JIHADI AUDIOVISUALITYAND ITS ENTANGLEMENTS Meanings, Aesthetics, Appropriations Edited by CHRISTOPH GÜNTHER and SIMONE PFEIFER JIHADI AUDIOVISUALITY AND ITS ENTANGLEMENTS JIHADI AUDIOVISUALITY AND ITS ENTANGLEMENTS Meanings, Aesthetics, Appropriations Edited by Christoph Günther and Simone Pfeifer Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © editorial matter and organisation Christoph Günther and Simone Pfeifer, 2020 © the chapters their several authors, 2020 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 11/15 Adobe Garamond by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 6751 3 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 6753 7 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 6754 4 (epub) The right of the contributors to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). Published with the support of the University of Edinburgh Scholarly Publishing Initiatives Fund. © cover image Scarecrow by Khalid Albaih CONTENTS List of Figures viii Notes on Contributors x Acknowledgements xv Jihadi Audiovisuality and its Entanglements: A Conceptual Framework 1 Christoph Günther and Simone Pfeifer PART A ETHICAL CHALLENGES OF EMPIRICALLY GROUNDED RESEARCH ON JIHADISM 1. On Speaking, Remaining Silent and Being Heard: Framing Research, Positionality and Publics in the Jihadi Field 27 Martijn de Koning, Annelies Moors and Aysha Navest 2. Designing Research on Radicalisation using Social Media Content: Data Protection Regulations as Challenges and Opportunities 51 Manjana Sold, Hande Abay Gaspar and Julian Junk vi | contents 3. Ethics in Gender Online Research: A Facebook Case Study 73 Claudia Carvalho PART B VISUALISING JIHADI IDEOLOGY AND ACTION 4. Appropriation in Islamic State Propaganda: A Theoretical and Analytical Framework of Types and Dimensions 99 Bernd Zywietz and Yorck Beese 5. Visual Performativity of Violence: Power and Retaliatory Humiliation in Islamic State (IS) Beheading Videos between 2014 and 2017 123 Michael Krona 6. From the Darkness into the Light: Narratives of Conversion in Jihadi Videos 148 Christoph Günther PART C APPROPRIATING AND CONTESTING JIHADI AUDIOVISUALITY 7. Artivism, Politics and Islam – An Empirical-Theoretical Approach to Artistic Strategies and Aesthetic Counter- Narratives that Defy Collective Stigmatisation 173 Monika Salzbrunn 8. Re-enacting Violence: Contesting Public Spheres with Appropriations of IS Execution Videos 198 Simone Pfeifer, Larissa-Diana Fuhrmann and Patricia Wevers 9. ‘You’re against Dawla, but you’re Listening to their Nasheeds?’ Appropriating Jihadi Audiovisualities in the Online Streetwork Project Jamal al-Khatib – My Path! 222 Rami Ali, Džemal Šibljaković, Felix Lippe, Ulrich Neuburg and Florian Neuburg contents | vii PART D ANĀSHĪD: SOUNDSCAPES OF RELIGIO- POLITICAL EXPERIENCE 10. ‘Nashīd’ between Islamic Chanting and Jihadi Hymns: Continuities and Transformations 249 Ines Weinrich 11. Anāshīd at the Crossroad between the Organisational and the Private 273 Carin Berg 12. Contested Chants: The Nashīd Íalīl al-Íawārim and its Appropriations 294 Alexandra Dick and Larissa-Diana Fuhrmann Index 320 FIGURES I.1 ‘Scarecrow’, cartoon by Khalid Albaih 2 3.1 Methodological Process 79 5.1 Video stills from A Message to America, 2014 and Wa-in ʿuddtum ʿudanā #2, 2015 134 5.2 Video stills from A Message Signed with Blood – To the Nation of the Cross, 2015 135 5.3 Video still from Shifāʾ al-nufūs bi-dhabª al-jāsūs, 2015 136 5.4 Video stills from Shifāʾ al-nufūs bi-dhabª al-jāsūs #3, 2015 137 5.5 Video still from ending scene of ʿĀqibat al-mundharīn, 2017 138 5.6 Video stills from Jazāʾ al-khāʾinīn #2, 2017 139 5.7 Video still from Shifāʾ al-nufūs bi-dhabª al-jāsūs #2, 2015 139 5.8 Video stills from Qi‚‚at al-naªr, 2016 140 5.9 Video still from Na‚r min Allāh wa-fatª qarīb #4, 2016 141 5.10 Video still from Shifāʾ al-nufūs bi-dhabª al-jāsūs #4, 2017 142 6.1 Video stills from Fitrah – The West behind the Mask, 2017 and Min al-Õulamāt ilā-l-nūr, 2016 151 6.2 Video stills from Fitrah – The West behind the Mask, 2017 156 6.3 Video stills from Min al-Õulamāt ilā-l-nūr, 2016 159 6.4 Video stills from Fitrah – The West behind the Mask, 2017 160 figures | ix 6.5 Video stills from Fitrah and Min al-Õulamāt 163 6.6 Video stills from Min al-Õulamāt ilā-l-nūr, 2016 164 8.1 Video still from The Levant Front’s counter-Islamic State video, 2015 204 8.2 Video stills from IS Hinrichtung in Essen / Deutschland, 2014 209 8.3 Video stills from IS Hinrichtung in Essen / Deutschland, 2014 211 9.1 Point-of-view in IS-produced video and over-shoulder shot in Jamal al-Khatib – My Path! videos 232 9.2 Quran quotations included in IS propaganda and Quran quotations featured in Jamal al-Khatib – My Path! videos 234 9.3 Protagonists approach the camera in IS propaganda videos and in Jamal al-Khatib – My Path! videos 235 9.4 Video stills from Jamal al-Khatib – My Path! videos 237 9.5 Video stills from Jamal al-Khatib – My Path! videos 238 10.1 Musical transcription of Bi-jihādinā 261 10.2 Page from a school hymn book edited by Wadād al-Maqdisī Qur†ās 261 12.1 Video still from Salil Sawarim (Synthesia piano cover) 303 12.2 Video still from Saleel Al Sawarim – Hardcore Remix (Full Version) 306 12.3 Video still from Mahrajān al-Íawārim – Zār Rīmiks | El Sawarim – Zar Remix 307 12.4 Video still from Íalīl al-Íawārim – ‘Maskhara’ Tariyaqa ʿalā al-Dawāʿish bi-Jumhūriyyat Dār al-Salām 310 12.5 Video still from ISIS Song Saleel Sawarim Presidential Sing Along Parody 312 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Hande Abay Gaspar is a research associate at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) and member of the Research Group ‘Radicalization’. Her research focuses on the causes of real-world radicalisation processes of Salafist groups in Germany. Rami Ali is a political scientist and Islamic studies scholar teaching at the University of Applied Sciences FH Campus Vienna, Austria. His areas of expertise include P/CVE, jihadism, extremist online propaganda, racism, digital youth work and online street work. He is a board member at the Vienna-based civil society organisation Turn (Verein für Gewalt und Extremismusprävention), where he is, among other things, responsible for Online Streetwork in the project Jamal al-Khatib – My Path!. Yorck Beese is a film scholar and PhD candidate in Media Studies with the Junior Research Group Jihadism on the Internet at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany. His research focuses on the history of jihad- ist video production and the development of the Islamic State’s video production. x notes on contributors | xi Carin Berg holds a PhD in Global Studies from Gothenburg University, Sweden. Her fieldwork-based study ‘The Soundtrack of Politics. A Case Study of Anashid in Hamas and Hizbullah’ (2017) shows how music is used as an essential political tool in Islamist organisations. Her most recent pub- lication is ‘Anashid in Hizbullah: Movement Identity through Impassioned Ideology’, The Middle East Journal, 72(3), 2018. Claudia Carvalho is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Tilburg University. Her research interests include the role of women in terrorism, online extremism, social network analysis, countering violent extremism, and counter-terrorism practices. ‘Hidden Women of Caliphate, a Glimpse into the Spanish Jihadist Networks’ (in ‘Militant Islam’ vs. ‘Islamic Militancy’?: Religion, Violence, Category Formation and Applied Research. Contested Fields in the Discourses of Scholarship, ed. Klaus Koch and Nina Käsehage, 2020) is her most recent publication. Alexandra Dick is a PhD candidate in Islamic Studies with the Junior Research Group Jihadism on the Internet at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany. In her PhD project, she addresses Islamic State’s usage of anāshīd along with their perception. Larissa-Diana Fuhrmann holds a BA and an MA in African and Islamic Studies from the University of Cologne. Between 2014 and 2017, she worked as the cultural co-ordinator at the Goethe-Institut Sudan. Since late 2017 she has been a PhD candidate in the Junior Research Group Jihadism on the Internet at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany, focusing on the field of artivism. She also continues her work as a curator and cultural manager. Christoph Günther holds a PhD in Islamic Studies and is Principal Investigator of the Junior Research Group Jihadism on the Internet: Images and Videos, Their Dissemination and Appropriation in the Department of Anthropology and African Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany. His research interests include religio-political movements in the modern Middle East, visual cultures and iconography, and the xii | notes on contributors sociology of religion. His research has been published in the International Journal of Communication, Sociology of Islam and the International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies, among others. Julian Junk is head of the Research Group ‘Radicalization’ at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) and head of PRIF’s Berlin office. His research focuses on radicalisation, political violence, security policy, interna- tional organisations and research methods. Martijn de Koning is an anthropologist working at the Department of Religious Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands. He works on Salafism in Europe, Islamophobia and racialisation, and (militant) activism. Together with Nadia Fadil and Francesco Ragazzi he edited the volume Radicalization in Belgium and the Netherlands – Critical Perspectives on Violence and Security (2019), and with Carmen Becker and Ineke Roex he wrote Islamic Militant Activism in Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany – ‘Islands in a Sea of Disbelief’ (2020).