Middle East Media and Book Reviews Online Volume 1, Issue 1 | Page 23

2/2/2016

Middle East Media and Book Reviews Online

Muslims and New Media in West Africa: Pathways to God
By: Dorothea Elisabeth Schulz
Muslims and New Media in West Africa: Pathways to God. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2012. Index.
306 pp. Pbk.: $27.95. ISBN: 978-0253223623.
Volume: 1 Issue: 1
April 2013
Review by
el-Sayed el-Aswad, PhD
United Arab Emirates University
Al-Ain, United Arab Emirates
Dorothea Schulz’s Muslims and New Media in West Africa: Pathways to God is a thoughtful project that aims at investigating the mass-mediated
religious discourses and practices creating new, publicly engaged Muslim communities in West Africa. The book consists of seven chapters, of
which parts of three chapters have been previously published in scholarly journals. The book addresses Islamic renewal in West Africa, particularly
in the urban areas of southern Mali where the author conducted ethnographic studies, especially in the town of San, and among other neighborhoods
around the capital city of Bamako. Through utilizing comparative data, the author attempts to locate ethnographic findings within a broader
politico-economic framework.
One of the book’s objectives is to trace the recent movement of Islamic renewal in Mali from domestic realms to domains of public debate and
interaction. Schulz’s central point is that the integration of media into religion and politic