Americans' opposition toward building an Islamic community center at Ground Zero has been attributed solely to a general anti-Muslim sentiment. We hypothesized that some Americans' negative reaction was also due to their motivation to symbolically pursue a positive U.S. group identity, which had suffered from a concurrent economic and political downturn. Indeed, when participants perceived that...

The paper uses the case study of the controversy regarding the construction of a mosque near the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in Manhattan, New York, to analyze the different theoretical approaches to the concept of solidarity. It is argued that the presence of affectional solidarity which is based on feelings of caring, friendship and love was very limited in the case under study. Instea...

We use different text-processing algorithms to gain insight into the political rhetoric used in conservative and liberal weblogs. We specifically focus on the online debate regarding the issue of the “Ground Zero Mosque,” which has been one of the most controversial political issues in U.S. politics in the last several years. Overall, our results show that there are significant differences in t...

The issue of the „Ground Zero Mosque‟ has been one of the most controversial political issues in US politics in the last several years. Using two different statistical text-analysis techniques, we analyze conservative and liberal blog posts, related to the construction of this Muslim community center and the debates surrounding the issue. In the first experiment, we use a machine learning techn...

This article focuses on the emerging online Arab public sphere that the web has enabled. It explores how the ‘‘local’’ interacts with the ‘‘global,’’ critically examining their implications on global politics. Specifically looking at online readers’ comments about the Swiss minaret ban the so-called ‘‘Ground Zero Mosque,’’ how does the Arab online public sphere respond to and frame these issues...

the present research aims to study the role of mosque in increasing social capital from the viewpoint of the quran and islamic narratives. for this reason, specifications of the mosque made in the quran and narratives have been organized based on social capital indicators in order to identify the role of mosque in increasing production of social capital. the research uses a descriptive-analytic...

It has been recognized since the earliest period of Islam the importance of mosque as a centre of Islamic educational institution. Attached to the mosque is a library of certain magnitude and importance. Most of these libraries are administered by mosque administrators, whose level of competencies in information and communication technology is assumed to be low. A study to assess the level of c...