|
Reuters: Islam Takes to The Web in The Aftermath of 9/11
CAIRO,
September 11 (Reuters) - When Thomas from the United States
wanted to know what the Muslim world had to say one year after the
September 11 attacks, he turned to IslamOnline.net.
His
request was courteous, unlike some angry questions sent in the past
year to the Web Site which offers online Islamic fatwas - or religious
edicts - as well as news and advice to Muslims and others interested
in the Islamic world.
But
regardless of the questioner’s sympathies, IslamOnline aims to offer
authoritative statements from scholars on Islam, reflecting differing
views from various schools of thought.
“Today
we have broken relations, broken hearts, broken trusts and broken
homes, broken buildings and towns...The last September 11th has made
us all more sensitive to this brokenness in all of us,” Muzammil
Siddiqi, a counselor for IslamOnline and a U.S.-based scholar, wrote
to Thomas, who described himself only as a non-Muslim from America.
IslamOnline
was set up two years before Muslim hijackers slammed planes into the
World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, but the
attacks raised its profile as hits on the site almost tripled.
In
the aftermath of September 11, more and more people have turned to the
Web for news and views from the Islamic world.
The
Internet has not only been a tool for the kind of moderate and
broad-minded approach of IslamOnline, which has its editorial offices
in a quiet residential area of bustling Cairo and headquarters in the
Gulf Arab state of Qatar.
Radical
voices, some with apparent links to suspected September 11 mastermind
Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, have also turned to the Net
to vent their opinions. Some analysts say they may be using the
Internet to contact allies and win new followers as the war on terror
continues.
As
militants lost their territorial base in Afghanistan and were squeezed
out of mosques by wary Arab governments, many seem to have turned to
the virtual world to pursue what some describe as an “electronic
jihad,” or holy war.
The
extent of the influence of such sites is difficult to gauge, analysts
say. But some point to a precedent that might worry regional
governments. Ayatollah Khomeini used the modern technology of his day,
audio cassettes, to send fiery sermons from abroad and help foment
Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.
“There
is what we might call today a virtual al Qaeda,” said Reuven Paz, an
Israeli who specializes in Islamist movements and keeps a close eye on
radical Islamic and other Web Sites.
After
last year’s devastating U.S. military campaign against Afghanistan,
bin Laden and his associates seem to have been pushed off the
television screens. But their alleged messages still appear
sporadically on the Net through Web Sites such as www.alneda.com
or www.jehad.net,
although many such sites have been blocked.
IslamOnline
itself issued a report in August saying it had obtained a letter
written by bin Laden, but says the story was a straightforward
journalist’s “scoop” and not because of any links to al Qaeda.
“It
is easy for youngsters now to feel that they take part in the
‘jihad’ sitting at home, without the need to go to volunteer and
to go to Afghanistan, or Bosnia, or Palestine or other places,” said
Paz.
Such
surfers may not be about to take up the armed struggle right away, but
Paz said some might imbibe ideas that could express themselves in the
long term.
Others
are more skeptical about the influence of such sites. Radical groups
may not be winning more recruits through their violent language or
actions because so far their campaign has only unleashed more woes for
Muslims, some say.
But
the catchment area is growing fast as countries across the Middle East
and Muslim world, many with youthful populations, open up to the World
Wide Web.
Analysts
said the Internet, which has proved so hard for governments to censor,
is an ideal channel for those with a radical Muslim agenda - many in
exile - to spread their views when they have no voice on television,
radio or newspapers back home.
Diaa
Rashwan, an Egyptian academic working on a book about Islam on the
Web, says Islamists in Egypt no longer control mosques that used to be
a key place to spread their ideas.
“For
them now, it is not a problem at all to fight through the Internet,”
he said.
He
said Islamic radicals had been swifter than other political activists
in the region to take advantage of modern technology, perhaps because
so many appeared to have been drawn from the ranks of scientists and
engineers with technical minds.
One
example is Ayman al-Zawahri, bin Laden’s right-hand man, who was a
surgeon before founding Egypt's Jihad group and then joining
Saudi-born bin Laden in Afghanistan.
Zawahri
was even issued an invitation via the Internet to attend a Cairo
seminar by telephone or e-mail in September. But he failed to make a
cyber-appearance.
Paradoxically,
the anti-Western program of extremists like Zawahri has not prevented
them from turning to an electronic network with origins largely
associated with universities and defense projects in their number one
enemy, the United States.
“For
them, I don’t think they recognize that this technology is a Western
one...They distinguish between the material development of the West
and the moral and ethical development of the West,” said Rashwan,
who is an analyst at Cairo’s Al Ahram Center for Strategic and
Political Studies.
As
well as avoiding the censors, cyberspace may have played an important
role to galvanize scattered elements who support a network like al
Qaeda, however informal its structure.
Whether
or not the Web has been used to issue orders from Qaeda leaders is
unclear, but analysts said alleged messages from the group - like the
one issued on www.alneda.com in
June purportedly from al Qaeda spokesman Sulaiman bu Ghaith - could
offer encouragement to disparate cells.
Also
open for debate is how to counter the influence of such views on the
Web.
Some
analysts say simply blocking the web sites would not address the root
causes that drive people to support such groups, including
frustrations with society at home.
But
sites like IslamOnline may already be playing a role, if
unintentionally, by providing a site that allows Muslims and
non-Muslims, religiously conservative or avowedly secular surfers, to
debate the issues.
“You
cannot fight radicalism and you should not worry about how much people
listen to that radical message. All you can do is widen the scope of
the mainstream so that radicalism would not become the mainstream,”
said Heba Raouf, an Egyptian political scientist and a member of the
group which founded IslamOnline.
“What
we are trying to do is make a platform and bring people together, and
ask people to think more,” she said.
|
