Research Article
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İslamofobinin Dijital Pelerin İçinde Yeniden Üretimi: “Call Of Duty” Oyunu Üzerine Bir İnceleme

Year 2022, Volume: 5 Issue: 1, 37 - 60, 30.06.2022
https://doi.org/10.47951/mediad.1089786

Abstract

İslamofobi, el-Kaide'nin Amerika Birleşik Devletleri'ndeki İkiz Kuleler ve Pentagon'a saldırısının ardından on yıl içinde Müslüman karşıtı bir kamusal söylem olarak popüllerleşmiş bir söylem olarak literature girmiştir. Çok sayıda bilimsel çalışma, İslamofobi olarak adlandırılan Müslüman karşıtı önyargının Batı toplumlarının belirgin bir özelliği haline geldiğini doğrulamaktadır. Öyleki, evdeki tehdit algısı Müslümanları Hristiyan Batı'nın “Öteki”si olarak odak noktasına yerleştirmiştir. Bu kavramsal çerçeve içerisinde, çalışma İslam ve Müslümanlara ilişkin batının genellemeleri, ve yine bu genellemeleri Arab steriotipi içinde limitlemesi varsayımları ve kalıp yargılarından hareketle İslamofobi üzerine yapılan tartışmalara katkı sağlamayı hedefler. Bu bağlamda makale, Foucault'nun iktidar ilişkilerinin sosyal yapıları etrafında “gerçeği” formüle etmesinin bir analiziyle desteklenen Gramsci'nin hegemonya analizi, Müslümanlar ve İslam'ın Batı tarafından ötekileştirilmesi hakkında daha fazla ayrıntı vermek için ilişkisel bir teorik temel oluşturur. Bu doğrultuda da söylem analizi kullanarak, en popüler dijital savaş oyunlarından biri olan Call of Duty’deki İslam ve Müslüman betimlemelerini yapı-bozumcu bir yöntemle inceler. Dolayısıyla bu makale, dijital savaş oyunlarının ABD’nin önderlik ettiği Teröre Karşı Savaş çerçevesinde batının eylemlerini meşrulaştırmak üzere mercek altına aldığı “öteki” İslam ve Müslüman stereotipleri üzerinden İslamofobiyi yeniden üretme biçimlerine dair yapılan çalışmalara katkıda bulunmayı amaçlar.

References

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  • Altsultany, E. (2012). Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation After 9/11. New York: New York University Press.
  • Bakali, N. (2016). Popular Cultural Islamophobia: Muslim Representations in Films, News Media, and Television Programs. Islamophobia Transgressions: Cultural Studies and Education, 5(1), 63-78.
  • Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The Location of Culture. New York, London: Routledge.Bates, T. R. (1975, Apr-Jun). Gramsci and the Theory of Hegemony. Journal of the History of Ideas, 36(2), 351-366.
  • Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. London: Sage.
  • Buke Okyar, I. (2022). “Neither the sweets of Damascus nor the face of the Arab”: Arab image in Turkish political cartoons, 1876-1950. New York: Syracuse University Press.
  • Doyle, N. J. (2016). The fear of Islam: French context and reaction. In D. Pratt and R. Woodlock (Eds.), Fear of Muslims? Bounderies of Religious Freedom: Regulating Religion in Diverse Societies (pp. 167-190). Switzerland: Springer, Cham.
  • Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977. London: Vintage.
  • Galloway, A. (2004). Social realism in gaming. Game Studies, 4(1), 1-13.
  • Gramsci, A. (1957). The modern prince and other essays. London: Lawerence & Wishart.
  • Grosfoguel, R. (2012). The multiple faces of Islamophobia. Islamophobia Studies Journal, 1(1), 9-33.
  • Green, T. H. (2015). The fear of Islam: An introduction to Islamophobia in the west. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
  • Guterman, K. (2013). The dynamics of stereotyping: Is a new image of the terrorist evolving in American popular culture?”, Terrorism and Political Violence, 25(4), 640–652.
  • Halliday, F. (1999). ‘Islamophobia’ reconsidered. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22(5), 892-902.
  • Helbling, M. and Traunmüller, R. (2020). What is Islamophobia? Disentangling citizens’ feelings toward ethnicity, religion and religiosity using a survey experiment. British Journal of Political Science, 50(3), 811-828.
  • Hobbes, T. (1986). Philosophical rudiments concerning government and society, (1651). In D. Wootton (Ed.), Divine right and democracy: an anthology of political writing in Stuart England (p. 450-477). London: Penguin Books.
  • Huntington, S. P. (1993). The clash of civilizations. Foreign Affairs, p. 22-49.
  • Hussain, A. (2010). (Re)presenting: Muslims on North American Television. Contemporary Islam, 4(1), 55-75.
  • Karim, H. K. (2006). American Media’s coverage of Muslims: The historical roots of contemporary portrayals. In E. Poole and J. Richardson (Eds.), Muslims and the News Media (pp. 116-127). London: I. B. Tauris.
  • Kipling, R. (2007). Kipling: Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series) New York, London, Toronto: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
  • Kozlovic, A. (2009). Islam, Muslims and Arabs in the popular Hollywood cinema. Comparative Islamic Studies, 3(2), 213-246.
  • Leydet, D. (2017) Citizenship, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/citizenship/>.
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  • Macfie, A. L. (2000). Orientalism: A reader. New York: NYU Press.
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  • Maldonado-Torres, N. (2014). Race, religion, and ethics in the modern / colonial world. Journal of Religious Ethics, 42(4), 691-711.
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  • Materns, T. (2019, May 30). ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’ adds a female Middle Eastern soldier’s POV. Here’s why”. Los Angeles Times.
  • Mirrlees, T. and Ibaid, T. (2021). The virtual killing of Muslims: Digital war games, Islamophobia, and the Global War on Terror. Islamophobia Studies Journal, 6(1), 33-51.
  • Modood, T. (1997). Introduction: The politics of multiculturalism in the new Europe. In T. Modood and P. Werbner, The Politics of Multiculturalism in the New Europe (p. 1-25). Zed Books.
  • Mohanty, C. T., Russo, A., and Torres, L. (1991). Third world women and the politics of feminism (Vol. 632). Indiana: Indiana University Press.
  • Mohanty, C. T. (2011, March 26). Imperial democracies, militarised zones, feminist engagements. Economic and Political Weekly, 46(13), p. 76-84.
  • Morey, P. and Yaqin, A. (2011). Framing Muslims: Stereotyping and representation After 9/11. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  • Navarro, L. (2010). Islamophobia and sexism: Muslim women in the western mass media. Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, 8(2), 95-114.
  • Payne, M. (2016). Playing war: Military video games after 9/11. New York: New York University Press.
  • Perocco, F. (2018). Anti-migrant Islamophobia in Europe. Social roots, mechanisms and actors. REMHU: Revista Interdisciplinar da Mobilidade Humana, 26, 25-40.
  • Piaget, J. (1962). The relation of affectivity to intelligence in the mental development of the child. Bulletin of the Menninger clinic, 26(3), 129.
  • Pratt, D. and Woodlock, R. (2016). Fear of Muslims. International perspectives on Islamophobia. London: Springer.
  • Sachs, A. (2003). The ultimate “Other”: Post‐Colonialism and Alexander von Humboldt’s ecological relationship with nature. 42(4), 111-135. History and Theory, 42(4), 111-135.
  • Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon.
  • Said, E. (1997). Covering Islam. London: Vintage.
  • Salaita, S. (2006). Beyond orientalism and Islamophobia: 9/11, anti-Arab racism, and the mythos of national pride. CR: The New Centennial Review, 6(2), 245-266.
  • Saleem, M. and Anderson, C. A. (2013). Arabs as terrorists: Effects of stereotypes within violent contexts on attitudes, perceptions, and affect. Psychology of Violence, 3(1), 84-99.
  • Salem, S. and Thomson, V. (2016). Old racisms, new masks: On the continuing discontinuities of racism and the erasure of race in European contexts. nineteen sixty nine: an ethnic studies journal, 3(1), 1-23.
  • Shaheen, J. (2008). Guilty: Hollywood’s verdict on Arabs After 9/11. Northhampton: Olive Branch Press.
  • Shesterinina, A. (2016). Collective threat framing and mobilization in civil war. The American Political Science Review, 110(3), 411–427.
  • Šisler, V. (2006). Representation and self-representation: Arabs and Muslims in digital games. In M. Santorineos and N. Dimitriadi, Gaming Realities: A Challenge for Digital Culture (pp. 85-92). Athen: Fournos.
  • Šisler, V. (2008). Digital Arabs representation in video games. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 11(2), 203–220.
  • Travis, C. ( 2021) How many people play Call of Duty? Esports talk on May, 17, 2021, https://www.esportstalk.com/blog/how-many-people-play-call-of-duty/
  • Trein, L. (2018). Governing the fear of Islam: Thinking Islamophobia through the politics of secular affect in historical debate. ReOrient, 4(1), 44-58.
  • Trust, R. (1997). Islamophobia: A challenge for us all (Vol. 41). London: Runnymede Trust.
  • Zebiri, K. (2008). The redeployment of orientalist themes in contemporary Islamophobia. Studies in contemporary Islam, 10(1-2), 4-44.
  • Zúquete, J. P. (2008). The European extreme-right and Islam: New directions? Journal of political ideologies, 13(3), 321-344.
  • Zunes, S. (2017) Europe's refugee crisis, Terrorism, and Islamophobia, Peace Review, 29 (1), 1-6.

Reproduction of Islamophobia in a Digital Cloak: An Analysis on Digital War Game “Call of Duty”

Year 2022, Volume: 5 Issue: 1, 37 - 60, 30.06.2022
https://doi.org/10.47951/mediad.1089786

Abstract

Islamophobia popularized as an anti-Muslim public discourse in the decade following the al-Qaida attack on the Twin-towers and Pentagon in the United States of America. Following the attacks, numerous scholarly studies have confirmed that anti-Muslim prejudice, commonly referred to as Islamophobia, has become a prominent feature of Western societies. The perception of threat at home placed Muslims at the focus as the Christian West’s “Other.” Within this context, this study contributes to the debate on the meaning of ‘Islamophobia’ based on generalizations, assumptions, and stereotypes of Islam and Muslims. Following discourse analysis as its primary methodology, the article deconstructs the representations of Islam and Muslims in the most popular digital war game, Call of Duty. Thus, this article contributes to how digital war games communicate misleading stereotypes and have been involved in stigmatizing Islam and Muslims and perpetuating Islamophobia in the context of the US-led Global War on Terror. Based on its analysis of the game, the article concludes that the stereotyped group is portrayed more often in a violent-terrorism context than in a nonviolent context where a solid associative link between terrorism and Arabs is established.

References

  • Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London, New York: Verso.
  • Allen, C. (2007). Islamophobia and its consequences. In European Islam: Challenges for Public Policy and Society (p. 144-167). Brussel: CEPS Centre for European Policy Studies.
  • Altsultany, E. (2012). Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation After 9/11. New York: New York University Press.
  • Bakali, N. (2016). Popular Cultural Islamophobia: Muslim Representations in Films, News Media, and Television Programs. Islamophobia Transgressions: Cultural Studies and Education, 5(1), 63-78.
  • Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The Location of Culture. New York, London: Routledge.Bates, T. R. (1975, Apr-Jun). Gramsci and the Theory of Hegemony. Journal of the History of Ideas, 36(2), 351-366.
  • Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. London: Sage.
  • Buke Okyar, I. (2022). “Neither the sweets of Damascus nor the face of the Arab”: Arab image in Turkish political cartoons, 1876-1950. New York: Syracuse University Press.
  • Doyle, N. J. (2016). The fear of Islam: French context and reaction. In D. Pratt and R. Woodlock (Eds.), Fear of Muslims? Bounderies of Religious Freedom: Regulating Religion in Diverse Societies (pp. 167-190). Switzerland: Springer, Cham.
  • Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977. London: Vintage.
  • Galloway, A. (2004). Social realism in gaming. Game Studies, 4(1), 1-13.
  • Gramsci, A. (1957). The modern prince and other essays. London: Lawerence & Wishart.
  • Grosfoguel, R. (2012). The multiple faces of Islamophobia. Islamophobia Studies Journal, 1(1), 9-33.
  • Green, T. H. (2015). The fear of Islam: An introduction to Islamophobia in the west. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
  • Guterman, K. (2013). The dynamics of stereotyping: Is a new image of the terrorist evolving in American popular culture?”, Terrorism and Political Violence, 25(4), 640–652.
  • Halliday, F. (1999). ‘Islamophobia’ reconsidered. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22(5), 892-902.
  • Helbling, M. and Traunmüller, R. (2020). What is Islamophobia? Disentangling citizens’ feelings toward ethnicity, religion and religiosity using a survey experiment. British Journal of Political Science, 50(3), 811-828.
  • Hobbes, T. (1986). Philosophical rudiments concerning government and society, (1651). In D. Wootton (Ed.), Divine right and democracy: an anthology of political writing in Stuart England (p. 450-477). London: Penguin Books.
  • Huntington, S. P. (1993). The clash of civilizations. Foreign Affairs, p. 22-49.
  • Hussain, A. (2010). (Re)presenting: Muslims on North American Television. Contemporary Islam, 4(1), 55-75.
  • Karim, H. K. (2006). American Media’s coverage of Muslims: The historical roots of contemporary portrayals. In E. Poole and J. Richardson (Eds.), Muslims and the News Media (pp. 116-127). London: I. B. Tauris.
  • Kipling, R. (2007). Kipling: Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series) New York, London, Toronto: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
  • Kozlovic, A. (2009). Islam, Muslims and Arabs in the popular Hollywood cinema. Comparative Islamic Studies, 3(2), 213-246.
  • Leydet, D. (2017) Citizenship, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/citizenship/>.
  • López, F. B. (2011). Towards a definition of Islamophobia: Approximations of the early twentieth century. Ethnic and racial studies, 34(4), 556-573.
  • McCrone, D. (1998). The Sociology of nationalism. London: Routledge. London: Routledge.
  • Macfie, A. L. (2000). Orientalism: A reader. New York: NYU Press.
  • Maldonado-Torres, N. (2006). Cesaire’s gift and the decolonial turn. Radical Philosophy Review, 9(2), 111-138.
  • Maldonado-Torres, N. (2014). Race, religion, and ethics in the modern / colonial world. Journal of Religious Ethics, 42(4), 691-711.
  • Manzoor-Khan, S. (2022). Look at ministers’ plans to secretly make Britons stateless and what do you see: Islamophobia. The Guardian: Opinion. Accessed on March 14, 2022. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/14/islamophobia-widespread-britain-trojan-horse-prevent-racist-joke.
  • Materns, T. (2019, May 30). ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’ adds a female Middle Eastern soldier’s POV. Here’s why”. Los Angeles Times.
  • Mirrlees, T. and Ibaid, T. (2021). The virtual killing of Muslims: Digital war games, Islamophobia, and the Global War on Terror. Islamophobia Studies Journal, 6(1), 33-51.
  • Modood, T. (1997). Introduction: The politics of multiculturalism in the new Europe. In T. Modood and P. Werbner, The Politics of Multiculturalism in the New Europe (p. 1-25). Zed Books.
  • Mohanty, C. T., Russo, A., and Torres, L. (1991). Third world women and the politics of feminism (Vol. 632). Indiana: Indiana University Press.
  • Mohanty, C. T. (2011, March 26). Imperial democracies, militarised zones, feminist engagements. Economic and Political Weekly, 46(13), p. 76-84.
  • Morey, P. and Yaqin, A. (2011). Framing Muslims: Stereotyping and representation After 9/11. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  • Navarro, L. (2010). Islamophobia and sexism: Muslim women in the western mass media. Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, 8(2), 95-114.
  • Payne, M. (2016). Playing war: Military video games after 9/11. New York: New York University Press.
  • Perocco, F. (2018). Anti-migrant Islamophobia in Europe. Social roots, mechanisms and actors. REMHU: Revista Interdisciplinar da Mobilidade Humana, 26, 25-40.
  • Piaget, J. (1962). The relation of affectivity to intelligence in the mental development of the child. Bulletin of the Menninger clinic, 26(3), 129.
  • Pratt, D. and Woodlock, R. (2016). Fear of Muslims. International perspectives on Islamophobia. London: Springer.
  • Sachs, A. (2003). The ultimate “Other”: Post‐Colonialism and Alexander von Humboldt’s ecological relationship with nature. 42(4), 111-135. History and Theory, 42(4), 111-135.
  • Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon.
  • Said, E. (1997). Covering Islam. London: Vintage.
  • Salaita, S. (2006). Beyond orientalism and Islamophobia: 9/11, anti-Arab racism, and the mythos of national pride. CR: The New Centennial Review, 6(2), 245-266.
  • Saleem, M. and Anderson, C. A. (2013). Arabs as terrorists: Effects of stereotypes within violent contexts on attitudes, perceptions, and affect. Psychology of Violence, 3(1), 84-99.
  • Salem, S. and Thomson, V. (2016). Old racisms, new masks: On the continuing discontinuities of racism and the erasure of race in European contexts. nineteen sixty nine: an ethnic studies journal, 3(1), 1-23.
  • Shaheen, J. (2008). Guilty: Hollywood’s verdict on Arabs After 9/11. Northhampton: Olive Branch Press.
  • Shesterinina, A. (2016). Collective threat framing and mobilization in civil war. The American Political Science Review, 110(3), 411–427.
  • Šisler, V. (2006). Representation and self-representation: Arabs and Muslims in digital games. In M. Santorineos and N. Dimitriadi, Gaming Realities: A Challenge for Digital Culture (pp. 85-92). Athen: Fournos.
  • Šisler, V. (2008). Digital Arabs representation in video games. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 11(2), 203–220.
  • Travis, C. ( 2021) How many people play Call of Duty? Esports talk on May, 17, 2021, https://www.esportstalk.com/blog/how-many-people-play-call-of-duty/
  • Trein, L. (2018). Governing the fear of Islam: Thinking Islamophobia through the politics of secular affect in historical debate. ReOrient, 4(1), 44-58.
  • Trust, R. (1997). Islamophobia: A challenge for us all (Vol. 41). London: Runnymede Trust.
  • Zebiri, K. (2008). The redeployment of orientalist themes in contemporary Islamophobia. Studies in contemporary Islam, 10(1-2), 4-44.
  • Zúquete, J. P. (2008). The European extreme-right and Islam: New directions? Journal of political ideologies, 13(3), 321-344.
  • Zunes, S. (2017) Europe's refugee crisis, Terrorism, and Islamophobia, Peace Review, 29 (1), 1-6.
There are 56 citations in total.

Details

Primary Language English
Journal Section Research Articles
Authors

Düriye İlkim Buke Okyar 0000-0002-4272-8142

Narmin Abdullayeva 0000-0002-1734-8033

Publication Date June 30, 2022
Published in Issue Year 2022 Volume: 5 Issue: 1

Cite

APA Buke Okyar, D. İ., & Abdullayeva, N. (2022). Reproduction of Islamophobia in a Digital Cloak: An Analysis on Digital War Game “Call of Duty”. Medya Ve Din Araştırmaları Dergisi, 5(1), 37-60. https://doi.org/10.47951/mediad.1089786
  

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