IN 2000, GARY Bunt, a lecturer in Islamic studies at the University of Wales, Lampeter, published a seminal work on Islam and the internet. Virtually Islamic: Computer-mediated Communication and Cyber Islamic Environments (Cardiff: University of Wales Press) explored the dialectic between Islam, as the fastest-growing religion in the world, and the world wide web, the communications medium of the millennium.

Hailed by reviewers as a “valuable guide to things related to Islam on the Internet, especially to readers pondering over technology’s impact on religious identity or the ummah’s urgent social, moral and political questions,” the book opens with an introduction defining cyber Islamic environments as “representations of the real and also representations of the ideal.”

Unlike other virtual realities, however, these environments can impact the real lives of individuals on many levels. Bunt poses and attempts to answer questions such as whether the creators of these cyberspaces are casting Islam in an idealized light, and how far they represent actual people and issues. Toying with the notion of identity, the book also probes the question of whether it is inherently contradictory to speak of “digital” and “Islamic” in the same breath. It tries to assess the impact of Islam-related websites and how material on these sites “influence Muslim and non-Muslim perspectives on Islam and Islamic issues.”

The five subsequent chapters deal with the notion of da’wa (the call to join the faith) as one of the primary forms of Islamic expression on the net; the diversity of Islamic cyber activity, such as Sunni versus Shi’a sites; online political diversity and how Muslim political parties (whether government or opposition) have invested in websites as platforms to propagate their perspective; and the use of the internet as a pulpit to deliver sermons.

Serving almost as a sequel to Virtually Islamic, Bunt’s Islam in the Digital Age: E-Jihad, Online Fatwas and Cyber Islamic Environments (London: Pluto Press, 2003) is the first comprehensive analysis of the same subject after 9/11 and the war on Iraq.

Here, Bunt taps into the phenomenon of electronic jihad and how the internet has become a forum for online activism and a window for the Muslim point of view on current affairs touching the ummah. The book also examines how Muslim cybernauts have made use of the communications revolution, not only on the political front, but also on matters of faith. The widespread issuing of online religious edicts fatwas to serve a contemporary Muslim audience living in majority or minority contexts has helped spur a qualitative shift with people depending more and more on unconventional (virtual) figures of religious authority who have a direct effect on their daily lives.

Mohsen Allam/Egypt Today

Bunt dedicates a large part of this book to defining the greater and lesser forms of e-jihad; hacking for Islam; patterns in the use of e-mail, message forums and chat rooms; post-9/11 mujahideen in cyberspace; and electronic efforts to achieve jihad for peace. In a highly rational approach, he tries to diffuse popular alarmism about Islamist use of the web.

In his concluding comments on e-jihad, Bunt asserts that the Islamic lane on the information superhighway reflects “varied and sophisticated notions of jihadi symbolism based in part on traditional interpretations of the concept,” but that the extent to which these cyber Islamic environments represent a “digital sword” is still open to question.

Bunt’s two books combined are groundbreaking canonical texts for students of both virtual Islam and, in a wider sense, those studying religion and the internet.  et