This timely book examines the power and role of the image in modern Middle Eastern societies. The essays explore the role and function of image making to highlight the ways in which the images "speak" and what visual languages mean for the construction of Islamic subjectivities, the distribution of power, and the formation of identity and belonging. Visual Culture in the Modern Middle East addresses aspects of the visual in the Islamic world, including the presentation of Islam on television; on the internet and other digital media; in banners, posters, murals, and graffiti; and in the satirical press, cartoons, and children's books.
Christiane Gruber is Associate Professor of Islamic Art, Department of Art History, University of Michigan.
Sune Haugbolle is Associate Professor in Global Studies and Sociology at the Department for Society and Globalization at Roskilde University.
Introduction
I. "Moving" Images
1. Images of the Prophet Muhammad In and Out of Modernity: The Curious Case of a 2008 Mural in Tehran /Christiane J. Gruber
2. Secular Domesticities, Shiite Modernities: Khomeini's Illustrated Tawzh al-Masail /Pamela Karimi
3. Memory and Ideology: Images of Saladin in Syria and Iraq /Stefan Heidemann
4. "You Will (Not) Be Able to Take Your Eyes Off It!": Mass-Mediated Images and Politico-Ethical Reform in the Egyptian Islamic Revival /Patricia Kubala
II. Islamist Iconographies
5. The Muslim "Crying Boy" in Turkey: Aestheticization and Politicization of Suffering in Islamic Imagination /Özlem Sava
6. The New Happy Child in Islamic Picture Books in Turkey /Umut Azak
7. Sadrabiliyya: The Visual Narrative of Muqtada Al-Sadr's Islamist Politics and Insurgency in Iraq /Ibrahim Al-Marashi
8. The Martyr's Fading Body: Propaganda vs. Beautification in the Tehran Cityscape /Ulrich Marzolph
III. Satirical Contestations
9. Pushing Out Islam: Cartoons of the Reform Period in Turkey (19231930) /Yasemin Gencer
10. Blasphemy or Critique?: Secularists and Islamists in Turkish Cartoon Images /Pinar Batur and John VanderLippe
11. Naji al-Ali and the Iconography of Arab Secularism /Sune Haugbolle
IV. Authenticity and Reality in Trans-National Broadcasting
12. Arab Television Drama Production and the Islamic Public Sphere /Christa Salamandra
13. Saudi-Islamist Rhetorics about Visual Culture /Marwan Kraidy
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index
