On the 13th of July 2015, the popular app Snapchat converged with the celebrations of the 27th night of Ramadan in Mecca. The app opened itself up to submissions and created a story specifically for those who attended Laylat al-Qadr, the ‘night of power’.
Snapchat is a video messaging app which allows users to send short video or picture messages to friends. These images will then be ‘deleted’ and thus no longer visible after they have been opened. One of the most popular features of the app is the ability for you to collate your experiences (snaps) into one ‘story’ which is visible for 24 hours. Snapchat recognises when you are in a certain location and for special events or festivals you can send your snaps to Snapchat and they will broadcast a main story to every user around the world.
The stream was a response to the #Mecca_live trend on twitter where thousands upon thousands of mentions were made requesting for Snapchat to feature the Muslim holy city as its main ‘story’. The story opened with “Join us as we travel to Mecca for Laylat Al-Qadr” with the call to prayer in the background. The stream showed the true spirit of the event, where users inside the city snapped scenes of the rituals that took place, such as doing Tawaf around Kaaba, a ritual where believers circulate in harmony around the Kaaba to demonstrate their unity in the belief in One God. Many snaps even showed people preparing bags of food to share with others in the street. Millions of meals were also provided for free, and at sunset, everyone broke the daily Ramadan fast together after the Iftar call.
One of the most prominent aspects of the story was that it showed the complete and utter unity of Muslims, who came together from all over the world to be in one place. All these people, regardless of their race or origin, were welcome inside. British historian and philosopher A. J. Toynbee stated that “the extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding achievements of Islam, and in the contemporary world there, as it happens, is a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue”. A Muslim also tweeted a picture of people praying together in perfect lines with the caption: “From these pics, can you tell who is rich and who is poor?”. Everyone performed the Hajj pilgrimage, everyone prayed together, everyone ate together; the sense of togetherness displayed is beautiful and stands in stark contrast to outsider portrayals of the Muslim faith.
When watching the Snapchat story for the first time, it was amazing to see how one app created a window into a new world. A world which for many has been misunderstood and its practices misinterpreted. This is primarily due to mass media’s focus on the actions of certain adverse minority groups in a religion which has over 1.57 billion adherents in about 50 Muslim-majority countries. The discussions on twitter before and after the event following the trend #Mecca_live showed that people were hopeful and aware of how social media coverage of the event would be beneficial for the image of the religion. Many tweets expressed how they felt; how the story showed the true beauty and peacefulness of Islam. Many Muslims even retweeted a vast amount of non-Muslims who expressed their admiration of the event using #Mecca_live; “I’m not Muslim, but #Mecca_live is truly astounding, just to see the dedication to their religion and the unity is stunning. So heart warming!”, “I’m not Muslim but the #Mecca_live Snapchat story really is beautiful! Shows how peaceful Muslims truly are, despite the media’s portrayal” and “#Mecca_live is a beautiful look at an example of people coming together, really want to learn more about Islam, not the Islam we see in news”. Why is it that despite the fact that people are evidently aware of the misportrayal of Islam in the media, the media and politicians still have so much influence over the perceptions of the religion? Is it just a lack of knowledge which fuels this misunderstanding?
When talking to a fellow UCMer she, too, felt that although she was interested in the history of Islam, and the religion itself, she still did not know much about it. She was not taught about it in school and the majority of what she knew was from historical books, fiction and the news. However, she also stated that “you see so much more now, everything gets documented”, and Snapchat is an example of this. This kind of technology enables people to see things that they otherwise would have never been able to see before, except through the news or stories, and even then it would not have been told by those who were there. Snapchat removed the middle-man, allowing the images and videos of the beautiful spectacle to be transferred from those actually inside Mecca to over 100 million Snapchat users worldwide without having the media as a filter.
Despite the overwhelming positive response to the Snapchat live feed, there were many who disapproved of the feature of the world’s largest religious festival on the social media app. First, some were concerned that it would be a re-hashing of the Snapchat story on the Saudi city O Riyadh, where many were disheartened as it seemed to be “poking fun at stereotypes of Saudis”. Second, many were concerned about the association of the holy place to Snapchat itself, indicated by statements such as: “Snapchat shows clips of people in revealing clothes, how can you agree to show the most pure place on earth on the same platform”. Although this is a valid concern, it could be considered that how people use the app is down to the user not Snapchat itself. The app, like many other things, is open to interpretation of its use.
The convergence of the social media app Snapchat and the celebrations of Laylat Al-Qadr in Mecca shows how technology has opened a ‘digital window’ which allows others to see things previously unbeknownst to them. Snapchat has created specialised stories from all over the world, allowing people to share what life is truly like. So could this be a revolution in how we learn, especially with current events? Rather than having several news sources which filter out current events, this would mean including only those which they deem to be important and leaving the rest unexplored. We would rely on social media such as YouTube, Snapchat and Twitter instead of newspapers and TV. The Snapchat story of Mecca could also be seen as another stepping stone to a more realistic, universal, and equal perspective, as well as a better understanding of Islam. Snapchat allowed the world to see the ‘night of power’ through the eyes of real people and their willingness to show the world that ‘the city that never sleeps’ is something that should be cherished.
Zoe Gorringe
The Bell 