By © Cory Funk Memorial University a Master's Thesis Submitted to The
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HASHTAGGING ISLAM: #JESUISHIJABI, SOCIAL MEDIA, AND RELIGIOUS/SECULAR IDENTITIES IN THE LIVES OF MUSLIMS IN WINNIPEG AND ST. JOHN’S, CANADA by © Cory Funk Memorial University A Master’s Thesis submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of Religious Studies Memorial University of Newfoundland Dr. Jennifer Selby July 2017 CONTENTS Abstract...........................................................................................................................................4 Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………………..5 Chapter One: Introduction Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..6 Canadian Muslims in Winnipeg and St. John’s………………………………………………….13 Internet, Securitization, and Muslim Identities in Canada……………….………………………18 Contextualizing Hashtags, Religion, and the Secular…….………………………………….......22 Thesis Overview…………………………………………………………………………………30 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….31 Chapter Two: Literature Review Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………33 Hashtag Theory and Online Religion………..…………………………………………………..34 Twitter as a Proxy for the Public Sphere……...……………........................................................45 Muslim Hashtags as Everyday Activism………..……………………………………………….55 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….61 Chapter Three: Methodological Approaches Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………63 Gathering, Analyzing, and Recruiting for Interviews……………………………………………64 Gathering and Analyzing Tweets: The Emerging Method of ‘Hashtag Ethnography’……….....68 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….74 Chapter Four: How Islam and Hashtags Shape Participants’ Navigation of Canadian Secular Society Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………76 Participants’ Perceptions of Islam, Canadian Identities, and Secularism………………………..78 Use of the Internet to Navigate the Public Sphere….……………………………………………83 The Co-Expression of Religious and Secular Identities Online……………………………...….87 The Use of Hashtags by Participants to Communicate Religious/Secular Identities……...…….90 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….99 2 Chapter Five: The Religious and the Secular in #JeSuisHijabi Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………..100 “Religious” and “Secular” Language in #JeSuisHijabi………………………………………...101 Contextualizing @JeSuisHijabi through Participants’ Experiences with the Internet and the Hijab…………………………………………………………………………………………….109 #JeSuisHijabi as Lived Religion in the Canadian Context…………….……………………….115 Changing Media Narratives and Addressing Stereotypes……………………………………...119 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………...130 Chapter Six: General Conclusions General Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………132 Scope and Limitations………………………………………………………………………......135 Suggestions for Future Research………………………………………………………………………………………...136 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………………138 Appendices Appendix 1: Consent Form…………….……………………………….....................................147 Appendix 2: Online Recruitment Poster…..………………........................................................153 Appendix 3: Interview Schedule………………………………………………………………..154 Appendix 4: Letter from ICEHR with Ethics Approval………………………………………..167 Appendix 5: Pamphlet…………………………………………………………………………..168 3 ABSTRACT In the fall of 2015, after a Canadian federal election rife with negative rhetoric toward Muslims and a concurrent rise in anti-Muslim incidents that occurred alongside November terrorist attacks in Paris, the Canadian Ahmadiyya Muslim community launched a Twitter hashtag campaign called #JeSuisHijabi. With it, the organization stated that it aimed to challenge misconceptions of Islam and Islamic garb that led to anti-Muslim attacks across Canada. An offline campaign accompanied the hashtag; information booths sought to teach non-Muslims about Islam and the hijab, while encouraging them to try on the garment. With analysis of tweets generated with the hashtag #JeSuisHijabi and consideration of qualitative interviews conducted with Muslims in Winnipeg, MB and St. John’s, NL on their use (or not) of hashtags and the Internet in general, I show that the way in which some Canadian Muslims use hashtags to communicate identity complicates the so-called separation between religious and secular spheres. This thesis argues that “religious” hashtags can complicate common notions of a religious/secular binary at work in contemporary Canada, and can serve as a means to understand everyday religiosity in the public sphere. 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank the participants who graciously agreed to meet and share their stories, thoughts, and experiences with me. Without them, this thesis would not be possible. I would also like to thank my wife, Anneke, for her support and patience throughout this process, and for tolerating my hollow responses and rehearsed nods as I dazedly pondered the content of this thesis during conversations that deserved her attention. Much gratitude also goes to my supervisor Dr. Jennifer Selby, whose mentorship, helpfulness, and intellect made writing this thesis a rewarding and formative experience. Finally, I would like to thank my parents, who taught me to be curious, kind, and courageous, three values that brought me to this point, which I hold dearly to this day. 5 CHAPTER ONE Introduction On a cold, gray November morning in Winnipeg, Canada in 2016 I sat down for breakfast to interview “Dauood.” 1 Dauood is 36, born in Pakistan, and has been living in Canada since 2004. If there was one thing that I learned very quickly about Dauood, it was that he loves food. “I eat out a lot,” he told me. “So if you know good restaurants, you are my good friend. If you cook you are my really good friend. If you don’t ask me to do dishes you are my best friend.” We both laughed. “So, I don’t care what your religion is. As long as you’re not feeding me pork, I’ll be eating your food every day.” Dauood is a self-identified Muslim and throughout our two hour-long interview we talked about more than just food. Like the focus of this thesis, we got together to discuss how, as a Muslim, he uses the Internet. Among other topics we talked about his favorite imams on YouTube, how the Internet is helping him decide who he wants to marry, and, as was on everyone’s mind at the time, what he thought about Donald Trump, elected as President of the United States only a few weeks earlier. In particular, I was curious about how he used hashtags, and whether he uses them expressly to challenge misconceptions about Islam. When I asked him, “Do you use hashtags? If so have you ever used them to challenge misconceptions about Islam?” He responded, "Kind of. You know what baklava is?" “Yeah.” I said, confused but intrigued. He responded: 1 I would like to gratefully acknowledge the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for funding this research. This thesis research falls under a larger SSHRC-funded project entitled Canadian Muslims Online: New Muslim Public Spheres in the Digital Age. As a research assistant for this project the interviews that I conducted are used as data for this thesis and for the larger project as a whole. For more information about the larger project, see http://canadianmuslimsonline.uqam.ca/en. All participants’ names have been anonymized. 6 It was my first picture on Instagram, I hashtagged it #MuslimFerreroRocher. So kind of in that aspect, you know, if you don’t come to a masjid [mosque], you don’t talk to us, you’d think all Muslims are some crazy maniac people. The word Islam, what’s the first thing to come to your mind? Even to my mind, because in the media whenever somebody says Islam it’s a black [and white] picture of someone with an AK-47. And even though I’m a Muslim, it comes to my mind, when beautiful things should come to my mind, but unfortunately that’s what we see. So I do use hashtags to kind of show, hey, we follow a certain religion, but we also have a family, we also have birthdays, we also have weddings, we also have food fests, we also go and watch movies in cinemas, we have Muslim desserts that we call non-Muslim names, that you can kind of relate to. So I do use hashtags, but for engaging people. Like we had #WinnipegEid, the MIA [Manitoba Islamic Association] was using it, so I used that in a couple of pictures. Like many Muslims, Dauood feels like his religion is portrayed poorly by the media and is fundamentally misunderstood in Canadian society as monolithic, violent, overly serious, dogmatic, and anti-Western. Even as a devout Muslim himself, he admits that it is starting to affect how he thinks about himself and his own religion. To him #MuslimFerreroRocher, is one way in which he, as an individual, can circumvent and subvert this narrative, and make his religious identity “more relatable,” by humorously showing the world that he is just a regular person, who, alongside being Muslim, does many of the everyday things that non-Muslim Canadians do. In doing so, he aims to make a popular Pakistani dish more palatable for what he presumes is a non-Muslim audience. I found Dauood’s story about #MuslimFerreroRocher fascinating, because to him, a hashtag was something that he used to creatively communicate Muslim identity to a public audience in a way that highlights the so-called “secular” aspects of his religious identity. In part, this conversation led me to hypothesize that perhaps hashtags can shed light on the ways in which the religious and the secular,