Religion in the Age of Digitalization

From New Media to Spiritual Machines

Giulia Isetti, Elisa Innerhofer, Harald Pechlaner, Michael de Rachewiltz, Giulia Isetti, Elisa Innerhofer, Harald Pechlaner, Michael de Rachewiltz

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000205794
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Theology & Religion
• Categoria: Comparative Religion

This book examines the current use of digital media in religious engagement and how new media can influence and alter faith and spirituality. As technologies are introduced and improved, they continue to raise pressing questions about the impact, both positive and negative, that they have on the lives of those that use them. The book also deals with some of the more futuristic and speculative topics related to transhumanism and digitalization.

Including an international group of contributors from a variety of disciplines, chapters address the intersection of religion and digital media from multiple perspectives. Divided into two sections, the chapters included in the first section of the book present case studies from five major religions: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism and their engagement with digitalization. The second section of the volume explores the moral, ideological but also ontological implications of our increasingly digital lives.

This book provides a uniquely comprehensive overview of the development of religion and spirituality in the digital age. As such, it will be of keen interest to scholars of Digital Religion, Religion and Media, Religion and Sociology, as well as Religious Studies and New Media more generally, but also for every student interested in the future of religion and spirituality in a completely digitalized world.

Part I
Religious practices in the age of digitalization

1
Islam and new media

Islam has entered the chat

Ruqayya Yasmine Khan with Ashley Kyong Aytes ¹

Powerful convergences exist between timelines of the full-blown rise of new, digital media (i.e., Facebook, YouTube, Twitter) and the aftermath of the tragedy of the 9/11 bombings. Partly due to these convergences, upcoming, new Muslim digital “natives” (i.e., millennial Muslims) play a crucial role in creating, innovating and/or promoting strong, optimal interlinkages between new media and Islam, especially as regards, for instance, Islamic marriage practices and Islamic fashion styles.

This chapter addresses the intersections between new media and Islam and it does so through brief comments and analyses of the following broad topics: 1) the impact of new media upon Islamic ritual practices, especially those relating to marriage (nikah and mahr); and 2) the challenges confronted by the new media corporate giant Apple and its construction of emojis, especially in relation to the hijab and Muslim identity politics.

The phrase “new media” is a catch-all term referring to digitally-based media. About 40 years ago, during the 1980s, this term first entered into the general discourse in parallel with the increasing ubiquity of computers and computerization, as well as with the rise and distribution of media reliant upon such networks. The two phrases, new media and digital media, appear to be largely interchangeable although digital media concern the “digitalization” of new media platforms and thus may be construed as a subset of new media. A broader definition of the term “new media” is that it consists of a variety of continually evolving “phenomena and practices”, (Chandler & Munday, 2016) including but not limited to new kinds of communication technologies (interpersonal and mass), entertainment, consumption, as well as novel representations of the self, community and world. New media includes both social media platforms (e.g., Facebook and Twitter and You-Tube) and mobile technologies (e.g., smart phones, tablets and other mobile devices); as such, it is efficient to consider the latest mobile communication technologies as new media par excellence, especially in relation to social media capabilities.

New media have contributed enormously to “digitalizing” nearly all forms of expression including those related to religious and spiritual communities. Furthermore, digital media have transformed how producers and users obtain, create, manipulate and exchange information, images, services and goods – with almost revolutionary consequences for the formation and development of religious and spiritual communities.

Both religion² and spirituality³ humanize and counteract some harmful trends of new media and its digitalization. In other words, without an emphasis upon religious/spiritual practices and “things of and from the spirit” (however variously and richly all these are defined), without a societal and individual consideration and integration of this – the phenomenon and practices associated with new media are diminished in terms of their humanity.

Thus, regrettably, a significant influence of new media within society concerns the possible erosion in overall human relations and interactions. Tristan Harris, the co-founder of Center for Humane Technology, has called this negative impact of new media “human downgrading” which he attributes to what he terms “extractive attention economy” (Center for Humane Technology). This begs the question, are people being distracted to death? Are human relations indeed being eroded? In a May 2019, Los Angeles Times article, Harris sounds the alarm regarding this “human downgrading” which has been spurred, in part, by the linkages between mobile technologies and social media (Center for Humane Technology). Other concerns raised by the ubiquity of the Internet and new media include invasions of privacy, the spread of misinformation and disinformation on social media platforms and the sharp rise in social, political and religious forms of polarization and polemics.

In terms of study and examination, the Internet and new media, including social media, pose challenges. Such obstacles and criticisms of undertaking Internet and digital and new media research involve considering the effects of the Internet as a non-place, or a space without place, on the events that unfold within the digital world and the best analytics for researchers who wish to study new media and religion. Moreover, the Internet brings up questions about users’ anonymity and consent to digital interaction and observation. Furthermore, the tendency for the Internet to be used to polemicize or propagandize must be taken into account though it should not be used to discount other mechanisms by which phenomena arise. Yet another challenge that may arise, as is the case in this present project, is how to generalize findings given the impossibility of canvassing the entire digital world. While an answer is not readily available, the practices here may provide a point of reference. Among the methods and methodologies that the researcher and investigator may undertake are observational research and qualitative analysis of text/rhetoric and images. Both the sets of traits and implications of digitally-mediated communication and entertainment technologies set forth investigative and ethical challenges and hurdles.

New media and Islam

In my 2015 edited volume, Muhammad in the Digital Age, I point out the coincidence of timing between the aftermath of the tragic, terrorist acts of 9/11 with the advent of the age of digital, new media (Khan, 2015). The digital age (whose birth is often dated back to 2002) is marked by an explosion of new media, including but not limited to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other platforms. This overlap between the aftermath or fallout of 9/11 and the popularization of the digital age has played a role in exacerbating what may be termed the “Othering” of Islam, the polarization of the discourses of Islamophobia vs. Islamophilia and the polemics concerning the perceived binary of Islam vs. the West or the West vs. Islam. As I state in this edited volume: Islamophobes, or Islam-bashers, uncritically demonize or vilify Islam, Muslims and/or Muhammad, while Islamophiles or Islam-lovers, uncritically idealize the religion and present it and its messenger as a panacea to all problems. Importantly, these two competing polemical constituencies feed off one another and grow in strength and numbers as mediatized images and ideological wars over Islam, Muslims and Muhammad play out in the world of new and digital media.

Islam’s two main sects or denominations, namely Sunnis and Shias, engage and/or interact with digital, new media in different ways. Because Sunni Islam and Shia Islam each have their own mode of conceptualizing and construing structures of religious authority and religious interpretation, it may be inferred that such differences also play out in the ways each engages with new media. Muqtedar Khan, an American Muslim intellectual, noted how the Internet has made issuing Islamic legal rulings into something too easy and quick, that is, nearly anyone can consider themselves an expert in Islamic law and jurisprudence (i.e., a mufti). This ability of a self-ascribed muftis to issue or put out fatwas (i.e., fatwa and mufti have the same Arabic consonantal root) is more germane or relevant to Sunni than Shia communities due to the far less centralized, far less hierarchical religious structure (as compared to Shia Islam) in Sunni Islam. In other words, Shia Islam, through a more robust religious authority structure, exercises more control over both the issuance of fatwas and producing commentaries and practising exegeses.

Millennial Muslim digital natives: a new generation’s impact on Islamic practices

Defying regional, national and international boundaries, numerous virtual Muslim communities and new Muslim identities have been formed and forged through the use of the Internet and new media. In such virtual communities (formed on Facebook, connected on Twitter and/or conversing on blogs, Instagram, etc.), much activity is generated by millennial Muslim “natives” to the Internet, typically in their twenties or early thirties. Given their generational demographics, as would be expected, main topics of interest appear to be further educating themselves about Islam (e.g., Muslim schooling), mastering Islamic practices (e.g., reading and understanding the Arabic Qur’an, i.e., the Islamic scripture) and learning about Islamic/Muslim dress and fashion and, perhaps most importantly, becoming more informed about Islamic practices regarding marriage and dating, including its online forms.

Some Google search results with certain combination words related to Islam are given in the following table:⁴

	Search words	Number of hits
1	Online Islam	300,000,000
2	Online Qur’an	118,000,000
3	Online Muslim school	194,000,000
4	Online Muhammad	231,000,000
5	Online Sufi	29,800,000
6	Online Muslim marriage	65,600,000
?	Online nikah	39,000,000
8	Online hijab	86,300,000
9	Online Muslim dating	50,300,000
10	Online salat	72,300,000

New media and Islamic ritual practices

This section zeroes in on uses and features of new media, including digital media, that concern Islamic ritual practices. In order to better assess how new media impacts and/or engages with Islamic practice(s), it should be pointed out that the term “practice” here includes, but is not limited to, Islamic rituals, Islamic rites of passage and/or Islamic daily, lived religious practices (e.g., wearing Muslim dress, Islamic dietary observances).

It is safe to say that new media shapes mainstream Islamic practices ranging from daily prayer, to attending mosque on Fridays (the Islamic equivalent of the “sabbath” day), to performing recitations of the Qur’an. For example, the digital delivery of the Islamic khutba (i.e., the Friday sermon), makes it less necessary to attend in person the Friday congregational prayer service. The attractiveness of being able to listen to the Islamic weekly sermon in the comfort of one’s own home or space (especially in areas where there may be challenges even getting to the mosque, or women, for whom traditional roles and expectations may pose challenges in attending the service) is compelling. Is it possible that the relationship between the Muslim believer and the physical place of worship is increasingly becoming a “virtual” relationship? Perhaps. By way of shedding more light on this, the main and historically long-standing Islamic mosque in Los Angeles is the Islamic Center of Southern California, that is, the ICSC. The ICSC provides the following virtual features on its website: live-streaming of sermons and lectures (over a decade of archives, available through its website but also through Facebook and YouTube). It also provides Internet options regarding secure, quick online solicitations of donations for a range of services such as zakat (the requisite annual Islamic tithing or alms-giving), Ramadan-related iftars or meals and Islamic educational services. New and other media⁵ provide many ways of staying in touch with a local or regional place of Islamic worship and community and thus, such media reduce or mitigate the “need” for physically going to and being present in a mosque. This may affirm the point that the millennial Muslim’s relationship with the mosque increasingly is being rendered a “virtual” relationship.

Islamic marriage and new media: nikah and mahr in new media

New media both influences and is influenced by Islam’s marriage rituals. Though Islam originated in the Arabic peninsula in the seventh century, most of the world’s Muslims are not Arab, and this is reflected in diaspora; in other words, there exists a geographically widespread cultural and religious Muslim diaspora all over the world not limited to the Arabic peninsula. As an aside, within the Arab Muslim world, social media like Facebook and Twitter are among the most visited/used (Ibahrine, 2011; Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Government, 2017). However, because Facebook makes it necessary to have familiarity with the user at the other end in order to view and engage with their profiles, Twitter becomes the preferred mode by which to investigate how new media both influences and is influenced by Islam’s marital rituals, namely those of nikah and mahr. Because Twitter, despite its character limit, allows users to create links and post photos and videos, the platform becomes a viable source of information. Instagram, too, is an oft-used, ubiquitous platform with which strangers can easily engage and public posts are accessible to a large audience. Employing these two platforms, one can begin to identify trends and formulate hypotheses concerning Islam and new media as they relate to Islamic marriage.

The Muslim diaspora, especially in the United States and Southeast Asia, has created new media uses and space that are coloured by multicultural, diverse perspectives on Islam and its rituals. This is particularly apparent in the context of nikah and mahr....

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• Part I Religious practices in the age of digitalization
• Part II Religious and spiritual hopes in the digital turn
• Outlook: digital religion and (dis-)embodiment
• Index