Towards TEDified Islam: The Nexus Between Islam, TED, and Postsecular Communications in New Media

This chapter provides an overview of the relevant works at the intersection of Islam, postsecularism, TED Talks, and new media storytelling. This chapter will explore this turn as an interdisciplinary dialogue. It makes an argument for a specific approach to that intersection, which is evident in the TEDified Islam. Divided into three key sections, it begins by examining the debates on postsecularism and its connection with secular media narratives on the sacred. The second section introduces TED to the context and outlines key arguments about the platform (TED) and its communication practices. The final section surveys existing literature on Islam and new media, focusing on the audiences and authorities, and develops a case for examining the discourse on Islam in the new media landscape that is neither Islamophobic nor produced with ritualistic importance. This chapter outlines TED’s narrative production on Islam as a storytelling on Islam that echoes the secular’s renewed interest in exploring the quintessential of Islam. Therefore, TEDified Islam resonates a nexus between postsecular ways of storytelling on Islam in the new media landscape.