The Split in Arab Culture

An aspect of Islam’s grandeur has been its ability to absorb myriad cultural influences. With the rise of Islamist movements, however, a new public norm—often characterized as “salafist,” since it is based on the narrow version of a “return” to religious orthodoxy that this word has come to imply—has taken root. This dynamic of salafization occurs even as the population continues to live among, experience, and consume a proliferation of profane and basically secular cultural products via television, videos, the Internet, and popular literature. What is occurring in the Arab and Muslim world, then, is a kind of schizophrenic lived experience: In private, one regularly consumes the culturally profane—via television, videos, the Internet, and popular literature, or in carefully segmented and reserved semipublic spaces—while in public, one is careful to proclaim his or her Muslim identity.