British Muslims Caught Amidst FOGs—A Discourse Analysis of Religious Advice and Authority

Abstract

This paper discusses the symbolic capital found within Islamic documents that were circulated in the UK during the COVID-19 outbreak. Specifically, the work explores “fatwas” and “other” similar documents as well as “guidance” documents (referred to as FOGs) that were circulated in March–April 2020 on the internet and social media platforms for British Muslim consumption. We confine our materials to FOGs produced only in English. Our study takes its cue from the notion that the existence of a variety of documents created a sense of foggy ambiguity for British Muslims in matters of religious practise. From a linguistic angle, the study seeks to identify (a) the underlying reasons behind the titling of the documents; and (b) the construction of discourses in the documents. Our corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis (CA-CDA) found noticeable patterns that hold symbolic capital in the fatwa register. We also found that producers of “other” documents imitate the fatwa register in an attempt to strengthen their documents’ symbolic capital. Accordingly, fatwas act as the most authoritative documents in religious matters and are written by senior religious representatives of the Muslim community, whereas guidance documents were found to be most authoritative in health matters. The findings raise questions regarding the manner in which religious instruction may be disseminated in emergency situations. Based on this study, a call for the standardisation and unification of these diverse and sometimes contradicting religious publications may be worth considering.

Faith in the time of Coronavirus: A corpus-driven analysis

“…Linguistic research on the Coronavirus has shown numerous corpusbased type of studies such as Yang and Chen (2021), Schweinberger, Haugh and Hames (2021), and Sardinha (2020) to name a few. The specialised type of discourse has been particularly examined with regard to the secular view of either a political, economic or social problem, but rarely are there corpus research exploring how the virus is viewed or communicated from the Islamic lens/point of view (Maravia et al 2021 is an exception, where their paper investigated Islamic documents that are entitled either "fatwas," "other," and "guidance," which were circulated in the UK during the COVID-19 outbreak using corpus linguistics methods and tools). In response to Généreux et al (2021) who called for more international studies to examine how COVID-19 information is delivered by authorities and media, this paper acts as a case study that described one Islamic-based institution and its efforts to compile writings on scholarly view of the pandemic for their online readers, which will be analysed through corpus-assisted discourse analysis (CADS).…”

Research Insights on Online Fatwas. A Comprehensive Systematic Literature Review

“…Even though the fatwas act as the most authoritative document on religious matters and are written by senior religious representatives of the Muslim community. The downside lies in the way in which religious teaching can be disseminated in emergencies (Maravia et al, 2021).…”

Ideologi Penggunaan Istilah-Istilah Covid-19 di Berita Online: Analisis Wacana Kritis Model Norman Fairclough

“…Perubahan yang terjadi pada masa pandemi COVID-19 menimbulkan adanya ketidakberesan sosial (social wrong) yang terjadi di masyarakat. Ketidakberesan sosial adalah suatu sistem yang merugikan masyarakat meliputi adanya kemiskinan, ketidaksetaraan, diskriminasi maupun kurangnya kebebasan dan rasisme (Maravia et al, 2021). Salah satu ketidakberesan sosial yang paling tampak pada masa pandemi COVID-19 adalah munculnya berbagai berita hoaks di media sosial terkait berita tentang COVID-19.…”