There's major controversy lurking in Islam's corner of cyberspace, reports Mustafa El-Menshawy For a generation steeped in cyberspace, Muslim webmasters will exert more influence than even the most learned alim (religious scholar). But the Internet's emergence as a primary player in an increasingly IT-ready global Muslim community means that not only can the web provide an instant fatwa (religious edict) on a wide variety of issues, it can also be a powerful and potentially dangerous tool of mobilisation as well. IslamOnline.net's Heba Raouf says the medium is beset by paradox: while it can "provide connectedness" in a positive way, it also gives extremists a chance to rally "even more support than they did without access to such technology". Together with Diaa Rashwan of Al-Ahram's Political and Strategic Studies Centre and Hussein Amin of the American University in Cairo, Raouf was on the panel of BBC's Digital Islam programme, hosted two weeks ago in Cairo as part of the Who Runs Your World series, which looks at digital wielders of power. Both panelists and audience agreed that Islam on the web was just such a centre of online power. Via cyberspace, Muslims in countries as far apart as Morocco and China can easily link up; with the benefit of new technologies like live video streams, there seems to be no end to the influence this sort of connectivity can potentially wield. As a forum for "web mobilisation", the Internet played a key role in the campaign against banning hijab in French schools, especially among Muslim activists in Britain. The year before, it provided a forum for a range of nationalities and faiths to oppose the US invasion of Iraq. For Muslim minorities in non-Muslim societies, especially, the web is an indispensable source of information on the practices of faith, verdicts of law and other issues. The most popular sites include Raouf's Islamonline.net, as well as the eponymous portal of the young generation's da'ia (preacher) of choice, Amr Khaled, both of which offer moderate content sanctioned by canonical orthodoxy. One audience member on the programme, a resident of France, said he depended on the web for information and a sense of religious community. While access is one thing, valid authority is quite another, and not all of the Islamic content online enjoys the same stellar reputation. But why suspect the Internet any more than other media? For one, the lack of regulatory authority comparable to what is available for television, for example, and the ease with which a web site can be set up, makes for trickier terrain. Rahma, a Dutch convert who works as an editor for an Islamic portal, referred to a Netherlands-based survey indicating that many of the sites that come up on searches for Islam are less than orthodox. Based on his own specialist research, Al-Ahram's Rashwan explained that so called Islamists have been more advanced than other activists, thanks to an intense involvement in Internet technology. Both Al-Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents have posted threats on the Internet, while one of those responsible for a recent bombing in Cairo reportedly found the explosives know-how he required on the Internet. And the same is true of the infamous Madrid bombers: they were not trained in Afghanistan -- as would have been the case in the past -- but online. Rashwan said this was not the case with all-out Muslim radicals until 11 September; that web activity has grown in response to the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq. Still, the future would appear to present an ever more frightening prospect. According to independent statistics, no more than five per cent of Arabs everywhere are currently using the Internet. Thus, while such sites cannot have much impact at the moment, when online activity increases, a genuine problem -- vis-à-vis the difficulty involved in making clear which sites are promoting hateful religious interpretations versus more moderate content -- is in the offing. To prevent misinformation (and curb the spread of absolutist ideologies), Amin -- who believes the ability to judge web content is ultimately restricted to the intellectual elite -- suggested the implementation of regulations comparable to those that govern television broadcasts. The other two panelists, along with the vast majority of the audience, voiced concerns that such regulations amount to thought control. In any case, enforcing them might well prove impractical, given the nature of the medium. All, nonetheless, agreed on the necessity of rooting out violence on the Internet. "If we want to see the end of such web sites," Rashwan explained, "we should target the causes that give rise to them." Such causes include, first and foremost, post-11 September US policies. Raouf, for her part, called for a stronger Arab world focus on democratic dialogue and the right to freedom of expression. Repressive measures, she said, can only regenerate violence, by providing even more of a fertile breeding ground for extremists.
