Talk Islam

Andrea Useem

  • 07:57:25 am on May 22, 2008 | # | |
    Tags: , ,

    Emergent Islam? I was wondering yesterday if the spirit of the emerging church — tech-savvy, anti-traditionalist, relationship-based — might have relevance for our generation of Muslims. And: why are mosque websites so bad?
    http://tinyurl.com/4b4sre

     

  • Tag this post

Comments

  • Baha'uddin 9:34 am on May 22, 2008 | #

    Salaam alaykum from Ste Rose du Nord, Quebec, Canada. Google it, why don’t you. Here’s our mosque’s website: http://www.naqshbandi.ca. Is it so bad?

  • Willow 2:23 pm on May 22, 2008 | #

    I think you’re giving short shrift to the Muslim blogosphere, which is thriving. In countries like Egypt and Iran, where state media is heavily censored, bloggers are often the people who break major news. (See the riots surrounding the 2005 Egyptian elections etc.) And in the west, you have, you know, us:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brass_Crescent

    It’s a mistake to discount a movement simply because it doesn’t have the same brand recognition (or the same $$) as New Church etc. Like most things in traditional Islam, what you would call “emergent” Islam is decentralized. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

  • Tariq Nelson 5:06 pm on May 22, 2008 | #

    Another great article. Over the past couple of years I am seeing signs of what one could call an “emergent” Islam in America. At this point they are meeting semi-formally in private gatherings. They do not feel comfortable in the mosques, but are very much Muslim.

  • aziz 5:11 pm on May 22, 2008 | #

    This was an intriguing article, Andrea. I think that “emergent” Islam is really better termed “assimilated” Islam, whereby the cultural mainstream seeps in around the edges and changes the outward practice. It is much the same thing, only in a religious context, as when Jews or Indians (desis) lament about their kids being too Americanized.

    As far as websites go, most of the innovation does exist outside the mosque organizations, true. But why should it be otherwise? I don’t think Islam in America is quite as evangelical as Christianity so there is no real pressing need for a marketing approach. In fact i would argue that the islamosphere (as Willow pointed out above) is more mature and tech saavy than the Christosphere since more of our energy is directed inwards rather than outwards.

  • thabet 2:39 am on May 23, 2008 | #

    why are mosque websites so bad?

    For the same reason mosque architecture is so bad.

Leave a Comment

*

Click on the picture to hear an audio file of the word.
Click to hear an audio file of the anti-spam word
To prevent spam, please type the security word shown in the picture. Click on the picture to hear an audio file of the word.