Islam dot com: Contemporary Islamic Discourses in Cyberspace By Mohammed el-Nawawy and Sahar Khamis Published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2009  Reviewed by Adel Iskandar Prof. Mohammed el-Nawawy Prof. Sahar Khamis

  

One of the most intriguing questions now being addressed in media studies pertains to the relationship between technology and content and how the two work either in tandem or opposition to represent human experience and reconfigure institutions and identities. This has become especially pertinent as recent political circumstances worldwide have pitted seemingly oppositional groups along religious and ideological lines in a competition for resources, prominence and supremacy. In the post 9/11 era, all eyes have been redirected towards the viability of the argument furthered by the late Samuel Huntington on the "Clash of Civilizations." This has meant that enormous funds are being allocated to monitoring, researching documenting and making judgments about the way in which the internet is used by various extremist groups of many faiths but predominantly the Islamic faith. A generation of researchers have been directed to counter-terrorism agencies where so-called jihadist websites are followed and assessed for leaning efficacy and reach, very much like monitoring any kind of munitions. are represented by members of various communities in the virtual spaces of the internet.

While not evident from the outset, it appears in the fine-print of the book that the two notable Arab media scholars and co-authors of the new book Islam dot com, Prof. Mohammed el-Nawawy (Queens University) and Prof. Sahar Khamis (University of Maryland) hope to avoid falling into the same discursive traps and debates about the influence of the virtual Islamic community within extremist, radical or fundamentalist circles. To avoid giving more credence to the terrorism studies prism which sees Islamic virtual spaces as one of public threat, radicalism and propaganda, they chose instead to analyse the most popular Islamic web portals. Professor Peter Mandaville at George Mason University, the author of several prominent and seminal works on cyber-Islam, described the book as one that provides "unprecedented conceptual and empirical richness" through the authors' ability to "transcending a narrow focus on the Internet as a space of radical foment."

I had the pleasure of being involved in the early stages of research design of this title. My friend and colleague Prof. el-Nawawy had consulted with me regarding the best methodology to approach in the study of online discussion forums. This was a perplexing question given the erratic, disjoint, and anonymous nature of the datasets on hand, in this case records of discussion forums and interactions between the administrators of the sites and their users There were a multitude of challenges to addressing the contradictions in such an area of communication research. The extent of liberty afforded to the participants in these three websites depends greatly on the website's policies and administrative controls and regulations. With each site drafting a "code of ethics" on their discussion forum, the expressions can be monitored, censored, or deleted entirely. Nevertheless, through discourse analysis the authors sought to determine how Habermas' concepts of "communicative action" and "public sphere" apply to the spaces created by these forums. What is the degree of freedom experienced by participants in these forums and how do their enact their identities, views, convictions etc.

el-Nawawy and Khamis venture into a new terrain of in the study of online communities by looking specifically at the discussion forums as sites of contestation and and deliberation on and about religious authority. Their choices of the three most popular websites was determined based on the total hits ranking in relation to other internet portals. Incidentally, the three most visited sites happen to fall outside the ideologically radical but instead tend to be the kind of sites which offer consultative content for adherents seeking advice, guidance, community building etc. The three websites are the popular Amr Khaled site (amrkhaled.net), islamonline.net, and islamway.net. Each of these was described with keen attention to detail to ensure a rich comprehension of the similarities and differences between them both in terms of aesthetic and content. With varying users and contributors, contrasting purposes and missions and different appeal, the authors applied textual discourse analysis to identify the propositional ideas that can be gleaned from each website and how these either fit or negate specific themes.

Primarily interested in the concept of a virtual umma, the authors engage the literature with a significantly narrow definition of the Habermasian public sphere. They set out to locate this idea of the public sphere within the virtual umma using empirical date and a meticulous attention to detail.  In keeping with the modernist tilt in the book, they also look into Habermas' idea of 'communicative action' to elaborate on whether it might be applicable to the virtual Islamic community. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book is the ability to create a convergence of schools of thought, from modernism and postmodernism. Few studies of media have been able to triangulate between a modernist body of theory and a post-structuralist methodology like discourse analysis'? This methodology, expounded on at the Glasgow school is perhaps one of the most alienating and rarely used in quantitative research in the United States. This is partly due to the excessively numerical nature of American textual analysis which privileges content analysis over any investigation of discourse. This is in large part a result of the minimal impact postmodern media research has had on the American academic scene. 

el-Nawawy and Khamis are at their best when they attempt to situate the locus of power and authority in the relationship between clerical religious figures and those of the majority of interactants and participants of the network. Refuted the existence of a unitary coherent public sphere but rather documented multiple, if not contradictory public spheres. Dismissed Habermas’s public sphere and communicative action on the grounds of its dismissal or neglect of diversity. Upon explaining their findings, the authors argue that while there remains a currency and vitality to Habermasian notions, their inability to interpret or explain the simultaneously consensual unanimity and variation in the virtual umma may be a justifiable critique of these notions which do not posses predictive power. The book also goes farther than most other studies of the kind to discussed agreement, concensus-building and the desire to belong as these are expressed in online forums. This was evident in the way they ascribed loyalty to symbols and principles. By reproducing conformity, their membership in the group became defensible and beyond question. In potentially disconcerting scenarios especially ones of great disagreement,  the participants or respondents exercised ijtihad.

The third website analyzed in el-Nawawy and Khamis' book is Islamway.net

The book sets out to ask some rather pressing and vital questions about the nature of Islamic community, the virtual realm and the impact of technology on the relationship between authority and individual interlocutors. At first glance it appears the questions posed by the authors in their introduction are especially hefty, and the investigation overly ambitious. Nevertheless, el-Nawawy and Khamis are better served describing their research as an evaluation which addresses some issues that draws scholars closer to understanding how the practices of community-building and maintenance are undertaken and upheld, how Muslims use the internet, and the manner in which a virtual umma is articulated and practiced. Even from an empirical standpoint, the analysis of three websites’ discussion forums, while exceptionally informative and instructive, is too limited a scope and too narrow a data set to substantiate any grand hypotheses about the so-called virtual umma.

Despite this, this book is an indispensible resource for anyone with a serious and deciphering interest in the role of the internet in shaping collectives generally and Islamic virtual communities formally. While there may be some theoretical and methodological issues deserving of redress in the next edition of the book, the authors are to be commended for venturing where few dare, into the most entangled virtual territories of cybercommunication--discussion forums. This is the kind of volume that will continue to be relevant for its trailblazing investigation of a neglected area. So far the book, still in a heftily-priced hardcover version, has received positive endorsements from many of the notable scholars both of Islamic cyberspace and Arab media, which are the two currents that permeate the arguments in the volume. Prof. Douglas A Boyd, one of the foremost names in the study of media in the Arab world and Middle East and the Chief of Staff of the President at the University of Kentucky, described the book as an "examination of what is being discussed in cyberspace among those following Islam reveals a fascinating view of how new media are being used in the Arab/Islamic world.”

By identifying the divergent identities in cyberspace, online resistance against hegemony, imperialism, patriarchy remain prominent throughout among the dissidence expressed by participants on the discussion forums. Problematizing the concept of the umma and negating the contradiction between this collective identity and configuration of the state and the democratic imperative.