Framing the Friday Sermon to Shape Opinion: The Case of Jordan

(Hardback)

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The book investigates the intricate relationship between Friday sermon and the worshippers opinion in Jordan. The author examines the religious sphere in Jordan in an attempt to unravel the apparent and hidden actors who produce and intake Friday sermon in an ostensibly westernized yet profoundly religious society. It fills a major gap in literature on how Islamist movements and groups use and produce the Friday sermon and its sociopolitical context. Covering the period before, during and after the Arab Spring, the book also challenges the lack of field investigation on framing and agenda-setting. The state, Islamist groups, and the media all vie to usurp the loyalty of the worshipper through the Friday sermon.

Reviews

A remarkable and complex research effort on a subject of enormous importance. Few scholars have so intimately engaged with the texts and contexts of Friday Sermons as a vehicle of communication power. Madanat has persevered in a zone of significance which has been shielded from systematic scholarly observation. -- Monroe Price, Yeshiva University
Preachers are influencers even if they are not online celebrities. Madanats book shows us the impact of the Friday Sermon into public opinion construction. Whoever wants to understand better how public opinion works in the Muslim World should read these useful and clarifying lines. -- Miriam Diez Bosch, Blanquerna Observatory on Media, Religion and Culture Director
This is highly informative and insightful scholarly research into a hardly investigated, crucial role that the Friday sermons in the mosques play in shaping religious and political attitudes and opinions in Arab societies. By testing the significance of framing, priming, and agenda-setting theories in a Jordanian setting, the study discusses important implications of the tug of war between preachers and government censors over the control of citizens public perception of reality. -- Gianpietro Mazzoleni, University of Milan

Author Bio

Philip Odeh Madanat, PhD, is an independent scholar.