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 is among religion’s most significant mediations.