Title: Hybrid Muslim identities in digital space: the Italian blog Yalla

First name: Giulia

Last name: Evolvi

Affiliation: Ruhr University Bochum

Mailing address: Universitätsstr. 90a 44789 Bochum

Telephone number: +39 3485200407

Email address: giulia . evolvi@ rub.de

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Abstract

Islam is often regarded as being incompatible with European values. In Italy, for example, anti-Islam points of view reiterate the religion’s alleged inconsistency with Catholicism and secularism. This article argues that narrative practices can challenge this idea by articulating Muslim hybrid identities that are compatible with Italian culture and society. The second-generation blog Yalla Italia represents a “third space” where young Italian Muslims contrast dominant media stereotypes, thereby creating “disruptive flows of dissent.” A textual analysis of the blog and interviews with some of the bloggers reveal that three main topics are employed to overcome marginalization: (1) critiques of mainstream media (2) narratives about family lives and the practice of Islam, and (3) advocacy of a quicker procedure for gaining Italian citizenship. The bloggers adopt a storytelling style to press for social and institutional change and explain how they succeed in adapting Islam to Italian society. Their religious diversity is thus perceived as providing a potential for Italy, rather than being a mark of marginalization.

Résumé

L'islam est souvent considéré comme incompatible avec les valeurs européennes. En Italie, les opposants anti-islam relaient cette prétendue incompatibilité avec le Catholicisme et la laïcité. L'article soutient que des témoignages et récits de vie peuvent mettre en evidence des identités hybrides musulmanes qui sont compatibles avec la culture et la société italienne. Le blog de deuxième génération Yalla Italia représente un « espace tiers » où les jeunes musulmans d’Italie peuvent contester les stéréotypes médiatiques et créer des « courants dissidents ». L'analyse textuelle du blog, ainsi que des entrevues avec des blogueurs révèlent que trois sujets sont principalement utilisés pour aider à surmonter la marginalisation des musulmans dans la société italienne: (1) la critique de médias traditionnels (2) les récits de la vie de famille et de la pratique de l'islam (3) la promotion d’une procédure plus rapide pour obtenir la citoyenneté italienne. En employant la narration, les blogueurs plaident pour le changement social et institutionnel et présentent leur diversité religieuse comme un atout pour la société italienne, plutôt qu’une marque de marginalisation.

Keywords: Islam, Italy, Internet, media, secularization

Author biography

Giulia Evolvi is a postdoctoral researcher in Religion and Media at the Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. She obtained her PhD in Media Studies from the University of Colorado Boulder, United States, where she was affiliated with the Center for Media, Religion and Culture, and also holds a Master’s degree in Religious Studies from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and the University of Padua, Italy. Her research interests are new religiosity and religious change,

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secularization, religious pluralism in Italy and Europe, and Catholicism in the media. Her PhD dissertation focused on resistive digital practices of non-mainstream religious groups in Italy.

Introduction

Anti-Islamic hysteria is everywhere and Muslims are forced (once again) to repeat “we have nothing to do with this” or “this is not Islam” or “we firmly condemn all this,” hoping others will believe [us](Ismahan Hassen, January 9, 2015)

The terrorist attack against Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 forced Europe to reflect on the

Muslim presence within its society. In the aftermath of this and other acts of terror on the

continent in 2015 and 2016, a number of Muslims felt the need to dissociate themselves from the

ideologies and religiosity of the terrorists. Some Italian Muslims used the online platform Yalla

Italia (hereinafter Yalla, www.Yallaitalia.it) to share their feelings about the Charlie Hebdo

attack, as exemplified by the quote above from Ismahan Hassen. While condemning a type of

Islam that fosters violence, the Yalla blog voices the frustration felt by second-generation Italians

of Muslim faith at the continual need to justify their religiosity in a Western context.

Attacks such as that against Charlie Hebdo seem to confirm a certain vision of Islam as violent,

non-democratic, and unwilling to accept European and Christian values – a vision often voiced

by xenophobic political parties (Betz and Meret, 2009; Pisoiu, 2013; Savage, 2010). However,

Muslims’ daily narratives are often able to reconcile Muslim identities with European values,

thus challenging anti-Islam discourses. Through an analysis of the Italian blog Yalla, this article

argues against the idea of a monolithic Islam that cannot adapt to European modernity. The

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blog’s discourses prove that it is possible to articulate hybrid Muslim identities in a way that

reconciles Italianness with Islam. The Internet differs somewhat from other media in its ability to

provide a space for more nuanced identity negotiations and discourse formations. Yalla shows

that through narrative practices positioned in between private and public experiences, Italian

Muslims try to challenge stereotypes in order to overcome a sense of marginalization and

advocate for social change. In doing so, they are able to create “disruptive flows of dissent”

(Echchaibi, 2013) that subvert dominant narratives.

1. Catholicism and secularism in Italy

Italy is predominantly a Catholic country where around 75% of the population self-identifies as

Catholic and an even higher percentage have been baptized Catholic (Doxa, 2014). Catholicism

is deeply embedded in Italian society, politics, and education (Frisina, 2011), and the Catholic

Church plays a prominent role in civil society (Garelli, 2007). Furthermore, mainstream media

tend to represent Italian identity as intrinsically Catholic (Ardizzoni, 2007).

The overwhelming presence of Catholicism in the Italian public sphere is usually considered to

be compatible with the secular character of the Italian state and its recognition of the principle of

religious freedom. According to Frisina (2011: 272), this happens because Italian society is

based on a “Catholic model of secularism,” which is “founded on the social representation of

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Catholicism as the cultural basis of the nation’s identity.” According to this model, Catholic

values inspire secular values and act as a wellspring from which the country’s ethics and

morality can emerge, thus making them intrinsic elements of Italian history and society (Joppke,

2013; Mancini, 2010).

The “Catholic mode of secularism” stresses the importance of the Judeo-Christian roots of

European civilization and indirectly marginalizes minority religions such as Islam. Indeed, while

Christianity is generally seen as being able to inspire and validate secular values, Islam is often

viewed as unable to respect the separation of religion and politics that is needed to create secular

identities in late modernity (Asad, 2003; Casanova, 2004). Italian and European anti-Islam

discourses often stress Islam’s alleged inability to keep out of public and institutional space,

describing it as “fundamentalist, dangerous and backwards” (Talhami, 2004: 154). These

positions connoting Islam as “un-European” in virtue of its supposed incapacity to adapt to the

continent’s values are symptomatic of anxieties about a changing society whose Muslim

population is steadily increasing.

2. Islam in Europe and Italy

Attitudes that reiterate the alleged incompatibility of Islam and Western democracy are often

unable to capture the dynamic changes of European society and religiosity. A number of studies

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have analyzed strategies of cultural and social adaptations of Muslims in Europe, as well as the

articulation of hybrid identities (Roy, 2013; Tibi, 2010). Similarly, other studies (Arfi, 2010;

Jones, 2013; Talhami, 2004; Yeğenoğlu, 2006) show how European identity is not

homogeneously based on secularism and Christianity, often being formed instead through the

exclusion of ethnic and religious groups, thereby creating fear of the “Muslim other.”

Muslims are estimated to comprise around 2% of the Italian population1 (CESNUR 2014) and

Islam is the fastest growing religion in the country (Pace, 2013). Strategies of religious

adaptation are visible in Italy among young, second-generation Muslims (Frisina, 2011), and

among mixed couples where one partner practices Islam (Cerchiaro et al., 2015). Muslims,

especially women, often negotiate their identities by articulating discourses that resist the

political use of secularism (Salih, 2004). These processes of identity-negotiation and practice-

articulation are often intertwined with a variety of media practices (el-Aswad, 2013). On the one

hand, the media contribute to the fear of Islam by offering biased and superficial descriptions of

the Muslim communities in Italy and by condemning, for example, migration and the

construction of mosques (Mezran, 2013; Saint-Blancat and Friedberg, 2005; Vaccari, 2009). On

the other hand, second-generation and Muslim Italians use media to negotiate hybrid identities,

move beyond stereotypes, and promote integration (Toronto, 2008; Zinn, 2011). Studying the

1 It is difficult to obtain the exact number of Muslims in Italy, since many Muslim migrants are not officially registered. For further information, see Mezran (2013)

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media – and the Internet in particular – allows us to understand the strategies they adopt to

articulate identity and adapt socially. This article situates itself within existing scholarship about

Islam in Italy and Europe, while taking the innovative approach of analyzing Internet discourses.

3. Religious “third spaces” and Muslim blogs

Media have an impact on the negotiation of religious practices and identities. The mediation of

religion has a “horizontalizing” impact on religion because it provides spaces for re-thinking

authority and symbols. As a result, media have the potential to disrupt the traditional power

hierarchies between those who hold truth claims and those who do not; traditional religious

authorities lose their role of providing an interpretative framework for symbols, and believers

gain greater agency in determining their own religious meanings (Hoover, 2006).

Digital spaces influence religions in late modernity, creating the phenomenon that Campbell

(2012) describes as “networked religion”. The Internet also has the potential to become a space

of “lived religion” (McGuire, 2008) where believers can discuss matters of practice and faith.

Moreover, the articulation of religious discourses on the Internet can create a “third space” – a

concept which has been employed in different contexts to refer to a space “in-between” physical

and metaphorical venues. Bhabha (1990) refers to a “third space” to describe the creation of

hybridized cultures and subjectivities in postcolonialism. Hoover and Echchaibi (2014: 13) apply

the concept of “third space” to the Internet in relation to the formation of religious communities

that encompass new aesthetics and new forms of authority, enabling an “engagement with

technology, practice, and lived experience.”

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Blogs can be considered to be “third spaces” when they articulate non-mainstream identities and

resist political pressure. Blogging is a form of digital engagement that has the potential to serve

individuals’ and communities’ communication needs and link them to the larger mediasphere,

creating alternative venues for grassroots journalism (Echchaibi and Russell, 2009). Blogs can

enhance the practices and beliefs of religious groups and individuals because they permit direct

and immediate representations of private experiences in the public sphere, in a manner that

differs from other media such as television and newspapers. They elicit active engagement with

their readers and can form an alternative type of public through the circulation of religious

narratives (Lövheim, 2011).

Muslim blogs in the West are often concerned with negotiating secular identities within Islam.

For example, the blog Muslimah Media Watch, which is written by Muslim women, promotes

alternative media practices to create what Echchaibi (2013) defines as “disruptive flows of

dissent.” The blog does not aim to radically subverting hegemony, but rather represents a

“cultural thickening” in a larger project of cultural change (2013: 2). According to Echchaibi, the

effectiveness of blogs should not be assessed in terms of concrete and short-term achievements,

but in relation to the fluidity of cultural and social progresses.

In resisting dominant culture through aesthetic and performative spaces, Muslimah Media Watch

reflects on the position of Islam within Western modernity. As a result, the blog creates dissent

that can bring about long-term changes in the perception of Muslim women within established

discursive production; moreover, it articulates “hybrid Muslim subjectivities” (Echchaibi, 2013:

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3). In a similar fashion, Yalla Italia aims to create oppositional narratives that challenge

stereotypes and help situate the position of Muslim identities in Italian modernity.

4. The Yalla blog

Yalla tells stories of migration and multiculturalism from the perspective of second-generations,

a term connoting people who are born or raised in Italy by foreign parents, and whose identity is

situated between different religions and cultures. Yalla (meaning “Let’s go” in Arabic) was

founded in 2006 by journalist Martino Pillitteri and university professor in Islamic Studies Paolo

Branca, both non-Muslims who are personally and professionally interested in the Muslim

community in Italy. Pillitteri and Branca started the project because they felt that there was a

need for the direct self-representation of Arab-Italians, who lacked a voice in the mainstream

media. The fact that Yalla had non-Muslim and non-Arab founders was certainly among its

unique characteristics: Yalla also distinguishes itself from other Muslim blogs in Italy because it

does not follow official Muslim authorities and targets a multireligious and multicultural

audience.

Interviews with Yalla’s founders provided insights into its scope and structure. Yalla started out

as a printed publication before becoming a blog in 2011, establishing a presence on Facebook and

Twitter in order to circulate its posts. While its bloggers were initially only Muslims from the city

of Milan, Yalla has since added contributors from other religions, ethnicities, and Italian cities.

The blog used to publish posts on a daily basis, with an average of 2000 visits every day.

However, in 2015 Yalla started to decrease its activity and re-think its identity: in the future,

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Yalla might become more global in scope, or it might just end. (Martino Pillitteri, personal

communication, May 29, 2015).

Yalla’s posts attract a wide readership, sometimes generating up to a hundred comments per post.

Yalla mainly targets other second-generation Italians and those who are interested in

multiculturalism, but the bloggers do not refrain from engaging in digital conversations with

anti-Islamic readers. Indeed Pillitteri, who functions as blog’s moderator, usually chooses to

publish offensive and racist comments in order to enable discussion and confrontation. The blog

format actually allows for the formation of an interactive community of readers who often

contribute to the negotiation of Muslim identities. Yalla’s community dimension is enhanced by

its collective character: the blog numbers forty collaborators, some of whom are part of the

editorial staff, all under the direction of Pillitteri. Apart from Pillitteri, the bloggers are not

professional journalists and are usually recruited through second-generation and Arab-Italian

associations (Paolo Branca, personal communication, May 31, 2015)

The majority of Yalla’s contributors are women. The interviews and blog analysis reveal no clear

reason why this is the case, but an explanation could be found in the need felt by Muslim women

to express their voices in non-traditional venues. As the blog Muslimah Media Watch

exemplifies (Echchaibi, 2013), media can become venues for women to negotiate their religious

identity and contrast gender-influenced structures of power. According to Lövheim (2011, 2013),

women often create digital “ethical spaces” where they discuss cultural and social norms situated

in between private and public experiences. For example, women use the Internet to claim their

rights within Islam, challenge mainstream media representations, and discuss gender roles from a

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Muslim perspective (Piela, 2013; Vis et al., 2011). Yalla’s attention to topics such as women in

interreligious couples and the meaning of the hijab is probably motivated by the fact that Muslim

women in Italy are further marginalized in their opportunities for self-representation because of

their gender.

Yalla welcomes contributors from every background and religion and does not explicitly use the

label “Muslim blog.” However, since it aims to capture dynamic changes in Italian society,

which is currently facing increasing migration from Muslim countries, and since the majority of

its contributors self-identify as Muslims, Yalla constitutes an highly informative platform for

understanding Islam in Italy. In analyzing Yalla, I have explored the interplay between digital

space and offline experiences. Why did the bloggers choose a digital platform to articulate their

ideas? Which topics are emphasized to describe the experience of Islam in Italy? Which

strategies do they employ to overcome social stigma? To address such questions, I performed a

qualitative textual analysis of Yalla by analyzing posts and readers’ comments from 2011 – when

the blog went online – until March 2015, when the blog started to decrease the number of its

posts. In addition, I conducted face-to-face semi-structured interviews with the two founders of

the blog and four of the bloggers in May and June 2015. I translated quotes and interviews from

Italian and used the real names of the bloggers, which is how they sign their posts. The analysis

of blog posts and interviews reveals that Yalla provides a platform for topics that are often

overlooked by public discourses about Islam in Italy.

4. Results and discussion

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Yalla’s posts are written in a storytelling style that the bloggers utilize for describing their daily

routine. The aesthetic technique of storytelling is a way of expressing opinions in an indirect

manner: the bloggers do not openly advocate religious pluralism, but their personal experiences

implicitly point to social and political issues connected with religious integration.

The analysis of posts on Yalla reveals not only a strong effort to overcome marginalization and

connect with mainstream society, but also a focus on three main topics that are used as a means

of articulating hybrid identities: first, a critique of mainstream media shows the communication

potential of digital space; second, narratives about family matters normalize the practice of Islam

within Italian culture; and third, advocacy for a quicker naturalization process for Italian

citizenship reveals the willingness of Muslims to be recognized as Italians.

Digital challenges to media stereotypes

Yalla often criticizes Italian mainstream media for being partial and biased in the treatment of

topics such as multiculturalism and religious pluralism. The blog does not explicitly articulate

the notion of “mainstream media,” but it could be argued that the concept refers to national

television, radio, and newspapers. Yalla states that media often focus on Muslims in order to

attract the audience’s attention and make certain news more interesting. According to the blogger

Rania Ibrahim, for example, it is “humiliating and irrelevant” that veiled women become “news”

only in virtue of their religiosity:

I think that if one day I were to climb Everest blindfolded or become mayor of my city, I would not cause any reaction in the traditional mass media. BUT, if I were to do these actions with a nice Islamic veil that frames my face … well I’d be on

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the front pages of the newspapers. But when did wearing a veil, or worse being a Muslim, become so exceptional as to provoke a fuss? (Rania Ibrahim, October 12, 2012)

Yalla’s bloggers argue that this sensationalism is caused by media practitioners’ insufficient

knowledge of Islam and its followers. Ibrahim’s post denounces, in particular, the problematic

representation of Muslim women, who tend to be accorded attention only in virtue of their veils,

and not for their opinions.

Yalla condemns two main negative media biases in Italy. On the one hand, media tend to portray

all Muslims as “bad Arabs,” reiterating stereotypes of Islam as anti-democratic and violent. On

the other hand, media perpetuate the stereotype of the “poor migrant,” portraying all Muslims as

culturally and economically backward and automatically associating them with illegal

immigrants. Both these stereotypes connote Islam as fundamentally incompatible with Italian

society. Yalla does not negate the existence of radical Islam communities and illegal

immigration, but it does challenge the idea that Islam in Italy is monolithic and homogeneous.

The critique of mainstream media explains why Yalla’s bloggers have chosen a digital platform

as a place to share their ideas. Italian Muslims experience challenges when it comes to making

their voices heard: mainstream media tend either to fail to give them space or distort their

opinions because they do not fit the media biases described above. As blog co-founder Branca

notes:

The media are sensationalistic and they want to give alarming news, but this news [Yalla’s stories] would be reassuring, so they enter this ambiguous game where if

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you are not radical, fundamentalist and extreme you cannot be a Muslim. (Paolo Branca, personal communication, May 31, 2015)

Digital spaces, in this case a blog, make it possible to experiment with narrative techniques that

can better allow stereotypes to be subverted, and offer a platform for voices that often cannot

find space in mainstream media narrations. Pillitteri actually instructs the bloggers to be

provocative without being aggressive, and to underline problems without complaining (personal

communication, May 29, 2015). With its direct and provocative style, Yalla wants to build a

space that is more effective than mainstream media in raising awareness of certain issues. In this

way, the bloggers employ the Internet to overcome the risk of being an “invisible category”

(Zinn, 2011) or falling into generalizations and stereotypes.

Narratives of family life

Yalla often describes its bloggers’ relationships with parents and partners in a colloquial manner,

underlining generational clashes while also noting similarities with their Italian peers’

experiences. Because the bloggers are situated between two cultures and two religions, family

experiences are useful in describing efforts to negotiate identity:

For our parents it is a complex challenge. Unlike what many Italians believe, our Arab parents aren’t their Italian children’s enemies. They are just people who often encounter difficulties in raising children, because it is not at all easy to find the right balance between two cultures and emphasize the best of both. (Imane Barmaki, March 24, 2014)

As exemplified by the quote, Yalla’s bloggers do not describe their family issues as the product

of a backward religion unable to adapt to Western values. On the contrary, the generational clash

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is normalized as a phenomenon that can enrich family experiences despite requiring an effort to

reach mutual understanding. When the bloggers describe their family experiences they are

treasuring their own ability to connect two cultures.

In writing about their everyday experiences, the bloggers give insights into their strategies for

adapting the Muslim faith to Italian culture. If second-generation Muslims in a Western context

are to articulate their identity, they have to reconcile their own family experience (and the values

they learned within their families) with Italian values and culture. Yalla’s bloggers take a

heterogeneous approach to Islam: for example, some choose a Muslim partner and others pick

one who is not a Muslim; some of the women wear the veil and others do not. The bloggers

always stress the importance of making their own religious choices and critically evaluating

religious habits and practices:

When they ask me “Bahija do you observe Ramadan?” and I answer with a resounding YES, I always face grimaces that make me understand how incredulous they are. […] OK, I don’t change my dress habits (maybe I’m showing my décolleté a little too much?!?), I listen to music and I go dancing (obviously during the evening), I make exceptions on one or two days to have lunch with my colleagues… […] I admit I’m not the emblem of the perfect Muslim; I just commit sins like everybody, don’t I? (Bahija Monssif, August 17, 2012)

Family narratives enable the bloggers to explore their daily relationships with Islam together

with the negotiation of family values. In their constant definition of Muslim identities, they are

“Muslims in their own way,” as suggested by Pillitteri (personal communication, May 29,

2015). Refusing to follow traditional religious authorities, their religiosity tends to be lived

more at the level of family experience than in the public sphere. Blogging becomes a way of

negotiating traditional religious authority and forming a non-traditional community. In

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particular, women within Yalla often do not feel accepted in Italian mosques because they tend

to personalize their approach to Muslim practices, as exemplified by the above description of

Ramadan by Bahija Monssif. Yalla is a space beyond traditional authoritarian structures where

Muslim practices can be discussed and reflected upon.

This privatization of religion challenges the idea that Islam is totalizing and incompatible with

a secular society. The blogger Oussama Mansour, for example, describes himself by saying: “I

am Muslim in the same way many Italians are Catholic” (October 29, 2014). The bloggers see

their Catholic peers taking a selective approach to Catholicism and overlooking many precepts

of the Vatican; they often choose to do the same with Islam, whose practice at family level

does not diverge from Italian culture and secular values.

Being Italian on an institutional level: citizenship

Yalla extensively covers the issue of citizenship, showing the bloggers’ engagement with

institutional change. Italian legislation on citizenship is inspired by the jus sanguinis principle:

because children automatically gain their parents’ citizenship, those born of foreign parents on

the Italian soil are not granted Italian citizenship. Therefore, unless their parents apply for

citizenship themselves while their children are still minors, second-generations have to wait until

they are eighteen to apply in their own right, often having to deal with a slow and disorganized

bureaucratic system. This situation is problematic for second-generations, who find themselves

receiving fewer opportunities than their Italian peers in terms of education, career, and political

involvement.

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Yalla shows how citizenship is not only a legal problem, but also an identity issue. Without

actually rejecting their family culture, Yalla’s bloggers often assert their Italianness. They feel

Italian because of their education and the values they were raised with, and Italian citizenship

becomes a way of reiterating this essential part of their identity. Yalla often articulates feelings of

belonging to the Italian state, culture, and society:

We are even more Italian because we choose to be Italian, you are born Italian and never questioned it, but we questioned our identity and chose to be Italian. […] WE ARE ITALIAN (Sara Abd Alla, comment on a post, March 13, 2013, emphasis in original)

Citizenship, while not a religious issue strictu sensu, is often perceived as a mark of further

marginalization for Muslims. Yalla’s posts and their comments reveal that non-Muslims often

view Islam as being incompatible with Western institutions. The laws of democratic states

cannot discriminate on the basis of religion, but anti-Muslim attitudes can negatively influence

public opinion on citizenship. These attitudes, which Yalla strongly criticizes, are often found in

comments on the website’s posts:

A wise and civil country, because of the EVIDENCE that Islam is a persecutor, invader, and violent, would NEVER give Muslims citizenship. […] A Muslim will NEVER be Italian even if he is born here because he is Muslim and he will follow the Islamic law. (Franco, comment to a post, December 30, 2014, emphasis in original)

This comment shows the anti-Islamic attitude of many Italians, who consider Muslims to be

“foreigners.” Yalla’s female bloggers often address the problem of being considered “non-

Italian” because of their veils. The blogger Sabrina Mandouh, for example, describes her

negative experience in voting for national elections after having obtained citizenship: the fact

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that she wears a headscarf made the scrutineer question her right to vote, saying: “If you are

Muslim, why are you voting?” (May 26, 2015).

Yalla’s bloggers believe that facilitating the process of acquiring Italian citizenship would be an

important step towards countering these xenophobic attitudes. The bloggers drafted a proposal

for jus soli temperato (tempered jus soli), according to which citizenship would be accorded to

children born in Italy after they complete compulsory education. Yalla’s proposal constitutes not

only a way of simplifying the naturalization process, but also a strategy for situating the bloggers

within Italian culture: they feel Italian because they have participated in a process of education

and schooling that made them culturally Italian. With these discourses, the bloggers implicitly

criticize migrants who refuse to learn Italian and embrace Italian culture as they themselves do.

The reform of Italy’s citizenship laws has a double meaning for Yalla. On the one hand, it

challenges the xenophobic idea that Islam is incompatible with Italianness; on the other hand, the

bloggers’ willingness to obtain citizenship shows that not only have they grown up in Italy, they

have also undergone a process of integration that has led them to fully accept and love the

country – a process that has made them as Italian as their Catholic peers.

Conclusion

Yalla aids the negotiation of hybrid Muslim identities by challenging the stereotype of a

monolithic Islam. Yalla is a “third space” because it exists between the private experiences of

Muslim Italians and the public perception of Islam, and because it enables bloggers to discuss

religious matters beyond traditional authorities. Yalla’s bloggers articulate their identities in a

third space that is neither their culture of origin nor the Italian culture, but rather a hybrid space

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that is inclusive for both. The articulation of hybrid Muslim identities on the Internet is relevant

for two main reasons.

First, Yalla describes these hybrid identities as double identities, richer identities which have the

potential to improve Italian culture and society. The bloggers express this concept through the

description of strategies for overcoming their marginalization within Italian society and

normalizing the experience of being Muslim in Italy. By presenting themselves as religiously

similar to their Catholic peers, the bloggers paint an unthreatening model of Islam that is

compatible with Western values. The bloggers’ critical reflection on religious practices and

behaviors enables them to move beyond dichotomies. By telling stories of social integration and

solidarity they refuse to be criminalized as “bad Arabs,” and by reiterating their educational and

professional achievements they equally refuse to be victimized as “poor migrants.” Yalla’s

identities subvert dominant narrations of Islam by presenting religion and ethnicity as cultural

potentials rather than marks of marginalization. Yalla tells stories of second-generations that not

only can unproblematically reconcile their Muslim and Italian identities, but whose hybridity

allows for a better understanding of multiple cultural, religious, and linguistic codes.

Second, the blog format is crucial in articulating Muslim hybrid identities. Yalla cannot aspire to

the same audience as mainstream media, and so it employs a digital space to provide an

alternative voice and create a community of readers. In addition, the bloggers use the Internet for

its creative potential. Their hybrid identities principally exists in offline spaces and in private

spaces of everyday experiences; because a blog allows for a storytelling style, it enables these

experiences and identities to be transposed into the public space, where they can be read and

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reflected upon. In this way, the bloggers gain agency to select certain narratives upon others and

reappropriate their rights to define their own experiences, even if they do not constitute attractive

content material for mainstream media discourses. As Echchaibi (2009: 23) writes, “[t]he ability

to tell your story on your own terms in this case reflects a capacity to challenge a social order by

countering its exclusive rights to define your image and identity.” Indeed, while not the only

venue of identity articulation, the Internet represents a space where the bloggers can enhance,

amplify, and communicate the Muslim identities that exist in offline spaces.

Yalla’s ability to find strategies for overcoming marginalization and using the Internet as a space

for storytelling has the potential to send a powerful message to Italian society. Branca usually

encourages the bloggers by saying: “Don’t tell anything special, you are a message, the fact that

you exist is a message because people don’t know you exist” (personal communication, May 31,

2015). By showing their community of readers that Muslims do indeed exist who have already

found strategies for adapting their religious principles to their Western lives, Yalla’s bloggers

send the implicit message that Italian society needs to acknowledge the presence of Muslim

Italians as a resource rather than a threat. This message is political in the sense that it indirectly

advocates for social change by creating “disruptive flows of dissent,” subverting the dominant

narrative of incompatibility between Islam and the West. In doing so, the digital storytelling of

hybrid Muslim identities shows that lived experiences can be more explicative than political and

mainstream media discourses against Islam.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Professor Nabil Echchaibi from the University of Colorado Boulder for his precious help on this article. My gratitude also goes to Professor Stewart Hoover, Professor Shu-Ling Chen Berggreen, Professor Michela Ardizzoni, and Professor Peter Simonson, from the

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University of Colorado Boulder, for their support. My article greatly benefited from the editing of Nicola Morris, Julien Turpin, and Camélia Bouf, as well as from feedback of the reviewers of the Social Compass and Dr Anna Halafoff. I would also like to thank Dr. Mauro Gatti for invaluable support of many kinds. Most importantly, I thank the bloggers of Yalla for their collaboration and their work.

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