Thomas Hoffmann

Göran Larsson

This volume deals with the so-called new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and their interrelationship with Muslims and the interpretation of Islam. This volume taps into what has been labelled Media Studies 2.0, which has been characterized by an intensified focus on everyday meanings and ‘lay’ users – in contrast to earlier emphases on experts or self-acclaimed experts. This lay adoption of ICT and the subsequent digital ‘literacy’ is not least noticeable among Muslim communities. According to some global estimates, one in ten internet users is a Muslim. This volume offers an ethnography of ICT in Muslim communities. The contributors to this volume also demonstrate a new kind of moderation with regard to more sweeping and avant-gardistic claims, which have characterized the study of ICT previously. This moderation has been combined with a keen attention to the empirical material but also deliberations on new quantitative and qualitative approaches to ICT, Muslims and Islam, for instance the digital challenges and changes wrought on the Qur’an, Islam’s sacred scripture. As such this volume will also be relevant for people interested in the study of ICT and the blooming field of digital humanities. Scholars of Islam and the Islamic world have always be engaged and entangled in their object of study. The developments within ICT have also affected how scholars take part in and influence public Islamic and academic discussions. This complicated issue provides basis for a number of meta-reflexive studies in this volume. It will be essential for students and scholars within Islamic studies but will also be of interest for anthropologists, sociologists and others with a humanistic interest in ICT, religion and Islam.

Notes from an Emerging and Infinite Field

Muslims and the New Information and Communication Technologies

Although Muslims are now an important presence in Europe, little is known about the Muslim communities that exist in the Nordic and Baltic regions of Europe. This is the first comprehensive and detailed study of the history, context and development of Islamic institutions and Muslim groups in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland, and includes chapters on Islam in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Iceland and the Faroe Islands. With contributions by academics with long experience of the Muslim communities in question based on original research, this volume presents new and important perspectives within a comparative and regional framework. Islam in Nordic and Baltic Countries will be an important reference work for students of European history and Islamology, and will be valuable to all researchers and scholars interested in the development of Islam and Muslim communities at the strategic heart of Northern Europe.

Islam in the Nordic and Baltic Countries

Scholars from an extensive range of academic disciplines have focused on Islam in cyberspace and the media, but there are few historical studies that have outlined how Muslim 'ulama' have discussed and debated the introduction and impact of these new media. Muslims and the New Media explores how the introduction of the latest information and communication technologies are mirroring changes and developments within society, as well as the Middle East's relationship to the West. Examining how reformist and conservative Muslim 'ulama' have discussed the printing press, photography, the broadcasting media (radio and television), the cinema, the telephone and the Internet, case studies provide a contextual background to the historical, social and cultural situations that have influenced theological discussions; focusing on how the 'ulama' have debated the 'usefulness' or 'dangers' of the information and communication media. By including both historical and contemporary examples, this book exposes historical trajectories as well as different (and often contested) positions in the Islamic debate about the new media.

Göran Larsson

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