NABIYUNA JOURNAL

Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds, and peace and blessings be upon our master Muhammad and upon his pure and immaculate Household.
This study examines one aspect of the poetic corpus of the Christian poet Saeed Jirjis al-Issa (1917–1991), namely the aspect in which his poetry reflects an influence of Islam—its Qur’an, its Messenger (peace be upon him and his Household), and the Arab culture that emerged under the auspices of the true Islamic faith. These influences engaged the poet’s consciousness and motivated him to write on their basis. Within this context emerge the names of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his Household) in his poetry.
The poems of Saeed Jirjis al-Issa addressed in this study fall into two main categories. The first consists of texts imbued with an Islamic spirit, which subtly evoke the image of the Greatest Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his Household) and implicitly allude to his blessed names. The second includes texts explicitly marked as poems of Prophetic praise, numbering three poems in total.
This study forms part of a broader research project concerned with examining the image of the Greatest Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his Household) in modern Arab Christian poetry.

This study seeks to approach Islamic identity from a semiotic perspective through the discourse of the book Muhammad at Mecca by the British orientalist W. Montgomery Watt. The book is considered a controversial discourse in the way it represents the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and the early stages of the Islamic mission, as it employs the Arab-Islamic heritage selectively to construct an image of Islamic identity.
The research proceeds from the hypothesis that Islamic identity in the book under investigation is subjected to a dual process of formation and distortion. The narrator presents an image of the Prophet ﷺ in a state of spiritual and intellectual development, yet simultaneously introduces interpretations and explanations that weaken the credibility of the prophetic experience and diminish the autonomy of the acting self in accomplishing the mission.
The study relies on semiotic analytical tools—Greimas’s actantial model, modalities of action, and the semiotic square—to uncover the surface and deep structures governing Watt’s discourse, and to demonstrate how the meaning of Islamic identity is constructed within the text. The findings reveal that formation appears through highlighting elements of identity via the historical narration of the Prophet’s experience in Mecca (his upbringing, spiritual retreat, revelation, and early preaching). In contrast, distortion emerges by attributing action to external factors such as the role of Lady Khadija (peace be upon her), social conditions, and pre-Islamic religious heritage. This attribution weakens the acting self and transforms it from a divinely guided autonomous agent into one conditioned by external determinants.
Thus, the study exposes the central paradox in Watt’s discourse: on the one hand, he acknowledges the uniqueness of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ in shaping the identity of Islam, yet on the other hand, he presents a narrative that strips this identity of its divine dimension and frames it as purely human and socio-historical. Consequently, Islamic identity in the text is not merely formed, but is a contested identity—its meaning oscillating between authentic divine foundation (the Qur’an) and distorted interpretation (Watt’s account).

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The advent of digital tools in the field of “Digital Humanities” has enabled a profound reconsideration of the methodology in Orientalist studies of the Prophetic biography (Sīrah). This article aims to present an interdisciplinary framework for data-driven analysis of the biography of the Prophet of Islam (PBUH) with a focus on the Qur’an as the central text. Based on a descriptive–analytical method and a systematic review of digital resources, it introduces key tools and databases such as the Qur’anic Arabic Corpus, OpenITI, and Digital Hadith, explaining the general mechanisms of data extraction and refinement. Three main axes were analyzed: the alignment of Prophetic narrations with Qur’anic verses through advanced search, semantic analysis of key vocabulary in the Sīrah and Qur’anic texts, and exploration of the social network of Hadith narrators, revealing these tools’ capabilities to clarify the semantic and documentary structures of the Sīrah. Findings indicate that integrating these approaches simultaneously enables better understanding of the relationship between the revealed text and historical narration, identification of shared semantic patterns, and enhancement of documentary authentication. Moreover, innovative reference sources like the Encyclopedia of the Qur’an, Brill’s Encyclopedia of Islam, and Oxford Islamic Studies Online provide an integrated infrastructure for combining historical, linguistic, and interpretative analyses. Finally, it is recommended that Muslim researchers leverage trilingual databases, design indigenous semantic modules, and integrate digital hermeneutics with classical exegesis to balance the precision of new technologies with the richness of traditional interpretation, thereby strengthening the scientific civilizational dialogue between East and West based on Sīrah data.

This study addresses the critical issue of how the Quranic Pro
phetic Biography (al-Sīrah al-Nabawiyyah al-Qurʾāniyyah) is rep
resented across contemporary digital media platforms, where
narratives are often fragmented, secularized, or reframed ac
cording to non-Islamic paradigms. While the field of religious
media studies has expanded in recent years, a significant gap
remains in systematically linking Quranic principles, Prophetic
exemplarity, and the unique dynamics of digital media eco
systems. The primary objective of this research is to develop
a media framework that ensures accurate, ethically grounded,
and pedagogically effective representation of the Quranic Pro
phetic model. Employing a qualitative, analytical–comparative
methodology, the study examines a diverse corpus of Islamic,
Western, and secular digital media content, triangulated with
theoretical models from religious communication studies. The
findings reveal substantial discrepancies between Quranic nar
rative authenticity and prevailing digital portrayals, often driven
by algorithmic bias, Western media templates, and insufficient
religious media literacy among content producers. However,
the research also identifies promising opportunities for con
structive engagement through integrative media training, algo
rithmic accountability, and cross-sector collaboration between
scholars, policymakers, and content creators. The proposed
framework synthesizes Quranic hermeneutics with contempo
rary media ethics, offering actionable recommendations for en
hancing narrative fidelity, audience engagement, and interfaith
understanding in the digital age.