The Representation of Islam/Muslims in Televangelists’ Sermons

Having explored televangelists’ self-presentation on YouTube and social media (Chapters 4–5), this Chapter will explore the sermons of the three televangelists focusing on the representation of Islam and Muslims, and the construction of in-groups and out-groups relevant to identities’ representation. Thematically speaking, the chapter will be divided into four main sections. Firstly, I will delineate the key features of televangelists’ sermon as a genre, setting the context for the development of this chapter (e.g., addressing multiple audiences, and creating hybrid ‘texts’). In the second section, the chapter will reveal unifying patterns that were common among the three televangelists, for example, the use of collectivization terms to represent Muslims as an in-group and the positive predication of Islam and Muslims. The third section of the chapter will explore the specific representation of each televangelist in relation to the topic of ‘Islam in/and the West’. As for the last section, it will focus on the representation of Muslims, Christians and Jews as an in-group in Hamza Yusuf’s and Yusuf Estes’ sermons. One contribution of this chapter is that it will offer new insights into the phenomenon of Muslim televangelism and Muslims’ agency in responding to anti-Muslim rhetoric (cf. Baker et al., Discourse analysis and media attitudes: the representation of Islam in the British press. Cambridge University Press, 2013; Grooves G, Clarke I, McEnery T, In: Pihlaja, S, Ringrow, H (eds) The Routledge handbook of language and religion. Taylor & Francis Group, Abingdon, Oxon, 2023).