Pop Islam

In the West, Islam and Muslim life have been imagined as existing in an opposing state to popular culture—a frozen faith unable to engage with the dynamic way popular culture shifts over time, its followers reduced to tropes of terrorism and enemies of the state. Pop Islam: Seeing American Muslims in Popular Media traces narratives found in contemporary American comic books, scripted and reality television, fashion magazines, comedy routines, and movies to understand how they reveal nuanced Muslim identities to American audiences, even as their accessibility obscures their diversity. Rosemary Pennington argues that even as American Muslims have become more visible in popular media and created space for themselves in everything from magazines to prime-time television to social media, this move toward "being seen" can reinforce fixed ideas of what it means to be Muslim. Pennington reveals how portrayals of Muslims in American popular media fall into a "trap of visibility," where moving beyond negative tropes can cause creators and audiences to unintentionally amplify those same stereotypes. To truly understand where American narratives of who Muslims are come from, we must engage with popular media while also considering who is allowed to be seen there—and why.

"From Ms. Marvel to Muslim lives on television and in fashion magazines, Pop Islam provides a captivating account of the paradoxes, complexity, and hybridity of modern Muslim identities and their echoes in popular media. A must read!"—Sahar Khamis, author of Islam Dot Com "By drawing out the ways in which representation can overcome stereotypes, or just reinforce them, Rosemary Pennington places the challenge of diversity in an immediate and urgent context. We see the unexpected vulnerabilities, the persistent rigidities, the occasional comedy and the undeniable tragedies of America's Muslims, a minority as diverse and confusing as the country they belong to—a country that struggles to understand its Muslims for reasons of global histories, structural possibilities, and even the terms upon which America constructs its sense of national self."—Haroon Moghul, author of Two Billion Caliphs

Rosemary Pennington is Associate Professor of Journalism in Miami University's Department of Media, Journalism & Film. She is editor with Hilary E. Kahn of On Islam: Muslims and the Media and editor with Michael Krona of The Media World of ISIS.