This week we're looking at how religious organizations are using Web technology. Today's post looks at a blog that aims to "challenge misconceptions and stereotypical perceptions about Islam and Muslims worldwide". The site is Inside Islam and we caught up with lead blogger Kaitlin Foley today to find out more. For the previous posts in our series, check out our reviews of LifeChurch.tv (a Christian church) and Shalom Hartman Institute (a Jewish institute).
Inside Islam is a collaboration between University of Wisconsin-Madison and Wisconsin Public Radio. It is using 'new media' to improve communications between Muslims and non-Muslims.
The blog's focus is clearly illustrated with the most recent post at time of writing: Mark LeVine and Heavy Metal Islam: The Fight Over What Islam Means. The post explains the story of scholar and professional musician Mark LeVine, who traveled across the Middle East "playing with and studying heavy metal bands in the area after the September 11 attacks in 2001." According to Foley's post, Mark LeVine's work uses "the universal language of music to articulate the diversity of Islam in contemporary times."
The post finishes with a selection of links to various media - Flickr, podcasts, the Heavy Metal Islam homepage, LeVine's blog, links to audio. There's also mention of a radio broadcast LeVine will be doing this Thursday, on 'Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders' - which is a radio program by one of the organizations behind the blog, Wisconsin Public Radio.
Incidentally, if you want a 1-line explanation of what Heavy Metal Islam is, this quote at the top of the HMI homepage - attributed to one of the founders of the Moroccan heavy-metal scene, Reda Zine - sums it up: "We play heavy metal because our lives are heavy metal."
The trailer for a documentary called Heavy Metal in Baghdad, via InsideIslam
We asked Kaitlin Foley to tell us more about Inside Islam and how it got started. A recent graduate of University of Wisconsin-Madison, Foley has a degree in International Studies and Political Science. She focused on Islamic studies for her degree and so the blog is kind of an extension of that. She explained:
"The project as a whole is a product of University of Wisconsin-Madison, of which me, the blogger, and the pubic radio shows are only part of... in the end, we hope to have a wealth of resources that people around the world can access about Islam and Muslim culture worldwide. This includes digital stories, blogs, YouTube videos, music, and all other types of popular content on the web."
Foley told us that the response to the blog has been "positive from the Muslim community online." She said that it "seems to be an issue people are really concerned about and want to talk about in a new way." The Internet, said Foley, "is a way to talk about political, cultural and global issues in a democratic way." The blog's goal is to "create a dialogue and raise some debates about hot issues in a meaningful way."
The blog is closely linked to the radio show 'Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders', mentioned above. The first radio show to be broadcast is on tomorrow, about Heavy Metal Islam. The second show is October 30 on the topic of Muslims and social media.
The final question we asked Kaitlin Foley was: are you a Muslim yourself? She replied that she's not, although she said a couple of her supervisors are. She explained further that "even though I'm not Muslim, I think Islam is a big concern for anyone with a T.V. or internet access and [it's] an important way people understand the world."
Inside Islam is an interesting use case for a blog - it's using a two-way medium, along with new media tools like podcasting and Flickr, to open up discussion on a religion that, in this day and age, can be easily misunderstood.
For context, we must point out that Islam is already a popular topic in the blogosphere. We noted in a post in November that trend charts showed more Web activity about Islam than about Christianity. There is indeed an Alltop category for Muslims, which has a lot of blogs in it. Not to mention there are some web 2.0 blogs that cover the Middle East, including ArabCrunch and IslamCrunch.
Let us know in the comments about other religious organizations or independent sites using the Web in innovative ways.
Top photo: Mark LeVine
See also:
Religion and Web Technology, Part 1: LifeChurch.tv
Religion and Web Technology, Part 2: Shalom Hartman Institute
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all Read/WriteWeb posts
I thought I'd add some mention of additional Islamic websites that I find notable.
1. Talk Islam (talkislam.info)
This is a WPMU-powered website with a prologue theme front end. Its a group blog with major well-known bloggers from most of the Islamic blogsphere (the Islamsphere), s well as some Jewish, Christian, and even atheist bloggers, contributing.
2. AltMuslim (altmuslim.com)
Founded by brothers Shahed and Zahed Amanullah, this is a portal website and journalism portal. They just interviewed Howard Dean and Naomi Klein, to give you an idea of their access and mainstream media connections. Its a powerhouse.
3. Mumineen.org
A website for the Dawoodi Bohra muslim community, a sub-sect of Shi'a muslims. This website acts as an information gateway for the community's members worldwide, with news feeds powered by Wordpress, Coppermine gallery, Drupal audio site, and lts of custom code in PHP, for example for prayer timings. Everything is tied together by RSS feeds.
I am a bit embarrassed to mention it here, but my own blog City of Brass, which I founded in March 2002 (qualifying me for old geezer status in the Islamsphere), recently moved from its old domain at cityofbrass.blogspot.com to new digs at Beliefnet.com (blogs.beliefnet.com/cityofbrass).
Posted by: Aziz Poonawalla | September 25, 2008 3:40 AM
Just want to give you a heads up on a project. Currently muslims around the world are celebrating Ramadan, In which they fast from Sunrise to Sunset.
Ramadan.co.za is a website created with the intent of sharing experiences of ramadan from people around the world. Its a group blog, that accepts reader contributions as well, They have a spiritual bootcamp, a section for charities and events happening during the month.
Posted by: ID | September 25, 2008 4:03 AM
All of the above seems to be in sync and good for all concerned.
But one lesson I've learned over the years is this;
This whole terminology of Mulsim Extremeism has to go.
Why?
The answer is easy, but two part.
First, there are terrorists of all kinds.
Catholic terrorists blow up abortion clinics and kill innocents in the name of Jesus Our Lord.
Jews have their own terrorists. The most noted (if not for Our Lord Jesus Himself) is Menachem Begin, who before he bacame Prime Minister of Israel was convicted of being a Terrorist in the British Protectorate of the Future State of Palestine.( Remember a People without a HomeLand are still considered a State) (So much for personal political statements) Mr Begin was sentenced to a prison sentence.
And of course their are noted Terrorists of Muslim Faith.
However why we don't understand each other here in the US, besides our own Christian v Semite anti-isms, is that we are as a State mostly a Judean-Christian society anyway.
Islam is New and therefore Strange to the so called WesternWorld.
So let's all take a lesson from our Kids and see who they're getting along with these days and if they aren't getting along with anyone then we'll figure it out together. Neighbor to Neighbor. And of course that's after we figure out how to straighten out our Kids.
And if that's not OK. Then I'll see who'll figure it out with me.(Which is usually anyone who'll listen).
Thanks for the Music
All Praise Those Who Have Faith
?authority or give peace a chance?
Regards
dePaul Consiglio
Posted by: dePaul Consiglio NYMetroCityState US | September 25, 2008 5:33 AM
Heavy methal is not named "Catholic Heavy Metal" when played in Europe and/or US so why does it suddenly become "Islam Heavy Metal" when being played in Middle East ? Is there something related to the religion in the lyrics ? (I suppose that the religion does not change the level of the disto or the tapping technique ;) And if not, why not simply calling it "Middle East Heavy Metal" like in the trailer "Bagdad Heavy Metal" ?
Posted by: y!onel | September 25, 2008 5:57 AM
Firstly, thanks for featuring IslamCrunch on RWW (we have been long time fans).
Secondly, I just wanted to point out that we don't cover the Middle East only, we cover stories from across the globe. Our main concentration is the San Francisco/Silicon Valley Bay Area where we are based.
Thirdly, thank you for showcasing Islam in positive light.
A big shout out to Guy Kawasaki for graciously placing us on top of Alltop.
Catch us on Twitter here: twitter.com/islamcrunch
And on our lifestream here: islamcrunch.com/lifestream
Posted by: Mikael Pittam | September 25, 2008 7:06 AM
Don't forget about the Muslim digg site Islamify.com which is updated like every day with Islamic content from all over the web.
Posted by: themanoffewwords | September 25, 2008 7:37 AM
There are several Islamic communities with limited funds here in the U.S. that use a combination of the Internet and onsite activities to not only connect with local Muslims, but also Muslims who may be interested in participating with their group, but who may be limited by time, distance, resources, etc...
Our group, the American Islamic Fellowship, meets twice a month for discussion groups, has other monthly and quarterly activities, but then uses our website, email, Myspace and Facebook to connect to our members during the in-between times. We also use the Internet to connect to other similar groups and other groups who have similar goals to work together in the intra and interfaith/philosophy environment. The results have been fantastic!
I can also recommend Muslims for Progressive Values: http://www.mpvusa.org/
Progressive Muslim Network: http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=18441989920
Most of us originally found each other online. :)
Posted by: Kelly | September 25, 2008 8:23 AM
Some other popular sites:
HalalTube.com
MuslimMatters.org
MujahideenRyder.net
Posted by: Amir | September 25, 2008 10:31 AM
There are much better Islamic sites than mentioned in this article. Some of the notable ones are Islamicity - http://www.islamicity.com/, Ummah.com http://www.ummah.com/ and as mentioned in a comment above AltMuslim. There is also a social network for Muslims called Muxlim.com http://www.muxlim.com.
I am a regular reader of RWW articles and enjoy the content put across but I must say that this article is very disappointing - the content chosen is hardly relevant to the topic. A better approach would have been to interview the Muxlim site leadership and get some views from them.
Posted by: Danesh | September 25, 2008 10:38 AM
All good points! We were thinking of another title on the blog... Heavy Metal and Islam seems like it's only one way to frame the phenomenon... region is another, youth culture is another. The list goes on...
Posted by: Kaitlin | September 25, 2008 11:31 AM
Thanks for the links, everyone.
Posted by: Kaitlin | September 25, 2008 11:33 AM
Danesh, thanks for your comment and the links. It's impossible for an an article like this to be comprehensive. The aim really was just to pick one site that is promoting Islam (as I did for Christianity and Judaism) and review it. So we chose Inside Islam, as it is using web 2.0 in a cool way.
But your points noted about the other sites, perhaps we can look at those in a future article.
Posted by: Richard
|
September 25, 2008 12:22 PM
It's nice to see Muxlim.com mentioned in the comments there.
Muxlim.com is one of the biggest muslim sites out there, and it is kind of amazing to see any articles about the web+muslim culture without Muxlim being mentioned. Muxlim visitor numbers are in the early millions per month and growing. Muxlim.com has an especially popular video service called tv.muxlim.com. And the very interesting background part is that it comes from Scandinavia and mostly has people from the USA and UK as members/visitors.
You are certainly invited to do a story about Muxlim or just explore it. I'm yet to hear about a muslim site (in english language) that would be bigger than Muxlim.
Posted by: Niko | September 25, 2008 1:08 PM
Thank Richard for mentioning ArabCrunch :)
Posted by: Gaith | September 25, 2008 6:34 PM