**4. Discussion**

All of the freethinkers and non-believers covered in this survey are firm in their rejection of the sanctity of religious beliefs and dogmas and in their insistence that everybody should have the right to criticize them and even make fun of them outright. In the Arab world, where there is a long tradition of expressing doubt about religious dogma in a nuanced, allusive or figurative way, and in small and often 'elitist' social circles, this is a significant innovation. The deeper socio-economic reasons of this phenomenon remain to be explored: migration and the globalization of education and media, individualism and consumerism, the demographic transition and weakening of traditional family and neighborhood structures. The fact that the phenomenon also includes members of religious minorities seems highly significant in this context, but remains to be explored more thoroughly. However, there is no doubt that the apparent spread of freethinking and non-belief at this particular point in history has been made possible to a large extent by advances in media technology. Only the rapid spread of social media in the Arab world and the increasing availability of low-budget broadcasting technology have enabled a new generation of Arab non-believers to move beyond the limits of book-reading intellectual circles and beyond the hostile environment of the mainstream media and begin to address—in some cases apparently with considerable success—a wider Arabic-speaking public.

Beyond the general agreemen<sup>t</sup> on unlimited free speech concerning religion, there are important differences in style and intellectual approach. First, there is the differentiation in the protagonists' self-description: On the one hand, there are the non-believers who see themselves as atheists (Sherif Gaber) or use the more generic term *la-d ¯ ¯ın¯ı* plus an additional qualifier like agnostic (Kosay Betar) or theist (Adam Elmasri). On the other hand, there are those who continue to identify with the religion they were born into or refuse to declare their religious status and form whom I have suggested the term freethinkers. If people in this group use self-descriptions, these do not indicate whether they are believers or not but focus on other aspects of their intellectual stance, such as secularism (ޏ*alman¯ ¯ıya*), humanism (*insan¯ ¯ıya*), and enlightenment (*tanw¯ır*). Considering the case of Hamed Abdel-Samad, it

<sup>49</sup> 
41 4 - 7\)LVT d" ./ - (Typical questions #4—do you apostasize to follow your desires?), 13 January 2020, https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=2v1xnP\_ren8.

<sup>50</sup> 
41 8 - 7i -2 - b -,-(Typical questions #8—why do you only criticise Islam?), 17 February 2020, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=3aC4usVOAIY.

seems likely that freethinkers find it easier to reach a degree of public acceptance and insert themselves into general debates, even if their criticism of religion is as radical as that of the non-believers. However, Abdel-Samad's apparent advantage over the other YouTubers in this area might as well boil down to his being older or being in possession of higher social capital as a successful academic and writer in a Western country. All things considered, it remains an open question if radical freethinking and atheism can benefit from their presence in the social media to become a more regular feature of public debates in the Arab world.

When it comes to the intellectual content and the type of arguments used, the distinction between freethinkers and non-believers is of less significance. All four channels delve into the four overlapping areas of critical thinking: natural science, textual criticism of the Holy Books, the history of religion, and philosophy (ethics and logic). The kind of mix depends mostly on the intellectual formation and preferences of the individual protagonists. Abdel-Samad relies mostly on his sphere of academic expertise, social sciences and history, plus textual criticism of the Quran and the Hadiths, while Sherif Gaber has the strongest focus on natural science—as mentioned he is the one closest to a 'materialist' conception of atheism. Adam Elmasri derives most of his input from historical and textual criticism, but has a much stronger philosophical side than the other channels.

There is also evidence of what Gavin Hyman has called the "reactivity" of atheist thought to the religious culture that it rejects (Hyman 2017, p. 29). The criticism brought forward against Islamic theology is focused very strongly on the scriptural meaning of the Quran and certain Hadiths and shows little interest in or in-depth knowledge of scholarly traditions. This is quite probably a reflection of the fact that literalist and fundamentalist interpretations have come to dominate popular knowledge of Islam in Egypt and the Arab world in recent decades (Schielke 2015, pp. 65–82). In addition, the most active opponents of the non-believers on YouTube are almost uniformly Salafi-styled activists who themselves contribute to directing the debate towards the exegesis of the foundational texts and excluding a large part of Islamic scholarly traditions.<sup>51</sup>

This circumstance explains why so many videos produced by non-believers deal with the hypothesis of the "scientific miracle(s)" (*al-i*ޏ *gˇaz al- ¯* ޏ*ilm¯ı*) of the Quran. This genre of religious reasoning, which claims that the Quran—if interpreted in the proper way—has predicted many scientific discoveries, is a common apologetic device in contemporary Islam that is popular across different religious schools and trends. As Sherif Gaber's imaginary "Renos and H. amada" dialogue shows, it is often the first counter-argument ¯ used by Muslim believers if others question the truth of the Quran.

Another topic that is amplified by current events in the Arab world, namely the spectacular rise of Salafi-Jihadism in Iraq, Syria and some other countries torn by instability and civil war in the years after the Arab Spring, is the issue of Islam and violence. The surveyed YouTube channels frequently refer to the views and actions of the so-called "Islamic State" and its supporters as particularly shocking examples of religiously motivated violence. They also claim, based on the same scriptural sources that the Jihadists themselves use to justify their deeds (verses from the Quran and stories about the Prophet and his followers) that this is what the "golden age" of early Islam really looked like. In this way, Jihadism serves as an ideal foil for non-believers to confirm their rejection of Islam on intuitive moral grounds, sometimes at the cost of avoiding any recognition of less extreme theological readings.

Non-believers on YouTube cover similar topics based on current interest, argumentative convenience, or because they are challenged to do so by their opponents and critics, but these do not necessarily define their positive views or core message. There is a difference between explaining why you do not believe in certain things and defining what kind of non-believer you want to be. While Abdel-Samad's approach is mostly focused "demol-

<sup>51</sup> On the polarization of online debates about Islam and the disproportionate influence of the more radical and extreme voices in either camp see Al-Rawi 2017.

ishing" religion, the others also try to spell out a positive message of their own or even provide practical advice. The fact that they openly declare a divergent religious status that is far from self-explaining in the Arab world, already puts them under a certain pressure to spell out the intellectual and ethical consequences. While Sherif Gaber, Adam Elmasri, and Kosay Betar each offer a different world-view in place of Muslim and Christian theism, they remarkably converge on ethical and social questions. All of them strongly endorse gender equality and—a much more controversial issue in the Arab world—the acceptance of homosexuality. It seems that their non-belief comes as a package deal with "progressive" social views and offers the promise of an individualistic, cosmopolitan lifestyle.

An individualistic outlook also determines their views on how to deal with the vexing social and political situation in the Arab world, where freethinkers and non-believers still face widespread rejection and persecution (Whitaker 2017; Jackson 2018; Diab 2020). While the challenge of political Islam, both in its moderate and radical shapes, is too omnipresent to be ignored, Abdel-Samad is the only one who offers clearly articulated political views on current events in the Arab world. The other YouTubers portrayed here, on the contrary, avoid talking about politics almost completely. Their focus is, one might say, on strengthening their own intellectual community. They seem to believe that establishing a visible presence in the virtual public sphere is a step toward making non-belief an accepted part of the intellectual and social landscape in the Arab world. The sense of a lively and growing virtual community has certainly raised the confidence of non-believers and made them more daring in their self-portrayal and in their demands on society. In this sense, freethinking and non-belief imply an attempt to re-negotiate social and political boundaries within Arab societies at large. One crucial question for the period ahead is how religious authorities and institutions and common believers react to the challenge of non-belief and how believers and non-believers negotiate their relationship. However, recent studies about digital media in the Arab world caution us against over-estimating the potential of emerging digital communities when it comes to challenging and dislocating deeply entrenched social and political power structures (Richter et al. 2018, p. 4). It might be a long way before the voice of Arab non-believers will have an impact on legal and constitutional questions, such as family law and the prerogatives of religious authorities.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable.

**Acknowledgments:** I would like to thank Karin van Nieuwkerk, Lena Richter and the anonymous reviewers for valuable comments and suggestions.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.
