As a second-generation immigrant with roots in the Muslim community, I sometimes encounter Muslim-themed memes in my social networks. They are fascinating to me, because while they share many of the influences familiar to western audiences, they serve a completely different set of values. The result is a bit uncanny if you’re not a part of that group, and reveals a more playful side of Islam that isn’t as public as the violent side that is widespread in media. Inspired in part by Nick Douglas’s excellent Medium write-up last year on Facebook moms and the rise of the “post-meme,” I decided to apply a similar analysis to Muslim memes.

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Douglas described an intriguing variation on the meme form that turned the most familiar version on its head: Ironic humor by and for “nerdy middle-class straight white men” was replaced with earnest and sassy inspirational messages “targeted at parents, Christians, and conservatives.”

Personally I’m a bit unsatisfied with the Christian-centric viewpoint used to approach these kinds of analyses.

It turns out nearly every community has their fair cut of Facebook pages and Instagram accounts posting images that can only be truly appreciated by members of the group. And you can learn a lot about a culture or religion by examining what its people share.

Digging into Muslim post-memes I discovered a variety of approaches, and a wide range of religious expression and tension. Many of these images can be interpreted as devout attempts to play within the bounds of Islamic law while stretching it gently to meet pop culture at the edge. Others go much further, offering more forceful attempts to bring Islamic thoughts and beliefs into a Western frame of reference, and revealing a much stranger relationship between the two in the process.

Religious memes

The very nature of memes as a visual form poses a problem for some Muslims. Aniconism has a long tradition in Islam. Because idolatry is a major sin, Islam forbids depictions of Allah and his prophets. Images of humans and animals have also historically been discouraged due to a prohibition against drawing anything with a soul. Some people believe an acceptable workaround to this is to avoid drawing eyes. Others believe photography and television are permissible, depending on the content. While the ruling has become fuzzy in the modern age, the inclination to avoid depicting a human in artistic renderings of living beings is nonetheless still pervasive in most Islamic cultures.

This doesn’t prevent Muslims from sharing the many memes that don’t break this rule:

Ayatul-Kursi is a verse of the Quran believed to provide Allah’s protection when recited. Sometimes recited before driving anywhere.

Play on words on “Kafir”, meaning non-believer.

“Ma Sha Allah” means “Thank God”, “Astaghfirullah” is sometimes used colloquially when someone does something bad.

The day of Eid al-Fitr is determined by moon sightings.

Similar to the typical post-memes Douglas analyzed, they “lean hard on the ‘benign’ side of benign violation.” That is, the situation simultaneously is benign and violates expectation. These kinds of memes are fairly conservative in scope, and more or less fall completely within the bounds of Islam.

But wait. This isn’t weird. The cultural and religious identity implied behind these jokes are consistent. That’s boring. What happens when they’re not?

When the meme is on point but the sister isn’t wearing hijab

Across the street from the Muslim pages that share content like the images above are pages that share these:

“Halal” means permissible.

“Wallahi” roughly means “I swear to Allah” and “Fitnah” means trial or distraction. “Wudhu” is a ritual washing done before prayer.

A “Khutbah” is a speech delivered during Friday prayers.

“Iman” roughly means faith.

Many less devout Muslims become more devout during Ramadan.

The obvious difference here is the pervasive juxtaposition of pop culture and captions that espouse Islamic values. These memes use a variety of references that are relatively newer, revealing a younger audience than the Facebook moms in Douglas’ article. The issue of aniconism is also ignored, indicating less adherence to traditional Islamic guidance on the use of images.

One thing to note is that none of these are making fun of Islam or its rules. The juxtaposition may be the core of the humor but underneath it is a sincere belief in the values expressed. Bart Simpson writing “I will tell(?) not talk during the khutbah” as a punishment is funny because Bart is supposed to be a Christian. However, Bart still represents a naughty kid and the Muslim idea that interrupting a khutbah is bad remains unaltered. It’s always the cultural reference that’s flipped on its heel, never religion.

Some of the memes share a common theme, like reactions to Islamophobia:

Cultural dissonance:

An “Imam” is the religious leader of a community, analogous to a priest or pastor. A “khutba” is the speech he delivers during Friday prayers.

Some Muslims believe Valentine’s Day is a pagan holiday. Also relationships outside of marriage are not allowed.

Struggles of fasting:

Iftar is the evening meal that breaks the fast on Ramadan.

Masjid is another word for Mosque.

Some reveal a love of Disney characters and their relationships, but not before sloppily retconning them into Muslims with beards and hijabs (Bonus: a makeup artist using her hijab to turn into Disney princesses):

Islam permits men to have up to 4 wives, although more than 1 is unusual and not recommended.

“Iblees” is Satan.

“Zawjati” means “my wife”. A “Shaheed” is a martyr.

And others use celebrities to promote religious principles:

“Jannah” is Heaven. “Deen over Dunya” roughly translates to “Religion over the material world."

Assalamualaikum is the Muslim greeting.

It is recommended in Islam for men to grow beards.

“Khadijah” is the name of the Prophet’s wife.

Oh, and don’t forget the ubiquitous Minions (Bonus: an original comic about Muslim Minions):

These could only have been created by Muslims who have been deeply immersed in Western culture and still hold strong to their faith. They are literate in both the language and expectations of their religion and the famous people and characters that surround them.

They change the world to suit themselves. More conservative Muslims who believe in the traditional Islamic way of life tend to avoid the influences of western culture, but those in touch with Western culture have the creativity to imagine how both can work together in harmony. With just a tweak in Photoshop, they can convert the entire cast of Furious 7 or edit Aladdin and Jasmine’s loving relationship into a halal one. These two worlds might be at odds with each other, but they can just make it work.

Double Violation

But does it work? The audience for these memes is a cross-section of people who care about being good Muslims but also appreciate pop culture. If you stand on any side of that demographic, they might feel very strange to you. If you’re more of a conservative Muslim you might find offense to associating Islam with these otherwise problematic references. You can pretend Leo DiCaprio is Muslim, but can you really forget his performance in The Wolf of Wall Street? If you’re not very religious or non-Muslim, it all just seems like a perverse appropriation of pop culture to fit the Islamic ideal. Is it okay to draw a hijab over a Disney princess? On either side something just doesn’t seem right.

The benign violation theory may explain why it feels so uncanny. To reiterate the theory, for a situation to be humorous, it must be benign and violate expectations. The above memes certainly violate the expectation that pop culture and Islam don’t or shouldn’t mix together. But are they benign? If you’re not a member of that small demographic you might be able to empathize with them anyway and find the humor. But you might also empathize with the other side of that demographic and find it an affront to religion and pop culture. It feels like a double violation.

And that’s okay

This subsection of the Muslim community is in a unique position of cultural dissonance. A great example is the second-generation immigrants in American Muslim communities. In Children of Immigration, Carola Suárez-Orozco and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco describe the three different types of social identities that immigrant children adopt:

…“ethnic flight” (abandoning their own ethnic group and mimicking the dominant group), “adversarial identities” (constructing identity in opposition to the mainstream culture and its institutions), and “transcultural [bicultural] identities” (developing competence to function in both cultures).

These particular Muslim immigrants likely find themselves falling into the latter category with “transcultural identities.” It’s not an easy thing to deal with, as both cultural identities will inevitably clash with one another. These weird memes are just a symptom of that. They say “I’m hip enough to hang out with, but give me a sec I gotta pray Asr first.”

That isn’t to say that Muslim-Americans are the only affected group. Western culture is omnipresent throughout the world, and Muslim countries are no exception.

The Muslim community hasn’t been the most fortunate when it comes to its public image in the media. These memes reveal a more humorous side of young Muslims that many non-Muslims may not have ever seen before. They show that cultural barriers are much more fluid than we think they are, and that the Internet can bring together Muslims just as well as Facebook moms.

Perhaps the initial uncanny feeling we get is just a gut realization that Muslims are as similar to non-Muslims as they are different.