Discussion forums were the first electronic Muslim spaces of communication. Nowadays, religious texts, counselling, interpretation and news dominate the Islamic presence on the internet, while extremist websites subsist in different parts of the Internet. Islamic communication, in any case, is diverse and is largely mainstream, going so far as to modern, online matchmaking for marriage. On a similarly modern note, the online performance of the major Muslim pilgrimage (hajj) has been observable. A ‘virtual ummah’ is being advocated by many, but differences between elite and folk, strict and liberal Islam cannot be denied, making it impossible to foresee under what circumstances a cohesive Islamic community can come about.
Read the full text by Thorsten Koch, MA, PgDip here:
