TY - JOUR T1 - Introduction: Media and Religious Controversy JF - Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture Y1 - 2019 A1 - Abdel-Fadil, Mona A1 - Årsheim, Helge AB - The phrase “religious controversies” is blunt and evocative, and immediately brings up associations to angry mobs, flag burning and, at times, inexplicable rage at seemingly mundane matters. The capacity of religion, whether in its doctrinal, social or institutional form, to generate, propagate and exacerbate controversy appears endless. While this capacity may not be unique to religion, nor recent in origin, the last couple of decades have seen what would appear to be unprecedented levels of religious controversies around the world. This introduction provides a brief backdrop to the overarching theme of mediatized religious controversies, and identifies some cross-cutting issues that have arisen across the different contributions. We identify some general patterns among the controversies dealt with in this special issue, and ask how these patterns may inspire new research efforts. UR - https://brill.com/view/journals/rmdc/8/1/article-p1_1.xml?language=en ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Counselling Muslim Selves on Islamic Websites: Walking a Tightrope Between Secular and Religious Counselling Ideals? JF - Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture Y1 - 2015 A1 - Abdel-Fadil, Mona AB - This article focuses on the interactive counselling service Problems and Answers (PS), an Arabic language and Islamic online counselling service, which draws on global therapeutic counselling trends. For over a decade, PS was run and hosted by www.IslamOnline.net (IOL). Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article aims to provide a layered, contextualized understanding of online Islamic counselling, through addressing the ‘invisible’, ‘behind the screens’ aspects of PS counselling and the meaning making activities that inform the online output. In particular, I examine: 1. The multiple ways in which ‘religion’ shapes the PS counsellors' counselling output, and 2. The extent to which secular and religious counselling ideals clash, in PS counselling. Drawing on a mixed methods approach, I demonstrate instances in which offline data nuance and generate new understandings of online data. The findings demonstrate the multivocality and variations in the PS counsellors' perspectives on both religion and counselling psychology, and shed light on possible tensions between professed ideals and actual online practices. UR - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322380732_Counselling_Muslim_Selves_on_Islamic_Websites_Walking_a_Tightrope_Between_Secular_and_Religious_Counselling_Ideals ER - TY - JOUR T1 - The Politics of Affect: the Glue of Religious and Identity Conflicts in Social Media JF - Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture Y1 - 2019 A1 - Abdel-Fadil, Mona AB - Affect theory often overlooks decades of anthropological, feminist, queer, and postcolonial scholarship on emotion. I build on this extensive scholarship of emotion and use my online ethnography of a Facebook group that promotes the public visibility of Christianity as a springboard to build a conceptual framework of the politics of affect. I address three theoretical gaps: 1) the lack of distinction between different emotions, 2) how affect is often performed for someone, and 3) the varying intensities of emotion. I delve into the intricate ways in which emotions fuel identities, worldviews, and their contestations, and how fake news may come to be perceived as affectively factual. This article deepens our understanding of the role of affect in polemic and mediatized conflicts. The role of emotion in religious conflicts and identity politics is not simply analytically useful, but is, at times, the very fabric of which political ideas are made. UR - https://brill.com/view/journals/rmdc/8/1/article-p11_11.xml?language=en ER -