Reflections and Conclusions

This chapter provides a summary of the findings of the book. After a brief overview of the book chapters, I sum up the book’s findings in relation to each research question. In relation to the self-presentation of Muslim televangelists, the book has revealed two types of religious celebrities. While Yusuf Estes and Hamza Yusuf constructed their authorities as preachers, a figure associated with authority, Baba Ali’s authority emanated from his self-presentation of ordinariness and of being close to his online viewers. The book also revealed that digital media appeared to be key to televangelists’ self-presentation, as shown on their websites, and social media platforms (cf. Chapter 5). Another Research Question that the book has explored is the representation of Islam and Muslims in televangelists’ YouTube sermons. The analysis has shown that a call on Muslims’ unity and the appeal to a global community of Muslims were common patterns among the three televangelists realized through the use of collective terms (e.g., ‘Muslims’, ‘the Muslims’), positive predication, argumentation strategies, and was visually constructed through the invocation of religious/social practices that connoted unity and harmony in televangelists’ social media pages. A third Research Question that the book explored is the recontextualization of historical and religious references. The analysis has shown that—broadly speaking—historical invocation in televangelists’ sermons spanned many eras that included the Middle Ages, Ottoman histories and modern American histories, which pointed to the hybridity of televangelists’ sermons. Religious references—likewise—encompassed a variety of sources including Quranic references and references to the bible. The recontextualization of historical and religious references served a variety of functions, including persuasion, presenting religious sources as relevant to Muslims’ contemporary context and endowing televangelists with authority. These various parameters pointed to the novelty of Muslim televangelism as a genre that sought to appeal to multiple audiences, embedded online literacy practices, exemplified in the use of multimodality and online users’ remediation of televangelists’ content. Finally, I discuss the limitations of the book and the recommendations for future research.