1. A. Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Culture Ecumene,” Public Culture, 2, 2 (1990) 1–24. Mediascapes involve flows of information and images beyond national and linguistic borders. Appadurai identifies deterritorialization as a key characteristic in the development of media and other-scapes in a contemporary global cultural economy.
2. See also A. S. Roald, “The Wise Men: Democratization and Gender Equalization in the Islamic Message: Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Ahmad al-Kubaisi on the Air,” Encounters, 7, 1 (2001) 29–55.
3. Consult for the larger phenomenon M. Q. Zaman, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam. Custodians of Change (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002).
4. The democratic potential and emancipatory power that mass media usage entails for different actors (including religious ones) have been critically discussed in Middle Eastern studies for almost 15 years. See D. F. Eickelman and J. W. Anderson (eds.), New Media in the Muslim World: The Emerging Public Sphere (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999);
5. F. Mermier (ed.), Mondialisation et Nouveaux Médias dans l’Espace Arabe (Lyon: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2003);