Representation of Islam in social media discourse produced by an apostate

摘要

This paper examines the postings on Facebook Timeline which belongs to a female Muslim apostate. The main aim is to explore her views towards the religion in order to understand the reasons behind her apostasy. The Facebook Timeline was observed for two years (January 2016 to December 2017). More than 4,000 postings were made in the period of data collection. The thematic analysis of the postings reveals that Islam is perceived as discriminative, coercive, and imaginary. These negative views of Islam may be one of the contributing factors to her apostasy and the sharing of the views on the Timeline can be seen as an attempt to promote her ideology. In engaging readers with the postings, the apostate mainly used imagery, rhetorical questions, constructed dialogues and loaded words. This paper is novel in the sense that it puts forth the views of an apostate which is very scarce in the current literature. It is also methodologically innovative as it uses social media postings as a tool to explore the apostate's views of religion. This paper concludes that the Facebook Timeline has been strategically used by the apostate to promote her ideologies and beliefs.