Cyber Islamic Environments Research Articles

DYNAMICS AND TYPOLOGY OF QURANIC CONTENT IN TIKTOK

Tik Tok has been considered as an attention grabbing alternative social media platform for the millennial generation as a way to convey and receive religious messages, especially Quranic messages. The use of TikTok as a new medium has also given birth to the current trend of learning the Qur’an. This study attempts to explain the impact of Quranic content on Tiktok on Quran learning. In the academic realm, this research seeks to contribute to discussions on the study of the Qur’an in its relation to social media. Using Ahmad Rafiq’s reception theory of the Qur’an and Gary R. Bunt’s theory of cyber Islamic environments, this qualitative research concludes the following points; first, the Quranic-related contents on TikTok comprise of several typologies, such as; quotes, interpretations, completing Quranic verses, tajwid, tahsin, qira’ah or recitations, lectures, news, stories, daily practices, murattal, rasm or manuscripts, the virtues of Quranic verses, memorization, guessing surahs, tips, and duets. Second, at the beginning of 2020, during the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, there had been an increased use of TikTok among people from various circles, ranging from the general public, celebrities, businessmen, preachers and others. Some preachers had been using TikTok as one of the learning media for the millennial generation. Third, TikTok had enabled creators of Quranic-related content to convey Quranic messages through Quranic content videos to be responded by netizens in the comments column. In this context, they started to turn to TikTok for religious advice and to answer some of their religious questions.

Gary R. Bunt, Hashtag Islam: How Cyber-Islamic Environments Are Transforming Religious Authority

Reviewed by: Hashtag Islam: How Cyber-Islamic Environments Are Transforming Religious Authority by Gary R. Bunt Sahar Khamis Gary R. Bunt, Hashtag Islam: How Cyber-Islamic Environments Are Transforming Religious Authority (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018) The question of religious authority in Islam, commonly referred to as “who speaks for Islam,” has been receiving more attention and added visibility in recent years due to a variety of factors, including the fact that more diasporic Muslim communities are intermingling with the fabric of new societies and, thus, contributing to accelerating processes of cross-cultural inoculation and cross-intellectual fertilization. Additionally, there is the fast growing, and swiftly expanding, new realm of digitalization of religion in the age of cyberspace, which opens the door for new voices to be heard in the field of ijtihad (re-interpretation of Islamic religious scriptures). This means inviting a plethora of new views and readings of Islamic religious texts, some of which are coming from outside traditional religious establishments,1 which opens the floodgates for an amalgamation of both positive effects and negative consequences as indicated in some of the scholarly publications on this topic.2 [End Page 113] Gary R. Bunt is one of the pioneers in the field of digital Islam and has been writing extensively over the last two decades about how interactions in cyberspace have been reshaping and redefining modern Muslim societies.3 In his book, which consists of six chapters, Bunt takes us on an insightful exploration into this ever-changing realm of Islamic interactions in cyberspace with a special focus on how and why such interactions have been reshaping religious authority in the Muslim world. He unpacks the far-reaching implications and new dynamics of this phenomenon, arguing that “digital content has become a key part of expressions of contemporary Islam in many contexts, in terms of the ways in which faith, command, and control are manifest across complex systems of Muslim beliefs” (1). He pays special attention to the myriad ways cyber-Islamic environments (CIEs), a term which he coined, “has resulted in some cases in a reconfiguration of understandings of models of religious authority and the dissemination of Islamic knowledge” (4). Bunt delves deep into this evolving phenomenon, with all its hybridity, nuances, complexities, and even its paradoxes, contradictions, and contrasts, as it manifests itself across different spatial and temporal contexts. He attends particularly to the rich and vibrant period between 2009 and 2017, which witnessed a number of significant events, including the eruption of the Arab Spring movements in the Arab region in 2011; the escalation of tensions in several conflict zones, such as Palestine, Iraq, and Syria; the displacement of Syrian and Iraqi refugees; and the increased visibility and heightened impact of extremist and radicalized groups, such as Al Qaeda and ISIS, to mention only a few. Bunt skillfully explains how these geopolitical shifts are accompanied, and sometimes even fueled, by parallel transitions in the realm of religious authority in the Muslim world, thanks to the increased digitalization of Islam and the prevalence of CIEs. He argues that one of the ways this phenomenon manifests itself is through the crossovers between the realms of formal and informal—as well as traditional and modern—forms of religious authority, which, in turn, open the door for a plethora of multifaceted and multilayered tensions, struggles, and push-and-pull mechanisms. In tackling these crossovers, he steers away from painting one universal image with a broad brush. He differentiates across countries ranging from Pakistan and Iran to Syria and Indonesia, as well as across generations ranging from the older and more orthodox traditional scholars to the younger, more [End Page 114] liberal, and more technologically-savvy newcomers to the field of fatwa (Islamic religious advice) online. In avoiding the temptation to generalize using a “one size fits all” description of modern Muslim societies, both online and offline, he also explores the overlaps and divergences between Sunni and Shi’a Islam, in addition to the “crossovers between religious and political discourses” (74). He explains how these “religio-political discourses” are both a cause and a consequence of a cacophony of different voices and discourses in cyberspace. In discussing...

Mediated Tarekat Qadiriyah wa Naqshabandiyah in the Digital Era: An Ethnographic Overview

This article examines how Tarekat Qadiriyah wa Naqshabandiyah (TQN) utilizes online media to strengthen its existence. As an integral part of the Islamic revival in Indonesia, Sufi orders (tarekat) are facing remarkable challenges and opportunities in maintaining their existence in the digital era. Nevertheless, previous studies observed Sufi orders as a traditional community that would be exterminated by the pace of modernization and globalization. This article argues that Sufi orders may survive in the internet of things era, contrary to preceding discourses. Based on ethnography research, both online and offline, the authors found out that the vitality of the Sufi order can adapt, develop, and innovate using online media. TQN's use of online media through various platforms proves Sufi order’s adaptive efforts to the internet-based era. TQN’s online media provide informations on Islamic and Sufism teachings, news, schedule of activities, and fundraising. Even though TQN members’ being active in cyber-Islamic environments, they resist online asceticism thus leverage the vertical-personal obedience, conservative authorities, and sacred rituals. These practices done by TQN members illuminate its identity as an authentic online sufism. Premises shown in this paper may enrich the scope of study within the relationship of Sufi orders and Islamic-cyber environment, especially in Indonesian context.

Persistent Orientalism: How Does the West View Islam on the Internet? (Review of: Gary R. Bunt. 2018 Hashtag Islam. How Cyber-Islamic Environments Are Transforming Religious Authority. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. — 234 pp.)

Persistent Orientalism: How Does the West View Islam on the Internet? (Review of: Gary R. Bunt. 2018 Hashtag Islam. How Cyber-Islamic Environments Are Transforming Religious Authority. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. — 234 pp.)

Hashtag Islam: How Cyber-Islamic Environments Are Transforming Religious Authority, written by Gary R. Bunt

Hashtag Islam: How Cyber-Islamic Environments Are Transforming Religious Authority, written by Gary R. Bunt

Hashtag Islam: How Cyber-Islamic Environments Are Transforming Religious Authority, by GARY R. BUNT

Hashtag Islam: How Cyber-Islamic Environments Are Transforming Religious Authority, by GARY R. BUNT

Takhrij al-Hadith via Mobile Apps: Study of 9 Imam Encyclopedia, Kutub Tis‘ah and Mawsu‘ah al-Hadith al-Nabawi al-Syarif

ICT boom has given a new dimension to the study of hadith which is at the same time considered an effort to strengthen, uphold and preserve the hadith within cyber Islamic environments. Therefore, this study has identified three selected mobile apps i.e. 9 Imam Encyclopedia, Kutub Tis‘ah as well as Mawsu‘ah al-Hadith al-Nabawi al-Syarif. The study was intended to demonstrate the ease of takhrij al-Hadith (verification and authentication) in this era and to explore some mobile apps that can be used to facilitate learning process. The methodology used was the quantitative data collection of hadith in the apps. On a positive note, the study found few important takhrij features have been refined on these apps including (1) Masdar al-hadith (original source text), (2) Ranking of hadith, (3) Sanad (chain of hadith narrators), (4) Matn (text of hadith), (5) Position of hadith in other sources (specifying Shawahid or witnesses and Mutaba'at or follow-up), (6) Narrator’s biography (al-Jarh wa Ta’dil), (7) Categories of hadith based on the Sanad, (8) Categories of hadith based on the Matn and (9) Hukm al-hadith (juristic ruling of hadith). Significantly, 9 Imam Encyclopedia is concluded to be the best mobile apps that can be used by many hadith scholars and online users as it comes with nine features listed earlier.

Emerging Islamic-Confucian Axis in the Virtual Ummah: Connectivity and Constraint in the Contemporary China

The key concept of this article is that while the predominant focus of the rise of cyber Islamic environments (CIEs) has been on the Middle East and the West, there exists a neglected but emerging trend of the Chinese-speaking Islamic websites in the midst of growing autonomy of civil social movements as well as the state surveillance. Among the ten Muslim nationalities in China, I first surveys the general situations of the cyber environments in China, in which the Hui Islamic websites embedded, and then go on to explore the development and features of some representative Hui Islamic websites. This article illustrates the challenge for Chinese CIEs is to resolve the identity politics, on the one hand demonstrating the political loyalty to the sovereign power of People’s Republic of China (PRC) and identifying the global ummah in terms of transborder religious solidarity on the other hand.

Islam, China and the Internet: Negotiating Residual Cyberspace between Hegemonic Patriotism and Connectivity to the Ummah

While the predominant focus of the rise of cyber Islamic environments has been on the West and the Middle East, this article is an exploratory study of the emergence of the Chinese Islamic websites. With the rapid proliferation and usage of new informational and communicative technologies and the Chinese government's relentless policy in regulating the internet, this article put the peculiar situations of Chinese cyber Islamic environments in the political background of China's rise. On a patriotic note of Aiguo Aijiao (“love one's country, love one's religion”), Chinese digital Islam has transformed into the negotiating space between state's sovereign boundary in countering against separatist movements and the Sino-Muslims' imagined realm for connecting to the ummah, the solidarity with the global Muslim brotherhood. By considering a Chinese Islamic website in response to the Danish Cartoon Affair as an example, this article considers Sino-Muslims have been appropriating the residual cyberspace for re-imagining the global ummah through the loyalty to the political project of national integration. In the concluding remarks, the article suggests the importance of the rise of Chinese language as a global soft power, the status of Islamic authority as well as the sovereignty dilemma China's Muslims face in the future research of Sino-cyber Islamic environments.

IMuslims: rewiring the house of Islam

1. iMuslims and Cyber Islamic Environments 2. Accessing Cyber Islamic Environments 3. De-coding the Sacred: Islamic Source Code 4. The Islamic Blogosphere 5. The Cutting-edge: Militaristic Jihad in Cyberspace 6. Digital Jihadi Battlefields: Iraq and Palestine 7. The Transformation of Cyber Islamic Environments

Islam in the digital age: e-jihad, online fatwas and cyber Islamic environments

Glossary 1 Introduction 2 'The Digital Sword'? and Defining 'E-Jihad' 3 Hacktivism, Hacking and Cracking in the Name of Islam 4 Cyber Islamic Reactions to 9-11: Mujahideen in Cyberspace 5 Cyber Islamic Reactions to 9-11: The 'Inter-fada' and Global E-jihad 6 Cyber-Islamic reactions to 9-11: Jihad for Peace 7 Islamic Decision Making and Advice Online 8 Sunni Religious Authority on the Internet I: Muslim Majority Contexts 9 Sunni Religious Authority on the Internet II: Muslim Minority Contexts 10 The Online Mujtahid: Islamic Diversity And Authority Online 11 Islam in the Digital Age 12 Bibliography Index

Virtually Islamic: computer-mediated communication and cyber Islamic environments

This is the first broad-ranging academic survey to explore how Islam and the internet combine and interact. Information technology is now making a global impact on how Muslims approach and interpret Islam. Given its utilization as a primary source of information, the internet also influences how non-Muslims perceive Islam and matters relating to Muslims. Among the issues addressed are: how multimedia applications are being integrated into websites, enabling surfers to listen to and see 'sermons' delivered thousands of miles away and to partake of new opportunities for religious experience; how Muslim organizations are networking globally through the electronic medium, and how that impacts upon understanding of Islam and Muslim identities; how can Muslims and non-Muslims approach the Qu'ran in its digital form; how the internet is used to present diverse dialogues relating to Islam, often reaching wide audiences where other forms of communication are heavily censored.

Virtually Islamic: Computer-mediated Communication and Cyber Islamic Environments. By Gary R. Bunt. Pp. 144 + 30 pages of notes. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000.

<b>Virtually Islamic: Computer-mediated Communication and Cyber Islamic Environments.</b> By Gary R. Bunt. Pp. 144 + 30 pages of notes. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000.

Islam@britain.net: ‘British Muslim’ identities in Cyberspace

The Internet represents a significant communication tool for the expression of Islamic concepts and notions of identity, on web pages ranging from the constructs of organizations through to the pronouncements of individuals. Cyber Islamic Environments provide indicators of what it means to be a ‘Muslim’ in Britain that augment other sources of knowledge. This paper presents an overview of prominent sites, and introduces issues connected with studying Islam and Muslims through this electronic medium.