Postsecular Imagination of Islam in TED Talks

This chapter conducts a discourse analysis of selected TED Talks on Islam to explore the interpretative frameworks speakers use to talk about Islam to a broader audience. It discusses how the postsecular imagination as a framework works in TED Talks on Islam by addressing questions such as: what does Islam spoken in the language familiar to a secular world look like? How do TED speakers articulate their narratives on Islam in a scenario wherein Islam encounters a secular space and experience? What is the role of non-Islamic religious traditions and secular norms in such processes? By addressing these questions, this chapter examines how a more empirical and context-oriented understanding of the concept of the postsecular would benefit considerably from examining the discursive features of the contemporary nexus of Islam, new media, popular culture, and storytelling. Four dominant discourse features are identified: (1) an emphasis on the importance of negotiating religious meaning to make it acceptable to the broader audience, (2) an emphasis on a Judeo-Christian framework, (3) the use of awe-inducing, personalised storytelling, and (4) secular translation of Islamic themes. While this emerging online-mediated discourse on Islam informs new storytelling strategies, the language used adopts a highly attenuated perception of Islamic themes and a great deal of traditional Islamic interpretation is replaced with excessively individualistic assumptions that are often tailored to cater to Western secular liberal mindsets.