Disentangling Jihad, Political Violence and Media

Explores how Jihad, political violence and audio-visual media are entangled This collection presents empirically-grounded, interdisciplinary research to foster critical perspectives on the significations of Jihad in the academe as well as in the realm of legislature, executive and the judiciary. It focuses on the contexts in which various notions of Jihad overlap with political violence, not only as a call for armed struggle, but also as a means to characterise Muslims as the 'other' of 'Western' conceptions of social and political order. Contributions shed light on distinct conditions under which Jihad is employed to describe and assess human traits, thoughts, and actions as political violence and how this assessment or its dissemination is informed by various media. From 16 detailed case studies, readers will learn to critically reflect on the practices of knowledge production in different social spheres. Split into four thematic parts, the contributions show how through discursive formations and mediations in the wake of 9/11 and the subsequent "War on Terror", Muslim life and religiosity has been evaluated in terms of a narrow understanding of Jihad. Simone Pfeifer is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Research Training Group anschließen-ausschließen: Cultural Dynamics Beyond Globalized Networks at the University of Cologne Christoph Günther holds the Heisenberg position for Islamic Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Erfurt. Robert Dörre is a Postdoctoral Researcher of Media Cultural Studies at Ruhr-University Bochum and an Associated Scholar at the Collaborative Research Centre Virtual Lifeworlds.