Thinking about Islam, Politics and Muslim Identity in a Digital Age

Abstract

Abstract:Since digitality emerges from a Western, Eurocentric weltanschauung, it follows that the digital sphere tacitly rejects Islam and Muslims, where Islam and Muslims are the archetypal Other of the West. Digitality is a continuation of Orientalism, or a Eurocentric power/knowledge project of (continued) global domination. Given Eurocentrism’s inherent racism, given digitality’s omnipresence, and given that Islamophobia is the paradigmatic example of racism, it is inevitable that there will be more and more anti-Islamic/anti-Muslim sentiments throughout the world. This essay is an examination of the ways in which politics in the digital age are reconfigured to fit specific parameters preordained by the digital sphere, and, concurrently, ideas around Islam and Muslimness—whether according to the wider social (media) landscape or by Muslim actors themselves—are also significantly re-shaped by digitality. Digital Islam is disrupting traditional ulematic authority in ways never seen before. This is because authority/knowledge within the interactive spaces of Web 2.0 is dissected, reconfigured and reassembled as another kind of knowledge. Digitality is challenging various branches of Islam (whether Shia, Sunni, Wahhabi, or what have you), when it comes to their authority, not least because traditional Islamic authorities have to now—consciously and unconsciously—comport themselves and their message to the logic of digitality.