No. 48 - Christoph Günther: “German Version better”: Mimetic Normativity in TikTok Daʿwa Working Papers This article explores how TikTok’s short video format facilitates a distinctive mode of religious instruction that simplifies Islamic norms into binary categories of “right” (ḥalāl) and “wrong” (ḥarām). Focusing on two case studies, I highlight how Muslim content creators convey ethical guidance by referencing the Qurʾan and Hadith while omitting the nuanced discursive traditions of Islamic jurisprudence and contextual knowledge. The brevity of the videos limits critical engagement with complex theological discussions, presenting norms as supra-historical and detached from human experience. This leaves audiences to debate the norms presented in comment threads, without explicit acknowledgment of scholarly expertise. Additionally, I employ a performance-centred approach to analyse how TikTok’s functional logics and affordances, including collaboration, humour, spatial settings, and app features like hashtags and captions, shape the presentation and reception of religious content. These elements, combined with audience interactions and the app’s user interface, constitute a “technosocial setting” that frames the couple’s performative enactments of Islamic teachings. This setting not only influences audience interpretation but also facilitates memetic engagement, reinforcing TikTok’s role as a platform for disseminating simplified religious norms in an engaging, collaborative manner. Read more About the author: Christoph Günther Christoph Günther has been a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Erfurt (funded by the DFG’s Heisenberg Programme) since February 2023. Trained in Islamic Studies, History, and Arabic, his research and teaching touch upon issues of religion and digital media, visual culture, as well as social change and the role of religio-political actors therein. His current research focuses on the ways in which Muslim actors design audiovisual mediations on social media platforms and how Muslim practitioners engage with such videos and images in the course of their daily religious and media practices. He is the author of En- trepreneurs of Identity: The Islamic State’s Symbolic Repertoire (Berghahn Books, 2022) as well as co-editor of Jihadi Audiovisuality and its Entanglements: Meanings, Aesthetics, Appropriations (Edinburgh University Press, 2020) and Disentangling Jihad, Political Violence and Media (Edinburgh University Press, 2023).
