos about Islam and the motivations for producing them.” New Media & Society 15 (4):482-500.
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Svensson, Jonas. 2013. “ITZ BIDAH BRO!!!!! GT ME?? -- YouTube Mawlid and Voices of Praise and Blame.” In Muslims and the New Information and Communication Technologies: Notes from an Emerging and Infinite Field, edited by Thomas Hoffman and Göran Larsson, 89-111. Dordrecht / Heidelberg / New York / London: Springer.

Welbourne, Dustin J., and Will J. Grant. 2015. “Science communication on YouTube: Factors that affect channel and video popularity.” Public Understanding of Science:1-14.

Yazicioglu, Isra. 2013. Understanding the Qur’anic Miracle Stories in the Modern Age. Edited by Vincent Wimbush, Signifying (on) Scriptures. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.

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Some Muslim preachers seek authority by using science. Dr. Zakir Naik, a Muslim preacher from Mum... more Some Muslim preachers seek authority by using science. Dr. Zakir Naik, a Muslim preacher from Mumbai whose training was originally as a medical doctor, grounds his authority on a rejection of biological evolution and his penchant for arguing with atheists. His globally-oriented satellite TV station, Peace TV, provides videos that are clipped and spread on transnational platforms like YouTube. This paper examines the comments on a particular clip from Naik’s oeuvre on evolution in order to examine how his authority is accepted and rejected by individuals. The video shows a debate between Naik and Adnan Jahangir, a young, ex-Muslim medical student in 2014. An earlier study demonstrated it to be the most widely spread of Naik’s clips on evolution, with a significant localized spread in Indonesia. That study demonstrated that the video has been interpreted through its various titles ambiguously, with some suggesting that Naik wins the debate and others suggesting that Jahangir does. For this new study, using the more than 40 thousand comments from approximately 200 copies of the clip, the analysis will focus on both the comments themselves and on the users making them, drawing on how they frame the debate to see what sources of authority are most important and how they construct themselves. The analysis includes coding for localizations (language, geographic references) as well as for framing of pro- and anti-religious and evolutionary stances. This analysis will show how individuals negotiate with efforts to persuade them about religion using science.

Widely disseminated videos by Harun Yahya and Zakir Naik show us the manipulation of ideas to con... more Widely disseminated videos by Harun Yahya and Zakir Naik show us the manipulation of ideas to construct Muslim identities based on particular understandings of science, especially through representations of evolution and iʿjāz (scientific miracles found in the Qurʾān). These topics are important because they are hotly contested: for instance, some Muslims suggest that not accepting human evolution is the normative understanding of Islam, other Muslims suggest that even human evolution is accepted in the Qurʾān. Still others question why one would look at the Qurʾān at all for scientific theories. On the other hand, the mainstream media repeat scientific errors by individual Muslim clerics.1 Some of the current discussion of digital humanities delves into social media, but videos within the Muslim world have been little studied beyond basic binaries.2 Through our recent effort to catalogue nearly all the internet videos on science and Islam, our preliminary data suggest ways representations are reused across the video media landscape, creating resonances that may be readily studied.

Videos have, in some ways, become a modern version of the premodern majmuʿa, in which an individual would copy and keep selections of works of interest. Our contemporary “copyists” might begin by watching a selection of videos, thinking about what they see, and engaging with the ideas through commenting on the videos, posting links to them on other social media, or discussing them with people nearby, like friends and family. As the video medium becomes more comfortable, they might then copy whole videos onto their own pages, and perhaps eventually integrate the material into their own voice by adding labels or splicing in their own messages. Even without adding their own voice, through clipping segments of longer videos, individuals highlight issues of concern. A few might experiment with a video blog. In the end, just as in the premodern majmuʿa, video clips are often shorn of their original context and grafted into a new context. Today, unlike the original majmuʿas, “copyists” may seek to attract attention and even economic benefit through views and sales. Yet just like the premodern majmuʿa, engagement with video is highly personal: if even just reposting a video clip to your own page means enduring comments, presenting material with your own voice or body in a video must be understood as an active presentation of identity (or identities).

The public nature of this social media process and the relative persistence of videos ensures that these contemporary video majmuʿa present discourses that may portray a wide variety of actors. Our data demonstrate how broadly disseminated the Turkish-based Harun Yahya’s documentaries are in English. Yet the lecturer with the largest number of videos is the South Asian medical doctor, Zakir Naik. The constructions of normative Muslim dogma through these videos, often strikingly contrasted with constructions of Western ideas, influence both Muslims and non-Muslims. This project analyzes not only the prominent personalities creating original content, but the way video clips are augmented or contrasted with additional material. This analysis delimits some of the processes of identity construction represented in this medium.

Funded by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.
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1. For instance, the representations of an Earth-centric universe. See these videos for some diverse presentations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-6rTCKde2k, www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqGt0YV1AMQ, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkwUnzd8ExA.
2. L. Mosemghvdlishvili and J. Jansz, “Framing and praising Allah on YouTube: Exploring user-created videos about Islam and the motivations for producing them,” New Media & Society 15(4) (2013): 482-500; J. Svensson, “ITZ BIDAH BRO!!!!! GT ME?? -- YouTube Mawlid and Voices of Praise and Blame,” in Muslims and the New Information and Communication Technologies: Notes from an Emerging and Infinite Field. T. Hoffman and G. Larsson, eds. (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013): 89-111.

Talks by Vika Gardner

Online spoken word poetry employs both audio and visual cues to connect to broader cultures of af... more Online spoken word poetry employs both audio and visual cues to connect to broader cultures of affinity. Muslim youth outside of Muslim-majority countries often find internet videos using poetry as a way to connect to others. Talk Islam from Sydney, Australia has spent the past several years creating short videos that present a their perspectives on a variety of social and religious topics.

One of the earliest of their videos is called the “Meaning of Life” (2013). I argue that the poem’s author, Kamal Saleh, takes up Muslim science narratives in his video in order to assert a dominance for Islam that Muslims in Sydney may not feel. The visual and textual idioms combine to construct his view of both globalized Anglophone culture and the Qurʾān as a locus of meaning, creating a cultural piece that has spread worldwide.

The material in this talk was developed from the 2014-15 project through SSiMS to catalogue videos on the internet addressing both science and Islam, funded by the Templeton Foundation. Evaluations for “The Meaning of Life” and more than two hundred other videos may be found online at www.islamandsciencevideos.com.

Papers by Vika Gardner

Journal of International and Global Studies, 2011

Gender in Contemporary Iran: Pushing the Boundaries is a collection of articles by sociologists w... more Gender in Contemporary Iran: Pushing the Boundaries is a collection of articles by sociologists who seek to break down stereotypes about Iranian women. The material has been arranged thematically (p. 4), with the first three of the eleven chapters analyzing discourses around gender within the spheres of law, politics, and religion. The next three chapters examine education and public discourses. The subsequent two essays examine youth in specific settings, and the last three essays address economic issues relating to women. Yet, if there is a weakness in the collection as a whole, it might be that reading eleven essays, all of which decry stereotyping, leads one to wonder if any of the people who are doing the stereotyping will ever read it. Two of the best of the theoretical works are Louise Harper's "Authority, Modernity and Gender-Relevant Legislation in Iran" and Azadeh Kian's "Gendering Shi'ism in Post-Revolutionary Iran," which are the first two chapters of the book. Although the titles make the two essays seem as if they examine different material, they utilize much of the same material through differing secondary source. This is not to say the essays are repetitious; in fact, they might readily be used side-by-side for advanced students to learn about how different thinkers shape similar material, and the chapters are enjoyable if not new for a specialist on Iran as well. Harper's article in particular is brilliantly written, with careful contextualizations of terms like "feminism" and "Islamist women," which need to be considered in an Iranian context. Each of these articles looks at marriage and how marriage and divorce have been affected by women's activism and the government since the 1979 Iranian Revolution; Kian's essay is more argumentative, one might even say polemical, but she locates agency squarely in women. The discussion of women arguing for more equitable solutions to resolve problems around women's financial inputs into family finances demonstrates well that (male) clerics in Iran are influenced by the religiously based arguments that Iranian women are becoming more adept at making. Although other authors, such as Leila Ahmed in A Quiet Revolution (Yale University Press, 2011), make the point that "Islamist" women are socially active, the religious basis of the Iranian government means that everyone who wants to implement change needs to work within this paradigm, in many ways making Iran far more dynamic religiously in the post-revolutionary period (and especially in the post-Khomeini period) than it was in the fifty years before this period. Fatemah Etemad Moghadam's article, "Women and Social Protest in the Islamic Republic of Iran," the third in this section as the editors organized it, is a highly condensed historical survey, perhaps useful for providing context; the article's sources include conversations with government ministers and lawyers working in Iran. In contrast, some of the book's later essays appear naïve. Goli M. Rezai-Rashi's "Exploring Women's Experience of Higher Education and the Changing Nature of Gender Relations in Iran" sets out "to show the participation of women in higher education and to examine women's views of their interests and desires in obtaining a university education and how this increasing access to higher education is affecting the dynamics of gender relations" (p. 45), a broad topic for an essay. She discusses how the Iranian government "removed the secular discourse" concerning gender relations (p. 48); problematically, however, while discourse might be supplanted, it is difficult to "remove." Government agencies are said to "lay out roles" for women (p. 49), without any discussion of how those roles might have changed, even from the government's position, using a book chapter published in 1994 as a source. One might have

Journal of Media and Religion, 2018

ABSTRACT Muslim youth cultures often are engaged by media both locally and globally. It is hypoth... more ABSTRACT Muslim youth cultures often are engaged by media both locally and globally. It is hypothesized they search for representations of Islam that allow them to frame their discourse in ways that unify rather than divide. Australia, with its diverse Muslim population, is a place where this sort of framing might seem especially important. A variety of Muslim youth cultures use science narratives in these unification efforts. These narratives are typically framed with scientists or people who present themselves as public figures to speak authoritatively for “Islam” or “science.” Frequently lost in these discussions are voices of ordinary Muslims engaging in acts of cultural production. We focus here on “The Meaning of Life” (2013), a video of a spoken word poem written and performed by Kamal Saleh, a young Muslim from Sydney, Australia. This expands prior discussions by examining how Muslim youth are actively shaping local and transnational cultures, rather than merely being acted upon by traditional media. We use analytical tools common in video analysis (Rose, 2016), applying them to data developed in processes described by Gardner & Hameed (2017) to understand how ideas about science within an Islamic context are reproduced.

Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, 2013

Die Welt des Islams

Internet videos are one form of “new media” that enable us to study the movement of narratives. L... more Internet videos are one form of “new media” that enable us to study the movement of narratives. Lectures addressing both Islam and science appear often in these videos. One of the most popular speakers in this material is Dr. Zakir Naik, a Muslim preacher from India. Naik’s lectures often interpret select modern scientific discoveries to “prove” the divine origin of the Qurʾān, a pseudo-scientific endeavor known as iʿjāz ʿilmī. This paper contextualizes Naik’s branding and how he draws upon the authority of science and Western scientists. Naik has been able to trade on both his medical training and his South Asian roots by combining formulaic presentations from famous pro-Islamic Westerners such as Dr. Maurice Bucaille with stylings learned from preachers such as Ahmad Deedat. Garnering both devoted fans and vociferous critics, Naik has developed into a recognizable cultural symbol with his own transnational authority.

Muslim youth cultures often are engaged both locally and globally. It is hypothesized that they ... more Muslim youth cultures often are engaged both locally and globally. It is hypothesized that they search for representations of Islam that allow them to frame their discourse in ways that unify rather than divide. Australia, with its diverse Muslim population, is a place where this sort of framing might seem especially important. A variety of Muslim youth cultures use science narratives in these unification efforts. These narratives are typically framed with scientists or people who present themselves as public figures to speak authoritatively for “Islam” or “science”. Frequently lost in these discussions are voices of ordinary ordinary Muslims engaging in acts of cultural production. We focus here on “The Meaning of Life” (2013), a video of a spoken word poem written and performed by Kamal Saleh, a young Muslim from Sydney, Australia. This expands prior discussions by examining how Muslim youth are actively shaping local and transnational cultures, rather than merely being acted upon by traditional media.

Forthcoming (17/2) in Journal of Media and Religion.

CyberOrient, 2017

This methodology article explores the process through which we sought to catalogue videos address... more This methodology article explores the process through which we sought to catalogue videos addressing natural science and Islam on the Internet comprehensively. This data was then used to select videos for inclusion in the Center for the Study of Science in Muslim Societies’ Science and Islam Video Portal (www.scienceandislamvideos.com), which evaluates the videos based on their representations of science, Islam and history. As a growing body of research is demonstrating, Internet videos provide a window into the lives of both celebrity and ordinary Muslims and their critics worldwide. The article describes the methodological decisions of what to include and exclude from the study, framing them in a discussion of some of the key terms. We then step through the process of searching for videos and cleaning the data, providing flow charts with details. In the last section of the article, we discuss the results and their ramifications on our continuing research.
Keywords:
media studies, Islam, social media, video

Follow the link above to the open-access article. This is the first in a series of articles based on research done on Internet videos at the Center for the Study of Science in Muslim Societies at Hampshire College.

Books by Vika Gardner

This web site provides links to videos that discuss both natural science and Islam together with ... more This web site provides links to videos that discuss both natural science and Islam together with evaluations of their discussions of Islam, science, and history. The purpose of the Portal is to allow both the public and scholars to see how topics about science are being presented both by Muslims and about Muslims and Islam. The video descriptions include additional information about the speaker(s), location of the presentation where possible, and links to other videos when relevant. The site is updated regularly with new videos and new evaluations of older videos.

The Science and Islam Video Portal is the result of research done starting in June 2014 into all videos on the internet that present information on both Islam (in any form) and the natural sciences. A subset of the videos have been selected for further evaluation and the results presented on this portal.

The research project was crafted by Salman Hameed, the director of the Center for the Study of Science in Muslim Societies at Hampshire College. Dr. Hameed, who writes regularly on Irtiqa, has written about the understandings of evolution in Muslim societies. Joining him for this project was Vika Gardner, a post-doc research fellow, and fourteen undergraduate cataloguers from across the Five Colleges. In addition, the project had five advisors, two from within the Five Colleges faculty: Charles Ross, associate professor of evolutionary biology, Hampshire College, and Suleiman Mourad, professor of religion, Smith College. The other three bring a diverse array of knowledge about Islam, science, and history to the project. They are Ehab Abouheif, professor of biology, McGill University, Asad Q. Ahmed, associate professor of Arabic and Islamic studies, University of California, Berkeley, and George Saliba, professor of Arabic and Islamic studies, Columbia University.

The project has been funded by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.