ABSTRACT
Muslims are linguistically, ethnically and geographically diverse: fewer than 20 percent of Muslims are Arabs, and one fifth of the world’s Muslims live in non-Muslim countries (“Mapping the Global Muslim” 1). Hence the problem of researching the visual depictions of Islamic stories for children lies in deciding which languages or countries to include. New media further problematizes the dilemma; the democratic hybrid nature of these screen—but not strictly “television”—productions are quite often user-generated, not subject to censorship or quality control, are produced relatively cheaply, easily and abundantly and are disseminated widely and quickly. Also, Islamic picturebooks, Young Adult (YA) book series, television and online cartoon productions, online games, apps and websites range in scale from the state-sponsored television series and commercially commissioned comic book series or animations by the Marvel Comics and Disney teams to the Muslim homeschooler blog and self-published paperback. This begs further questions: Which types of stories to study? What level of professionalism in execution or media attention garnered renders productions study-worthy? Are popular user-channels and website material worthy of current academic excavations? Add to this the lack of proper citations and databases of all Arabic language media and the sheer volume of both Arabic and English material, and the results of any critique are limited to the parameters a researcher sets.
