How Social Media Reshaped Religious Authority During the Arab Gulf Crisis?
Faculty Publication Feature Series
New Research. New Ideas. Conversations with Northwestern Qatar Scholars
The Faculty Publication Feature Series showcases significant new scholarship by Northwestern University in Qatar faculty, including books, journals, edited collections, monographs, and creative works. Through conversations with NU-Q scholars, we explore the ideas that drive their research, the insights they uncover, and the ways their work advances understanding of the complex issues shaping our world, particularly in the Global South.
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When the Arab Gulf Crisis unfolded in 2017, much of the world's attention focused on diplomacy, regional politics, and shifting alliances. For Ibrahim N. Abusharif, however, another transformation was taking place online.
In his new book, Social Media, Religious Authority, and the Arab Gulf Crisis, Abusharif examines how digital platforms fundamentally changed the ways religious authority was expressed, contested, and mobilized during one of the Gulf's defining political crises. Drawing on expertise spanning journalism, media studies, and Islamic studies, the book argues that social media reshaped not only political discourse but also how scripture, religious language, and legitimacy were deployed in public life.
Using close analyses of media texts, social media posts, and public discourse, the book demonstrates how state actors, religious scholars, ministries, influencers, and everyday users increasingly turned to Islamic language to justify competing political narratives. In doing so, it offers a new interdisciplinary framework for understanding how religion, media, and politics intersect in the digital age.
As part of Northwestern University in Qatar's Faculty Publication Feature Series, we spoke with Abusharif about the ideas behind the book, what surprised him most during his research, and why its findings remain relevant as digital platforms continue to reshape public life.
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Q: What first inspired you to write this book? Was there a particular moment during the Arab Gulf Crisis when you realized something deeper was unfolding online?
A: While teaching a summer course at Northwestern Qatar, I was watching the blockade unfold in June 2017. Like many people, I expected the conflict to play out through diplomacy, statecraft, and competing political narratives. What I kept noticing instead was that ordinary users, religious influencers, ministries, and scholars were all reaching for scripture—Quranic passages (and sometimes partial passages), Hadith, and normative Islamic ethics—to argue their positions, often with little consideration for what the texts actually meant.
The moment that moved me from observer to author was realizing that these religious references were not simply rhetorical decoration—they had become instruments of legitimacy.
Patterns quickly emerged. Religious media texts packed with advocacy circulated rapidly across social media, while the platforms themselves shaped the tone and intensity of a regional crisis with global implications.
Q: You describe the crisis as a turning point for religious authority in the Gulf. What changed during that period?
A: My argument is that authority wasn't simply challenged during the crisis—it was reconstituted.
Traditionally, religious authority rested on scholarly training, institutional position, and intellectual lineage. On social media platforms, however, authority became increasingly tied to immediate reach, emotional resonance, and alignment with state narratives. Religion was often deployed as a tool within the broader contest over political legitimacy.
Platform visibility increasingly performed the work that scholarly credentials once did.
The result was both a flattening and a restructuring of authority. Anyone could cite a verse, yet influence increasingly depended on circulation, amplification, and platform logic. Long-standing traditions of religious scholarship were drawn into the vortex of an intense political contest.
Q: In the book, you describe social media as a "digital battlefield." What made this different from traditional religious or political discourse?
A: Two things stood out.
First was speed. A theological phrase could be lifted from its scholarly context, attached to a hashtag, and circulated as a political weapon within minutes.
Second was the collapse of traditional gatekeepers. There was little institutional vetting of religious claims or scriptural interpretation before these messages reached vast audiences.
Religious language increasingly served not to teach, but to validate one's own position while delegitimizing another.
Discourse that once moved slowly through institutions became immediate, emotional, and adversarial.
Q: What surprised you most as you analyzed how Islamic language and scripture were being used?
What surprised me most was how closely religious media texts tracked state narratives.
I expected religious language to cross political boundaries in more complex and unpredictable ways. Instead, I found a striking consistency between scriptural framing and the official positions of governments.
The case of Kuwait was particularly revealing. Accounts there tended to emphasize reconciliation, reflecting Kuwait's mediating diplomatic role and its comparatively open media environment.
The surprise wasn't that people used scripture. It was how readily sacred language bent to serve state narratives—and how rarely users appeared conscious that this was happening.
Q: You write about "neutrality" and performative religion. What did your research reveal?
A: This became one of the book's central arguments.
In highly polarized environments, neutrality ceases to be the absence of a position. It becomes a position in itself.
The moment someone declines to take sides, others assign them one. Calls for reconciliation or restraint are interpreted as political statements rather than neutral interventions.
The Kuwaiti case illustrated this especially well. Appeals for mediation mirrored Kuwait's diplomatic role during the crisis, meaning neutrality itself became legible as a national position.
Platform dynamics made genuine neutrality almost impossible. Every sincere religious statement also became a political signal.
That does not mean people were insincere in their beliefs. Rather, the conditions of crisis transformed how religious expression was interpreted, leaving little space outside political contestation.
Q: Your work bridges media studies and Islamic studies. How has working across disciplines shaped your research?
A: My experiences have shaped everything.
My training spans journalism, religious studies, Quranic studies, and Islamic studies, while this crisis sits precisely at their intersection. Looking at it through only one disciplinary lens produces an incomplete picture.
Media studies helps explain platform logics, framing, and circulation. Islamic studies allows me to examine what Quranic and Hadith references are actually doing—and whether they are being interpreted carefully or used opportunistically.
Understanding religious authority in the digital age requires both perspectives simultaneously.
That intersection is becoming increasingly important today, as similar dynamics continue to emerge in contemporary geopolitical crises.
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About the Book
Social Media, Religious Authority, and the Arab Gulf Crisis examines how the Arab Gulf Crisis (2017–2021) transformed public religious expression in the digital age. Through close analyses of media texts and social media discourse, Ibrahim N. Abusharif explores how state actors, religious scholars, influencers, and citizens mobilized Islamic language to shape public narratives during the crisis. The book proposes a new interdisciplinary framework that brings together media studies and Islamic studies to better understand the evolving relationship between religion, politics, and communication in an increasingly networked world.
About the Author
Ibrahim N. Abusharif is Associate Professor in Residence at Northwestern University in Qatar. His research explores the intersections of media, religion, politics, journalism, and digital communication, with particular interests in Islamic studies, public discourse, and the evolving role of religious authority in networked societies.
