Abstract
The Muslim minority in Germany has been historically misrepresented in and excluded from the mainstream public sphere. In response, some Muslims in Germany have turned to blogs as an alternative space to challenge the dominant public discourse through varied discursive practices. In this study, we examine these practices through 28 in-depth interviews with Muslim bloggers in Germany. Applying Nancy Fraser’s theory of counterpublics, we posit that this group, which seeks to challenge mainstream representations and offer oppositional counter-discourses, represents an emerging counterpublic.
Keywords
Muslims in the German media
“Shocking Study,” screamed the headline in Bild, Germany’s leading tabloid, commenting on a government study that reported that nearly 25 percent of German Muslims refused to integrate into German society and rejected western values (Solms-Laubach, 2012). Released in March 2012, the study titled “The Daily Life of Young Muslims in Germany” (Frindte et al., 2011) has reignited the thorny debate about the place of Muslims in German society. Indeed, in sharp contrast to the early 1950s and 1960s, when German politicians eager to find solutions to the country’s post-war labor shortages viewed the arrival of Muslim workers with complaisance, German Muslims have increasingly become the focus of public resentment and suspicion (Constant et al., 2009). In recent years, the 4 million strong Muslim community, 1 which constitutes Germany’s largest minority (Haug et. al, 2009), has been routinely stigmatized in media representations and excluded from the mainstream public sphere, with little opportunity to speak for itself in mainstream media.
To counter such pervasive marginalization, some German Muslims have turned to blogs as an alternative space to challenge the dominant public discourse through a variety of practices. In this study, we examine these practices via in-depth interviews with a group of Muslim bloggers in Germany. Employing Nancy Fraser’s (1990) theory of counterpublics, we argue that this group, which seeks to contest mainstream representations, offers oppositional counter-discourses, and engages with the public sphere, represents an emerging counterpublic that hopes to challenge the hegemonic structures represented by German mainstream media and society.
As a group, Muslims first came to West Germany in the 1950s, when Germany signed a guest labor agreement with Turkey to rebuild the post-war economy. Dubbed “Gastarbeiter,” or guest workers, they were originally expected to return to Turkey after two years (Constant et al., 2009). Employers, however, pushed for extended stays to avoid turnover in their workforce; by the early 1970s over 300,000 Turkish workers had begun to live permanently in Germany (Der Spiegel, 2011). The number of Muslims grew as workers sponsored family members, and expanded further in the 1980s and 1990s as asylum seekers from the Kurdish territories of Iraq and Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan came to Germany. By the late 1990s, the emergence of Muslim communities had created significant social tensions in the country and triggered intense political debates between those who argued for a “multicultural German society” with a “right of residence for all” and others who stated that “foreigners” represented a “problem” and should be made to return to their native countries (Constant et al., 2009).
Such debates have intensified since 9/11, when an al-Qaeda cell in Hamburg was found to have played a key role in masterminding the attacks, with numerous studies pointing to the rapid and pervasive spread of anti-Muslim views among the German public (Macgilchrist and Böhmig, 2012). Heitmeyer (2010), who has tracked xenophobia in Germany, writes that Germans have not only come to view the notion of integration skeptically but have also become more opposed to Muslims as a group since 2001. Such findings are supported by major public opinion polls, such as the 2010 poll conducted by the Allensbach Institute, which found that 55 percent of Germans held anti-Muslim sentiments (de Luca, 2010). Additionally, a study conducted by the German Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency (2012) found that Muslims perceive themselves to be significantly more disadvantaged than other Germans, especially with regard to navigating the bureaucracy and finding employment.
Evidence of negative views towards Muslims is also provided by events such as the enthusiastic public reception of the book Germany Abolishes Itself by German politician Thilo Sarrazin, which sold over 1 million copies in two months (Der Spiegel, 2010). Sarrazin argued that Germany was losing its national identity due to the explosive growth of Muslims, whom he identified as less intelligent and unwilling to integrate (Follath, 2010). Similarly, comments by former president Christian Wulff (2010) that Islam had come to belong to Germany were rebutted by Secretary of the Interior Hans-Peter Friedrich (2011), who stated that there was no factual basis for such a statement and later demanded that Muslim organizations fight radicalism within their ranks (Die Zeit, 2011).
Crucially implicated in this emergent anti-Muslim discourse are German mainstream media, which engage in a “high level of boundary-drawing along ethnic and religious lines” (Macgilchrist and Böhmig, 2012). For example, a 2012 content analysis of German television demonstrated that whenever channels focus on Muslims, they tend to define them in negative terms. Every fourth story on the newscasts of private channels and every fifth on public newscasts featured Muslims as terrorists or potential terrorists with links to Taliban. Muslims were also represented through stereotypical visual tropes such as women in headscarves or men in turbans; private channels in particular tended to associate Muslims with conflict (Frindte et al., 2011). Similarly, Richter and Hafez (2009), who examined the coverage of Muslims in non-fictional formats on German public television, argue that even though public channels are mandated to support integration of minorities, their coverage often tends to be “Islamophobic” and likely to “further prejudices, fear and unease towards Muslims in Germany” (2009: 179). Similar representations are also discernible in German newspapers, which frequently link Muslims with fundamentalism and terrorism (Dolezal et al., 2010).
In fact, media representations often reduce Muslims to “a collective living in ‘parallel societies’ … [with] educational shortcomings and forms of patriarchal violence such as honor killings” (Ramm, 2010: 183). Consequently, even though numerous surveys indicate that a significant majority of second- and third-generation German Muslims support integration, the mainstream media continue to portray them as a homogeneous, frightening and backward mass, unwilling to join the mainstream (Schiffer, 2005). And, although the German media discourse terms ethnocentrism as a taboo, it continues to present immigrants as “problems” (Inthorn, 2007). Thus, while Muslims are frequently covered in German media, the “reality of their diverse ways of living, ways of thinking and worldviews find little or no reflection” (Mühe, 2007: 55).
Such persistent “othering” has significantly impacted German Muslims’ ability to participate meaningfully in the German public sphere – ironically a key aspect of integration. As Schiffauer puts it: Skepticism and distrust with regard to Muslims is not limited to certain extremist groups; rather, Muslims are confronted with it in Germany whenever they attempt to claim their rights in society or just want to be actively present in the public sphere. (2006: 355)
In response to limitations to their entry into the mainstream German public sphere, some German Muslims have turned to blogs as an alternative space where they not only undertake processes of self-definition but also challenge the dominant public discourse through a variety of discursive practices. We researched this phenomenon through interviews with 28 German Muslim bloggers, drawing theoretically on the work of Nancy Fraser (1990), who has stated that exclusions from the dominant public sphere often leads subordinated social groups to develop into “subaltern counterpublics” and to create “parallel discursive arenas” where they can define themselves and challenge dominant discourse. We argue that these German Muslim bloggers represent an emerging counterpublic – building identity and community, challenging existing discursive representations, developing counter-discourses and critically engaging with the dominant public sphere in Germany, employing virtual spaces created by new media.
Theorizing counterpublics
To explore the notion of counterpublics, it is important to first start with the idea of the public sphere. According to Habermas (1991), the principal theorist of the public sphere, in the 18th century, arenas such as coffee-houses and literary clubs constituted sites for debate, and collectively represented a “public sphere,” where “private people come together as a public” (1991: 23) to deliberate and criticize public authority and hold it accountable to society. This public sphere “connoted an ideal of unrestricted rational discussion of public matters,” with the discussion being open and accessible to all (Fraser, 1990: 59). Implicit in this conceptualization was the notion that citizenship had been universally implemented so that, within the public sphere, “inequalities of status were to be bracketed; and discussants were to deliberate as peers” (Fraser, 1990: 59).
Habermas’s arguments, while deeply influential, have been challenged by theorists such as Rita Felski (1989) and Nancy Fraser (1990), who have argued that the public sphere as conceptualized by Habermas did not account for the fact that entry into this discursive arena was determined by status and that many were denied access to it as a result of “formal exclusions,” based on gender, race and property qualifications. Moreover, in their view, even when individuals were theoretically guaranteed similar rights of access by law, the existence of deep-rooted inequalities that characterize stratified societies disadvantaged them in their ability to participate on an equal footing in the public sphere (Squires, 2002). For this reason, Felski made the case for “a plurality of public spheres” (1989: 155) or critical oppositional forces that go against the bourgeois public sphere by emphasizing race, gender, sexuality and ethnic differences. Similarly, Fraser argued: We should question whether it is possible even in principle for interlocutors to deliberate as if they were social peers in specially designated discursive arenas when these discursive arenas are situated in a larger societal context that is pervaded by structural relations of domination and subordination. (1990: 65)
Instead, she writes, marginalized social groups within stratified societies have “found it advantageous to constitute alternative publics” (1990: 67) or “subaltern counterpublics” that operate within separate discursive spaces distinct from the dominant public sphere and seek to correct the exclusions of the latter. Rather than a “single” public sphere or uniquely authoritative discourse about public affairs as defined by Habermas, Fraser argues, the public sphere coexists with multiple subaltern counterpublics and their own discursive spaces.
These “parallel discursive arenas” conceptualized by Fraser (1990) are liberated zones to which subaltern groups can repair to “successfully critique the dominant society without having its own interests and identity compromised or silenced by the exclusionary power exercised by members of the dominant public” (Squires, 2002: 450). In such spaces, Fraser argues, subaltern counterpublics can “invent and circulate counterdiscourses, which in turn permit them to formulate oppositional interpretations of their own identities, interests and needs” (1990: 67) and undertake “agitational activities directed at wider publics” (1990: 68). In other words, according to Fraser, not only is social discourse in stratified societies always carried out by multiple publics of unequal power occupying alternative spaces but it is in such spaces that these publics can be free of “the supervision of dominant groups” and thus find the “right voice or words to express their thoughts” (1990: 66).
The idea of the “counterpublic” thus originally emerged as a critique of Habermas’s monolithic definition of the public sphere and was used to recognize the existence of counterpublics as sites that develop critical oppositional discourses. In this context, Dawson (1994) theorized the role of the Black press and African American churches in fostering counter-identity and deploying such identity for purposes of dissent and resistance. Similarly, Steiner (2005) examined the efforts of a feminist public affairs cable show, sponsored by the National Organization of Women, to enter the public sphere and challenge dominant ideological assumptions. Further, Kaufer and Al-Malki (2009) defined the Arab-American press as a counterpublic that evolved in the post 9/11 period to contest the dominant public discourse regarding Arabs and the “War on Terror” propagated by the Bush administration in the United States.
In recent years scholars have also begun to discuss the relationship between new media technologies and the emergence of virtual or networked counterpublics (Palczewski, 2001). Examples of such studies include Downey and Fenton’s (2003) analysis of the anti-globalization movement and its discourse as a counterpublic and McDorman’s (2001) examination of “right to die advocates” online. More recently, Elsadda (2010) argued that Egyptian literary blogs represent a counterpublic sphere to the mainstream literary public sphere. Breindl and Houghton (2010) have analyzed the technological infrastructure of the internet as a new battleground between established power hierarchies and emerging counterpublic spheres, through an exploration of citizen responses to governmental efforts to enforce copyright legislation. Similarly, Milioni (2009) identified the practices of Indymedia Athens working as an online counterpublic sphere.
Situating itself within the tradition of scholarship that examines the development of virtual counterpublics in diverse contexts, this article studies the use of blogging by Muslims in Germany, who, excluded from the mainstream public sphere, have developed an alternative mechanism for self-expression. Exploratory in nature, it seeks not only to uncover the aims and motivations of this group but also to analyze the nature of their discursive activities online and to speculate on the implications of their actions in the larger context of German society.
Giving Muslims voice: in-depth interviews with Muslim bloggers
As a community, German Muslims have typically appeared as objects rather than subjects in German media research. While there are studies analyzing how Muslims are represented in the media, no studies have given Muslims the chance to speak for themselves on engaging in media production. In fact, recent research into media use by migrants found virtually no studies focusing on minority media producers in Germany (Arnold and Schneider, 2007; Kissau, 2008). For this reason, we decided to base our study on in-depth interviews with Muslim bloggers. We chose to focus on bloggers who are located in Germany and write predominantly in German on a broad range of social, political, cultural, and media issues. We were interested in this group because they address both other Muslims as well as mainstream German society, and represent a response to exclusion from the mainstream public sphere. That is to say, they are “public” in their orientation as opposed to the more theologically oriented Salafi Muslim bloggers (another significant group of Muslim bloggers in Germany), who tend to operate as an enclave and are mainly focused on those who share their beliefs (Sirin, 2011).
In order to identify bloggers we employed a non-probabilistic model and a purposive sample, using snowball sampling to identify Muslim bloggers. We utilized this method because not only is probability sampling of blogs and bloggers difficult since the population cannot be precisely identified (Li and Walejko, 2008) but also no German blog ranking or aggregator – Rivva.de, Deutsche Blogcharts, or Wikio – has a specific category of Muslim-authored blogs. A partial list compiled by Muslim bloggers exists but is not up to date. 2 Consequently, we started by looking for contacts at Germany’s leading blog conference re:publica xi in April 2011 and obtained the name of a prominent Muslim blogger who pointed us to other bloggers. Through a blog roll analysis of all our interviewees, we identified close to 60 regularly updated and frequently interlinked blogs that met our criteria. Most blogs had a single author, although one had as many as nine authors and another two.
We contacted 56 Muslim bloggers in spring 2012; 35 responded, resulting in 28 interviews with 15 women and 13 men. According to demographic data obtained from self-reports, all bloggers self-identified as German citizens or possessing the right to permanent residency in Germany. The majority were of Turkish ethnicity, four were native German converts. While the overall age of bloggers ranged from 18 to 71 years, the average age for women was 32 years and for men 33 years. Most bloggers identified themselves as students (high school to graduate), teachers, and academics; some were retired or self-employed. Like the majority of Muslims, they resided around various urban centers of West Germany including Hamburg, Berlin, Braunschweig, Tübingen, Bielefeld, Dortmund, Cologne, Frankfurt/Main, Darmstadt, Stuttgart, and Munich.
Many started blogging in the mid 2000s, while several started after 2010, in response to the debate surrounding Sarrazin’s Germany Abolishes Itself. Our sample largely reflects second-generation, educated Turkish Muslims who are grappling with the realities of living in two cultures. A few of our interviewees could be perceived as community leaders but most of them identified themselves as “ordinary” people who were trying to express their ideas. In fact, several pointed out that they became more widely known in their communities basically due to their blogs. In terms of traffic, while some bloggers tracked clicks per post and total number of visitors to assess their audience, others said they were not interested in “counting,” making it difficult to compare statistics or obtain numbers at all. The most well-known blogger, a woman, reported up to 20,000 unique clicks per month and 13,000 blog followers. Another woman blogger reported up to 1,000–2,000 clicks per day when linked to by a prominent German journalist. Two well-known men bloggers reported 500–1,000 and 600 average clicks per day. Almost all bloggers referred to a mixed audience of Muslims and non-Muslims, including journalists who cover integration issues. Many bloggers reported that their readers come via Google, Facebook, alternative websites, blogs, or journalists’ references.
In terms of topics, the majority of bloggers said that they posted on Islam and Muslims in Germany as well as current affairs and politics. Several said that they posted about their personal experiences as Muslims, discrimination, human rights, philosophy, and the Middle East conflict. This pattern of topical coverage is consistent with Bunt’s (2009) study of Muslim bloggers in about two dozen countries, which found that religious content is not necessarily the dominant theme in online spaces used by Muslims. Interviews lasted on average 30 to 60 minutes and were conducted in English or German via Skype or phone, except for two written interviews due to confidentiality concerns of the interviewees. Interview questions derived from our research questions and asked about the bloggers’ motivations for blogging, the nature of their online activities, topics of coverage, and their engagement with other bloggers, readers, mainstream media, and society.
Interviews were recorded and transcribed, and translated into English by a native speaker when necessary. They were then analyzed using grounded theory and open, axial, and selective coding (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). The open coding involved each transcript being analyzed paragraph by paragraph to identify recurring ideas and categories. In the second stage, we determined to what extent the identified categories were reflected in all transcripts. Finally, the interviews were considered collectively to uncover thematic patterns that showed a larger discourse about the community of Muslim bloggers in Germany. The process of coding revealed three categories that characterized the nature of the discursive practices undertaken by these bloggers: defining identity and creating community, challenging representations and articulating counter-discourses, and critical engagement with the dominant public sphere.
As our sample contains Muslims of a certain educational, ethnic, and geographical background we do not claim that they are represent all Muslim blog authors – or Muslims – in Germany. And, even though all interviewees self-identified as Muslims, some cautioned that they did not want to be stereotyped as “Muslim bloggers” and emphasized that being Muslim was just one part of their identity. Collectively, however, they do offer important insights into the online discursive practices of Muslim bloggers in Germany as an emerging counterpublic.
Exploring discursive practices
Defining identity and creating community
In terms of discursive practices, a significant theme expressed by almost all bloggers was the role of their blogs in enabling them to define their identity and create a sense of community. Bloggers argued that blogging offered them the opportunity to engage in a process of self-representation that was denied to them as a marginalized group within the German public sphere. Making the case that unlike the mainstream public sphere where Muslims were monolithically viewed as either “radical fundamentalists,” or in rare cases showcased as examples of “complete integration,” they argued that blogging provided a space where they could define themselves on their own terms. For some, this meant a negotiation of the complex and intertwined issues of faith and citizenship. A 52-year-old woman blogger and convert to Islam referring to this said her blog enabled her to define her multiple identities: “It is important to me that I am both Muslima and German.” Others asserted that being Muslim in terms of faith, they understood and presented themselves as German, having grown up and having attended school and university in Germany.
Several made the point that the blogging enabled them to articulate their identities as Muslims who were observant without being fundamentalist. Others argued that blogging offered a communicative practice through which Muslims could be “normalized” and express their thoughts as “people with many different interests and needs,” who express diverse opinions on issues ranging from politics and society to art, literature, and personal beliefs. As a 20-year-old woman blogger explained: I think there are many kinds of Muslim bloggers. And everyone is individually different. My appeal to the readers is not to generalize when reading something from a Muslim blogger. Like there are many plants, there are also many thoughts between Muslim bloggers. Read from all and form your own opinion. That’s the best way.
Thus the parallel discursive arena of blogs allowed German Muslims bloggers to articulate complex identities that are different from those typically ascribed to them in the dominant public sphere, a result of being able to speak in their own voices, without interference or oppression from privileged sections of society.
Additionally, bloggers also viewed this virtual space as central to the construction of community. Indeed, virtually all bloggers acknowledged that blogging had made it possible to connect with other – mostly second- and third-generation – Muslims who were grappling with similar challenges related to representation, identity, and integration in Germany. Such interactions, they said, resulted in the emergence of an often close and occasionally self-referential community of bloggers and readers. A 33-year-old man said: The people know each other, link to each other and they stick together when certain topics come up, but there are also different opinions. It’s a group of individuals who have a lot in common.
Similarly, a 24-year-old woman blogger made the point that the absence of access to the mainstream had resulted in a situation where: People have started creating their own media, linking to each other, reading each other’s articles, leading to a self-confident community.
She also pointed to the rising importance of Facebook, where, she said: The community would create new reality, where some news could be mutually filtered or put into context to defend themselves. If there would be an article against Muslims with lots of racism and stuff, you find the article and lots of comments, and positive articles would be shared a lot, so people could be happy about this and that has a major effect on building a community.
Many bloggers emphasized that whereas in the past they had felt alone, this sense of isolation had lessened as they could reach out to other like-minded individuals for discussion and support. This was especially true of converts to Islam (only women among our interviewees) who were often geographically distant from other Muslims but could construct a virtual community through blogging. As one 43-year-old put it: “There is the urge and the ability to stay connected with someone who understands Islam, who supports you and answers questions.” The significance of this type of community building among the members of a marginalized community is considerable, as “one should not underestimate the energy generated by the comfort of being with others like you” (Palczewski, 2001: 166).
Highlighting misrepresentations and creating counter-discourses
If expressing identity and creating community represent the type of intrapublic practices undertaken by these bloggers, their use of blogs to highlight misrepresentations of Muslims in the dominant public sphere and to create counter-discourses, demonstrates the outward orientation in their discursive repertoire. Indeed, all our interviewees maintained that, despite very few exceptions such as the national public radio Deutschlandradio or the renowned weekly newspaper Die Zeit, Muslims were typically stigmatized or stereotyped within the German mainstream media and that highlighting this fact was a fundamental focus of their discursive work online. In this context, a 20-year-old woman blogger said there were many discussions of the fact that: Muslims are not truly represented in the media. Most of the time the traditional media we have in Germany is prejudging and doesn’t take a look behind the curtain [that is] in front of the real world of Muslims.
Our interviewees repeatedly reported that Muslims were primarily covered in the context of issues such as honor killings [Ehrenmorde], the headscarf debate [Kopftuchstreit], and the oppression of women. 3 Another man blogger emphasized that blogs sought to demonstrate the accomplishments of Muslims, which otherwise received little attention in Germany, and challenged the tendency to view Muslims as a “problem,” to make demands on them as a community, and to blame them collectively for crimes, deviance, and a failure to integrate – reflecting what Abdulla and Oaf (2011) found in the portrayal of Muslims in Western media as collective “evil doers.”
Indeed, our interviewees felt that a crucial aspect of their blogs was to underline the fact that the life worlds [Lebenswelten] of average Muslims were not adequately or fairly represented in German media or society. As one 24-year-old woman said, “There is a general need to express ourselves, because we don’t feel represented by the mainstream.”
Other bloggers emphasized the need to illustrate the existence of stereotypes, particularly with regard to women. One woman blogger said that women who wore headscarves or other types of Muslim dress were uniformly judged to be “oppressed” or “radical.” In this context, a 20-year-old woman reported that she had been judged in that vein: Be it the questions of my teachers who asked me: “Are your parents forcing you to wear these kinds of clothes?” Be it sometimes the kids on the street calling me “terrorist” or “ghost.” Or be it my classmates asking me if I was going to come to school one day with a bomb beneath my veil to blow myself up.
In line with what other research has indicated regarding the recent growth of anti-Muslim sentiments in Germany, a number of bloggers also argued that stereotyping has increased over time and that the situation needed urgent redress, as a 52-year-old woman and a 38-year-old man blogger stated respectively: I think it has become much worse. I don’t like to mention Sarrazin but that is the direction it is going, that such opinions have become acceptable. I am not advocating being uncritical, I know that there are many problems with migrants, but that has nothing to do with being Muslim. What I find sad and what I’m afraid of, is that now with the theses and the words that [Sarrazin] has chosen he will receive lots of devotion from the German people, which scares me much more than what he actually says. What he says is his personal opinion but he is not a simple human on the street anymore but someone who has sold a million books because of his words and his theses. And what I was scared of has also happened, that a majority of Germans follow him and his theses. That was my big fear and unfortunately it happened like that.
Yet challenging as such developments are for Muslim bloggers in Germany, they have also impelled them to attempt to communicate alternative points of view or counter-discourses that contest those circulating within the dominant public sphere. As one 28-year-old man eloquently said: A majority of non-Muslims in Germany haven’t really had any contact with Muslims except at a kebab shop. Many opine that they know Muslims but their knowledge is based on the media. It’s the media’s task to mainly cover conflict, which is also necessary. But the problem with that is that a distorted picture of Muslims in Germany is established. I would like to de-distort that picture so that in general a realistic picture of Muslims emerges. (emphasis added)
In their efforts to create oppositional counter-discourses that question popular ideas about Muslims, bloggers reported engaging with a variety of topics regarding the practice of Islam or opinions about Muslims. For example, some bloggers referred to the fact that they sought to question the widespread notion that all Muslims support the introduction of Sharia law and special Islamic courts in Germany. A 29-year-old man said: This debate over Sharia does not register with Muslims. We never said anything about Sharia except for some radical wiseguys. The person who started this is not a Muslim but a lawyer and then it got hyped and now it travels all through the media and we have to react.
Others stated that they question the monolithic view of the Muslim community with regard to ethnic composition, religious observance, and degree of integration, and tried to show that the community was internally differentiated. Our interviewees reported that they tried to emphasize to their readers that, although Turks constitute the majority of Muslims in Germany, Muslims also include Albanians, Lebanese, Iranians, Iraqis, Afghans, and other nationalities. They also said that they tried to underscore that while the majority of Muslims are observant they do not belong to the conservative Salafis, who represent only 0.1 percent of all Muslims in Germany (Pantucci, n.d.) – an assessement consistent with statistics showing significant variations in religiosity among German Muslims (Haug et al., 2009).
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Summarizing this view, a 38-year-old man said: The label Muslim does not mean that everyone has the same opinion. Among Muslims there are so many different views, one is radicalized, one is fundamental, one is light, and one is liberal. We haven’t found a proper definition of Muslims in Germany, but do we really need a unifying definition? That is another question. The variety is also beautiful.
In countering mainstream discourse, several bloggers also referred to their efforts to highlight issues ignored in the public sphere. One such issue was the 2009 murder of an Egyptian woman scientist, killed in court by a man who was on trial for insulting her for wearing a headscarf some months prior. This case, bloggers said, had not only elicited a sluggish response from the government but also limited mainstream media coverage, which depicted the incident only as a criminal act. In response, several Muslim bloggers took up the issue and played a crucial role in defining the issue also as a hate crime as a 29-year-old man said: When an Egyptian woman scientist working in Germany was killed in a courtroom there was an outcry. Every Muslim blog wrote about it. They were all mad about it. Because politicians didn’t talk about it, the topic of hostility towards Islam was sought to be covered up and media did not report on it. We all scolded them for it and forced the government, politicians, and media to acknowledge the topic.
In another instance, bloggers said they questioned claims that linked willingness to integrate to adopting German citizenship, arguing that the two factors were unrelated and that there were plenty of Muslims who did not have German passports but were otherwise integrated. In a third case, a 29-year-old man blogger cited a story in the German tabloid Bild, in which the paper incorrectly identified a mosque as a terrorist meeting spot: There was a huge outcry, the mosque didn’t know what was going on and thought it was a meeting point for terrorists. Then [Bild] noticed its error: the other mosque was about a kilometer down the street. I made it so that other critical blogs took up that story like Bild-Blog which then linked to my blog. The problem is that a lot of media who talk about Islam drift into sensational journalism.
While the bloggers underscored the importance of developing counter-discourses, some also voiced frustration at constantly having to position themselves in relation to the dominant discourse and thus being limited by it. Lamenting this fact, a 32-year-old woman and 30-year-old man commented respectively: I am constantly busy in my thoughts to react to the other in whatever form. I have to explain myself or justify my argument against something. I am always trapped in reacting to the other. This is the result of a racist and hegemonic discourse.… We want to establish our own themes and break out of the discourse we are forced into … one is exhausted from having to constantly explain oneself. The dynamic so far has been that the media report something and the Muslim bloggers react with critique. To come up with their own topics is not common. Most Muslim blogs just react to daily events.
But even though a few bloggers said they resented their inability to set an independent agenda and explore other topics, most agreed that they were motivated to interact with the German public sphere and hoped to bring change in the way it currently functions. That is to say, they see blogging as a means to promote a different image of themselves, making their voices heard and fight against what Abdulla and Oaf have termed “notions of collective guilt and collective punishment” (2011: 748).
Engaging critically
However, simply creating alternative discourses is not the only way in which Muslim bloggers challenge the dominant order, nor do we believe that creating such discourses alone constitutes a challenge to the existing power structure. Indeed these have to be combined with a critical engagement with the wider society and such engagement (although emerging gradually) represents a significant dimension of the discursive practice of Muslim bloggers in Germany. In fact, most bloggers emphasized that they wanted to avoid being an “enclave,” to use Squires’ (2002) term, and instead to reach out to other Germans. For instance, a 24-year-old woman blogger who was verbally attacked at a neo-Nazi rally said that she felt that such incidents occurred because of a lack of communication and this played a role in her attempts to reach out to the broader community: I wondered why people have such prejudice? I thought it was because we don’t communicate with each other.… So … I started my blog.
This blogger, who is writing a thesis on how minorities develop a sense of identity and confidence using social media, has also written a column, which focuses on racism, since summer 2010 for Die Tageszeitung, a left-leaning national daily, that reaches almost 400,000 people via its print edition (Statista, 2012) and 4.7 million a month via its website (IVW, 2012). She has also worked with Die Zeit, a well-respected national weekly to help it recognize bias in its coverage and to change how topics are presented. This blogger also pointed out that German Muslims have recently created a virtual network called “Zahnräder,” made up of Muslim journalists, academics, entrepreneurs, and others to share knowledge and reach out to the broader society. Another 25-year-old woman blogger reported that she has been recruited as a regular contributor for the conservative-leaning national daily Die Welt since 2011, which reaches almost 900,000 readers via its print edition (Statista, 2012) and over 50 million via its website (IVW, 2012). She was also invited to write an article for the Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung about the so-called “Islam debates” in Germany. This, she said, resulted in considerable feedback on her blog, which became more popular due to her presence in the mainstream German news media. Several other bloggers also underscored the significance of outreach and said it was this motivation to be “public” and engage in a dialogue that led them to blog in German. In this context, a 20-year-old woman and 39-year-old man blogger said respectively: I wish to provide my readers a platform where they can take a look without prejudices into another world where they would normally hesitate to look in. We don’t only want to reach Muslims but all of society. We want that our fellow citizens better know what we think and through that we can reduce prejudice.
Another 33-year-old woman told us that she recently has started publishing Horizons – A Magazine for Muslim Debate Culture to “push an intellectualization of young, innovative Muslim authors” and to demonstrate that Muslims are interested in different topics.
Numerous bloggers also mentioned that their blogs had brought them into contact with mainstream politicians and journalists to whom they could communicate their perspective on Islam and Muslims in Germany. In fact, many said their blogs had provided them access to the mainstream media as authors or sources. Commenting on this development, 33-year-old male blogger said: Many of the Muslims who get involved in the media have blogs and blogs can provide an opportunity for media to become aware of you … for the public to become aware of you.
Similarly, another 29-year-old man commented: What is most important is that starting from my posts lots of discussions evolve in daily life, that’s what my regular blog readers have told me. My audience also consists of some known personalities interested in the inter-faith dialogue.
A third one said: The Springer-published big Hamburger Abendblatt did a cover story with me titled “I don’t want a German passport” to generate attention. It was about Muslims and integration in Hamburg. That article sparked a positive resonance so that even a critical mass became aware of me and a normal Muslim.
And although a couple of bloggers expressed concern that Muslim bloggers might be co-opted to showcase exceptions to the “Muslim norm,” the general consensus was that blogs enabled Muslims to become sources and commentators within mainstream media and thereby combat their long-standing exclusion from the public sphere. In this context, a 34-year-old man said his blog brought him to the attention of the mainstream media: An editor found my blog and invited me to contribute to radio. So now I make reports for Deutschlandradio every two months … this has led many more people to my blog. I have also been asked to give speeches and presentations.… Many newspapers have online versions and there they very often quote opinions from the Muslim community. I have seen that with specific topics; they referred to Muslim blogs because they are also the best source to go to.… Often you can find the blog via a link. A journalist was looking for a Muslim on a Muslim topic and by chance happened to find his blog via Google … and then called him for a quick interview on the radio.
Such developments, bloggers asserted, despite being relatively recent and by no means pervasive, have begun to impact public discourse, by not only causing more mainstream journalists to read blogs authored by Muslims but also making them “more sensitive and reflective” in the words of a 24-year-old woman blogger. Several bloggers mentioned that given that German mainstream media employ few Muslim and/or migrant journalists – only 2–5 percent of journalists in Germany have migrant roots compared to 20 percent of the population (Hamburger Abendblatt, 2012) – their blogs were significant for raising issues and facilitating dialogue that otherwise might not occur.
An emerging counterpublic
As Fraser has argued, in stratified societies where “deliberative processes tend to operate to the advantage of dominant groups” (1990: 67) members of subordinated social groups emerge as “subaltern counterpublics.” Those counterpublics occupy parallel discursive arenas in which they undertake the creation of “identities and interests” and oppositional or counter-discourses to challenge the dominant public discourse through a combination of inter- and intrapublic activities. This pattern is evident in the context of Germany where, denied equitable participation within the dominant public, marginalized Muslims in the country have used blogs to create an alternative space where they engage in a variety of discursive practices aimed both at self-definition and at countering and altering the dominant societal and media discourse.
So what does this mean in a larger sense? We do not argue that any of the blogging practices that we found in our study, alone constitute a “challenge” to the dominant discourse. They are part of a larger discursive whole that enables members of the Muslim minority not only to “express views countering public opinion more freely compared to outside the Internet as the danger of being socially ostracized is lower” but also to “build new social networks both among migrants and with Germans” (Kissau, 2008: 31). This was certainly indicated by the bloggers we interviewed, who emphasized that their blogs enable them to express views outside the mainstream and facilitate involvement in a flow of participation that begins online but affects their offline lives as well. Such engagement by Muslims in Germany is crucial given that the national debate around Islam, immigrants and integration in the country has largely been driven from “above” by the government with non-state actors being almost completely absent (Dolezal et al., 2010).
Moreover, by articulating identities that counter those constructed in the German public sphere, contesting the negative representations of Islam in mainstream media and society as well as engaging with the dominant public to change societal perceptions, the counterpublic represented by this group of Muslim bloggers in Germany also engages in a contest for the representational resources that are necessary for redefining social reality. Such actions, although not explicitly agitational, clearly represent efforts at altering the status quo. As Bunt (2009) points out, there exists a trickle-down impact from online to offline spaces and, as Muslim bloggers in Germany undertake a variety of discursive practices that combine a simultaneous process of contestation and engagement, they potentially pose quotidian challenges to the existing social order. By blogging, our interviewees believe that they influence how Muslims are perceived in German society and present alternative perspectives that challenge popularly held views on issues such as integration and immigration. In other words, their discursive practices potentially create what Macgilchrist and Böhmig have termed “rips” in a seemingly “hegemonic formation,” causing it “to be perceived as contingent, unstable and precarious” (2012: 97). Indeed, while we do not argue that the public sphere in Germany is becoming more expansive and inclusive of Muslims we do argue that Muslim bloggers in Germany are seeking to challenge it in new ways. As a 32-year-old woman blogger put it: “There is a power differential between us and them, but it is changing.”
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.