The Caliph, the Imam and the mates: Cyber Islam and the formation of second generation migrant's national identity in Australia

Ghada Wadeisa, PhD Candidate,

School of Sociology, ANU,

Larry Saha Room, Haydon Allen Building #2175

"Googling God" is the term used by a second generation participants to describe his online activity with Cyber Islam. Cyber Islam represent a new pathways of interactivity and interconnection among Muslims, and an innovative online universe. Scholars, students, activists, and Ordinary Muslims are developing new affinities that go far beyond traditional boundaries. It becomes a space where experts as well as ordinary people collaborated to develop a consensus on Islam. Not surprisingly, some Muslims now explain their religious affiliation by identifying with a specific website, rather than a mosque or religious sect. The importance of cyber Islam is that: first, it is shifting the religious authority from the traditional institutions to new online authorities. Second, it offers individual or minority views an opportunity to present themselves to a wide audience internationally. Third, it is used by Islamic activists to promotes and helps in the establishment of a unified Islamic front among Muslims masses living both in countries with Muslim majority population and in those where Muslims constitute a minority. fourth, it become a medium by which reformation, involving the appropriation and dissemination of information about the Islamic religion and the Islamic world could be achieved; and, finally, to become an open free source that provides Islam with its strength by liberating Muslim societies from what they call "official Islam". The purpose of this paper is: first, to outline how the perception of different Islamic schools of thought, (the moderate school or what is known as 'Wasatiyya'; and the traditional conservative school or the Salafi) on the questions of Islamic nationality, the Umma and the role of Muslim minorities in the West, are reflected in Cyber Islam. Second, outline how much the focus group of this paper, (25 male and female second generation Australian Muslims) is influenced by Cyber Islam on the issues of their understanding to Islam, their citizenship duties that include political participation, socio-economic integration and Military service. And finally, the role of cyber Islam on answering the challenges faced by the focus group seeking to reconcile or balance the practice of Islamic beliefs, and living within contemporary societies. This paper is going to analyze the contents of two websites that represent moderate school: IslamOnline.net and qaradawi.net; as well as the conservative Salafi websites such as Al-salaf-us-saalih.com. These moderate websites have been selected by the researcher because: first, they are the world's largest Muslim websites with millions of hits, which, according to Bunt (2003: 148), “invested heavily in the notion of the online fatwa as part of its site content, and claimed to receive a million hits a day in 2000”; and second, they are very popular with the focus group; 95%  of  the focus group considered them the most popular, honest and beneficial Islamic websites. They stated that they use them for educational purposes and consultation on issues relating to their life in non-Islamic society. And 97.8% of the group respected and trusted the moderate version of Islam of the jurists in these website especially Dr. Al-Qaradawi.

 

Date & time

Mon 03 Sep 2012, 1–2pm

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