Online in Cairo with news, views and fatwa corner!
This New York Times story (registration required) yesterday was interesting in showcasing the reach and importance of the Web even in the Islamic and Third World. Recently the Paid website has mentioned how its editor Rafat Ali, for example, has been posting from India again compressing the time and distance between the rest of the world and us here in the US.
Inside a run-down building in a middle-class Cairo neighborhood, a hybrid group of eager young dot-commers and idealistic religious messengers produces one of the Islamic world's leading Web sites, Islam-Online.net.
"We all consider this an act of jihad, how to liberate people's minds from ignorance," said Ahmed Muhammad Sa'ad, using "jihad" in its sense of spiritual struggle. Mr. Sa'ad is a recent religious school graduate and a prize-winning reciter of the Koran who helps channel readers' requests for religious rulings, or fatwas, to Islamic legal scholars around the world.
Islam Online says it wants to present a positive view of the faith to non-Muslims, to strengthen unity in the Muslim world and to uphold principles of justice, freedom and human rights. Scholars of the region say they see the Web site as a leading example of efforts by moderate Muslims to push for the Islamization of societies by nonviolent means.
"There's a desire to make it a one-stop shop," said John L. Esposito, a professor of religion and international affairs at Georgetown University. "But obviously no single Web site can do that for anything, let alone the Islamic world."