Gary R.

Bunt, Islam in the Digital Age: E‐Jihad, Online Fatwas, and Cyber Islamic
Environments
Islam in the Digital Age: E‐Jihad, Online Fatwas, and Cyber Islamic Environments by Gary
R. Bunt
Review by: Gregory Starrett
History of Religions, Vol. 46, No. 3 (February 2007), pp. 268-271
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/513258 .
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268 Book Reviews

the cultural board—to the various ways in which viewers see and interact with
images, the shifting contexts, purposes, and motivations that are operative at ground
level.
This is a welcome methodological move, one, certainly, in line with Bakhtin
(whom Geertz invokes), or Pierre Bourdieu (whom she does not), and one that has
not been the norm in art historical circles. Geertz applies it to good result in the
last three chapters of the book, which explore the changing cultural (and political)
contexts in which the temples are situated and the complex effects these changes
have had on the carvings and sculptures, the artisans themselves, and those who
participate in the temples. One of the real virtues of Geertz’s position in these
chapters is that she refuses to accept any single or easy understanding of the actual
effect of the various influences on the temples’ construction or reception; she calls
these influences “definite but not conspicuous” (174). Some may find Geertz too
tentative here, evasive, or simply too woolly. However, it is precisely because of
her appreciation of the complexity of issues of influence and intentionality—
involving, as they do, the specific Balinese context, a tangle of colonialization,
political upheaval, the rapid growth of schools and mass media, and a remarkable
influx of tourism—that she takes this tack, one which attends to both centripetal
and centrifugal forces, and which recognizes the danger of overemphasizing any
single factor in the mix. As such, The Life of a Balinese Temple presents an exem-
plary model of a kind of hybrid methodology, drawing as it does on anthropology,
art history, and religious studies. This is not an easy read, but it is certainly a
fruitful one.

Jacob N. Kinnard
Iliff School of Theology

Islam in the Digital Age: E-Jihad, Online Fatwas, and Cyber Islamic Environ-
ments. By Gary R. Bunt. London: Pluto Press, 2003. Pp. viii+237. $24.95
(paper).

Our connection to our Creator is direct—no passwords, no firewalls—faster

than high speed and cable and all the other methods one usually uses to “log on”
(Islam On-line, February 22, 2001)
For many of us, the Internet has proved a useful tool both for research and
for teaching. When putting together a lecture on Islamic law recently, I visited a
number of online fatwa services to collect opinions on image making and pho-
tography, in order to illustrate the flexibility of legal decision making. I found
five distinctly different sorts of responses to petitions on the topic, ranging from
blanket condemnation of all imagery to cautious acceptance of photography for
official documentation (passports, licenses, and criminal mug shots) to a general
approval of photography as memorialization (family albums), as long as there was
no taint of idolatry. The reasoning processes behind the opinions differed widely,
incorporating in some cases the citation of a single hadith, or saying of the Prophet
Muhammad, while in other cases the author presented a nuanced review of the

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History of Religions 269

range of existing opinion, with notes on the differences between photography and
the plastic arts, their multiple uses, and an acknowledgment that some scholars who
had previously decried photographic representation now allow their own photo-
graphs to be run in the newspaper.
The easy availability of a broad range of Islamic opinion and rhetoric is an
important feature of the Web, but this ease is a feature that not only fails to dis-
tinguish Islam from other content domains (sports, politics, movie chat rooms,
fetish pornography, and garden furniture sales) but also throws students of Islam,
scholars and seekers alike, into a frail open boat on a turbulent sea. While I use
the Web myself to gather information about religion, I do not allow my students
to write papers on religious Web sites, because we lack, as yet, a set of intellectual
tools with which we can contextualize and analyze Web sites in the same way
that we are used to doing with other systems of texts, rituals, or icons. Perhaps
because we know that Web traffic should in theory be quantifiable, we ask questions
about religious Web sites that we might not ask about other intellectual objects:
How many hits do they receive? What sites have directed the reader here? Where
do they go when they are done? Are they dedicated to believers, hapless wanderers,
or spies and apologists trolling the sites of their rivals and enemies for incrimi-
nating confessions? We ask but are severely restricted in our ability to answer such
questions.
Despite the relatively primitive methodologies and interpretive strategies we
have developed for understanding religion on the Web, such study does raise
important questions about authority, diversity, and intellectual influence as well as
ones regarding the relations among technologies, social groups, and other elements
of culture. Gary Bunt, in his second book-length foray into understanding Islam on
the Web (the first was his Virtually Islamic: Computer-Mediated Communication
and Cyber Islamic Environments [Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000]), writes
that “if a holistic contemporary understanding of Islam is sought, then part of that
interpretive process has to include . . . a discussion about the internet” (4). The two
elements of Muslim Internet use he explores in Islam in the Digital Age are Islamic
activism and decision making. Islamic activism comes in many forms, from daºwa,
religious outreach and education, and political propaganda to the hacking and
cracking (infiltration and sabotage, respectively) of “enemy” computer systems,
which can result in “e-mail overload, system failure, the defacement of web
content, database acquisition and dysfunctional and crashed sites” (47). This sort
of “e-Jihad” is practiced by any number of groups both Muslim and non-Muslim
in a network of mutual defamation and disruption centered on central contemporary
conflicts like those in Israel-Palestine, Chechnya, and Kashmir. Hacking clubs
like the World’s Fantabulous Defacers place photographs of injured Palestinian
children and slogans like “Long Live Hizballah!” on Ariel Sharon’s election Web
site, Israeli hackers link the Hamas Website to hardcore pornography, and Brazilian
hackers gleefully attack both sides simultaneously. The childishness of such deface-
ments and disruptions are accompanied by darker possibilities that have caused
more concern, such as the capture of databases with credit card information, as in
a 1999 Pakistani attack on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Web site,
or fears on the part of government agencies that the rhetoric of “cyberterrorism” is
270 Book Reviews

to be taken quite seriously: “This is the era of cyberwarfare,” a statement posted by

hackers on a United States Defense Department Web site read, “where once again
the Muslims have prevailed. We will not rest till every node, every line, every bit
of information contained in our suppressors has not been wiped out [sic], returning
them to the dark ages” (52–53).
Other uses of the Internet include the dissemination of various sorts of religious
and political propaganda, although, as with most Web content, the result all too
often oscillates between tedium and bombast. In describing the contents of Islamic
activist sites, Bunt highlights the truly international nature of the Web, in which
militant jihadi rhetoric originating in Lahore or London is posted through servers
in Montana or Houston, or a South African imam who studied in India posts his
opinions on herbal medicine, organ transplantation, and hair loss on a Web site
hosted in Silicon Valley. Such Internet use is “a means of developing cohesion
between and within communities in majority and minority contexts, and . . . dia-
logues and notions of authority are transcending traditional boundaries through
the electronic media” (167).
Because the medium creates a community that is both everywhere and nowhere
in particular, and because of the easy anonymity it provides, many sorts of inter-
actions can be more free than they might be in face-to-face contexts. But this
creates a number of interpretive difficulties, as members of chat rooms have long
recognized. How do we know with whom we are speaking? How can we evaluate
the authority or legitimacy of statements? Here the ambiguities of Web religion
emerge particularly sharply. When one posts transcripts of speeches by al-Qaeda’s
Ayman al-Zawahiri or audio clips of Osama bin Laden praising the September 11
attacks, how do we understand the intention of the posters and the effects on the
audience? Is this news or exhortation? Is it meant to attract, to convince, to in-
form, or to repel? In this medium tiny groups or even individuals can exert a
hugely disproportionate effect. Muslim Internet users, like all of us, vary widely
in their political and religious perspectives, and tracing the manifold relation-
ships between individuals and groups on the Web is of interest both to scholars
and security personnel, which is one of the reasons why so few militant Web sites
have been shut down by authorities in any country, who may prefer that they remain
open and subject to covert monitoring (96). In typical understated fashion, Bunt
concludes merely that “the impact of such rhetoric on the Internet is difficult to
determine” (75).
The final section of the book describes the increasing availability of Web sites
devoted to Islamic advice, largely in the form of electronic versions of fatwas (tra-
ditionally, carefully considered legal opinions offered by competent specialists in
Islamic law, although increasingly a form of rhetoric or even a new genre of preach-
ing on the part of self-styled experts). Newer forms of advice giving include FAQs
(lists of frequently-asked questions) regarding ritual life, marriage, or the legitimacy
of Internet use itself, as well as Islamic “cyber-counseling” for the distraught, the
lonely, or the abused (147). These, like the previously described propaganda sites,
range in style from the pedantic to the practical, from Puritan to New Age. For
some, the Internet becomes a place to denounce most elements of Western cul-
ture. For others, the status of Muslims in minority contexts becomes an opportunity

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History of Religions 271

to think seriously about the contradictions within some traditions of Islamic prac-
tice itself. In answer to a questioner who says that the executive committee of his
mosque has recently decided to stop women from attending, Muzammil Siddiqi of
the Pakistan Link Web site replies, “In America especially women go everywhere.
They are in the markets, in malls, in restaurants, in offices. It is ironic that some
men allow them to go to all the places of temptation but they want to stop them
from coming to the places where they can pray to their Lord and learn about their
faith” (175).
Because of the Web’s churning content, Bunt’s approach is largely, and by
necessity, historical. Chapters consist of descriptions of sites, statements, and
events, along with frustrated reminders about the difficulty of quantification, the
lack of solid current research, and the many unanswered questions remaining.
Despite the archiving of some Web content and the proliferation of mirror sites,
we face problems similar to those encountered by scholars of ancient manuscripts,
in which the works of an author, now permanently lost, are known only through
the quotations, summaries, and distortions of contemporary disciples or critics.
Perhaps Web scholars and medievalists share interpretive challenges, the latter
because of the paucity of their sources, the former because of their overwhelming
volume.

Gregory Starrett
University of North Carolina at Charlotte

An Introduction to Roman Religion. By John Scheid. Bloomington: Indiana

University Press; Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003. Pp. 232. $22.95
(paper).

This introduction by one of the leading figures in the scholarship on ancient

religions is a fine translation of a French book that was published in 1998 for the
first time. It is an introduction in the best sense of the word, aimed at those who
wish to get a clear outline of a subject and at the same time enough detail to flesh
it out, to fill accounts of ancient as modern times with life. Thus, the book might
assist undergraduates studying ancient history or classics as well as those starting
from the perspective of religious studies. The dense structure (such as in the index)
offers a number of different starting points without annoying the reader interested
in continuous, uninterrupted reading. A number of longer quotations from ancient
sources (always in translation) give an impression of the language of the religion
described and the implicit problems of historical reconstruction.
The book is organized in five parts. Part 1, “Questions of Methodology,” criti-
cizes the view of the history of Roman religion as a history of decadence, an
approach that characterizes many of the older handbooks. Second, Scheid dis-
cusses the problems of reconstructing archaic Roman religion. In the end, he opts
for a start in the third century BC, with his advocacy for cultural comparativism
remaining shadowy, as he never employs this method. Instead, Scheid analyzes
Roman religion, the religion of Roman citizens, as a civic religion, a religion linked