Islam and High-Technology: Global Communications and Cultural Re-Inventions

This paper problematizes the bifurcation of technology and tradition and its implied unidirectional transformative authority of technology. It divides the multitude of responses to the relation between technology and culture into these three categories: technology as the messenger and the message, technology as a messenger without an inherent message, and technology as a messenger unaware of its message. A study is reported that used examples from 48 Islamic World Wide Web sites and suggests that Muslim identities are incessantly being reinvented and reconstructed via, rather than despite of, new technologies. The paper reports that the study demonstrates that a conscious appropriation and appreciation of technology not only does not undermine cultural distinctiveness, but it may also enhance the production of a more vibrant cultural environment. It sees technology as neither bad nor good, but both a blessing and a burden. It also argues that the proponents of the technology-tradition binary perceive tradition as a set of static practices, a social order incapable of generating and adapting to change. (Contains 16 references.) (YLB)