RELATIONSHIP OF EUROPEAN IDENTITY AND ISLAM: JUTUB CONTENTS AS A MODUS OF ANALYSIS

Abstract

In the light of current migrations toward Europe in which a huge proportion of the immigrant population is of Islamic faith – on the assumption that it can contribute to researching the relationship of European identity and Islam – a number of videos from the YouTube portal have been analyzed. Respectively, from the mentioned site is analyzed the content in which the keyword is Islam, videos whose title and then the content recognized as such that it can answer the research question: Which knowledge about Islam can receive an interested viewer thrught YouTube, in what way the above-mentioned contents are shaped, which is the function and goal of the content, and what kind of influence they can have on the viewer. Therefore, in this paper, under the interested viewer (from Europe) default a person who does not possess systematic, scientific or professional knowledge of Islam, as also a person who can belong to any confession. In this regard, the author directed his analysis on the detecting of political and security aspects of those video contents, without consideration of doctrinal settings of Islam in the aforementioned. Just becouse of character of the media from which the search units have been selected made the possibility for objections on the methodological tools and criteria of sample applied in the work, whose correctness is not disputable – but the authors attachments can be understood as a proposal, an initiative for a possible pilot project, which may be related to Serbia also. The analysis has created the basis for carrying out (certainly limited) conclusions about the characteristics of Islamic discourse and discourses on Islam, the factors of radicalization and islamophobia, as well as the obstacles to the cultural integration of the immigration population in Europe, the assumptions about the outcome of the contact of opposing traditions and values.