Provocative Images in Contemporary Islam

Images provoke! This volume explores the role of images in contemporary Islam by turning to the act of provocation. Moving beyond a common focus within the study of religious visuality on art, aesthetic value, and perceptions of beauty or coherence, it shows how, when, and why images dare, shock, terrorize, confront, challenge, mock, shame, taunt, and offend, either intentionally or unintentionally, and as such lead to both confrontation and affective religious engagement. Exploring and experimenting with the relationship between text and image, the chapters draw attention simultaneously to the messiness of everyday life and to highly targeted, disruptive interventions that mark religious contestation in an era of escalating mobility and digital multiplicity. Ranging broadly from visual jihad to nudity, from public scandal to ‘multicultural clumsiness’, they ultimately converge to illuminate a phenomenon that has received little attention so far: intense provocation as being among religion’s most significant mediations.

David Kloos is a Senior Researcher and member of the Management Team (portfolio Research) of the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV).

Leonie Schmidt is Associate Professor in the Media Studies department of the University of Amsterdam.

Mark R. Westmoreland is Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Visual Ethnography Program at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology of Leiden University.

Bart Barendregt is Professor by special appointment and Scientific Director at the Leiden Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology.