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  • Muslims and the New Media: Historical and Contemporary Debates
  • Carl Morris
Göran Larsson . Muslims and the New Media: Historical and Contemporary Debates. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2011. 234 pp. $72.50. ISBN: 978-1-4094-2750-6.

In this excellent book, Göran Larsson provides an introduction to the historical and contemporary debates among Muslim 'ulamā' (Islamic scholars) regarding new media technologies—from the printing press through to the Internet—offering a fresh insight into a growing area of academic research. While consideration of the social, political, and cultural impact of these technologies on Muslim societies is unavoidable, Larsson largely attempts to focus on the reaction of Muslim 'ulamā' from a range of reformist and conservative traditions, with particular emphasis on fatāwā (religious-juristic rulings) and other interventions based on Islamic law. Concerns over "new media" by Muslim 'ulamā' are often understood within the context of a modern, media-saturated era. However, by providing a historical overview in one volume, Larsson succinctly shows that these debates actually stretch back over the rapid evolution of media technology throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The book is therefore structured by chapter to examine the impact of each technology in turn. It considers the printing press; photography; cinema; radio and television; the telephone; and the Internet. There is also an additional final chapter that examines how all of these debates link to specific issues around belief and practice relating to the Qur'an.

The broader arguments within this book are largely based on an exploration of the two outer poles of Islamic jurisprudential and theological thought. Larsson therefore examines the differences between reformists and conservatives with an additional analysis of the Islamic concepts of ijtihad (interpretation) and taqlid (imitation), or ahl al-ray'y and ahl al-hadith (those who either emphasize personal judgment or a more literal adherence to the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad). While Larsson explicitly acknowledges that the differences between the two sides of Islamic thought are often complex, he nonetheless suggests that they provide a useful analytic tool in examining the responses of Muslim 'ulamā' to the introduction of new media technology. While this approach allows Larsson to tease out nuances of difference (for example, reformists were quicker to embrace new forms of religious and political communication), it also highlights commonalities across theological positions, such as a shared concern over the influence of European colonialism through new media and the resulting impact on behavioural norms in Muslim-majority societies. It should be mentioned that a slight drawback to this analytic framework is the occasional lack of clarity over where exactly majority opinion stands in relation to some of these debates—sectarian diversity is not always presented in sufficient context.

Clearly, the overriding contribution of this book is the consideration of different media technologies together in one volume. This analysis enables common themes to emerge—across different forms of new media—that might otherwise not be readily apparent. An excellent example of this is the role that new forms of media can play in either strengthening or weakening traditional forms of power and authority. This tension reverberates throughout the shared history of media technology. Reactions among the 'ulamā' to the printing press, for instance, [End Page 467] varied from a desire to communicate with the wider masses, to a concern that religious knowledge would escape beyond their control—a debate that is continuing fiercely still in relation to the Internet. The influence that new media can have on public morality and religious practice is again another common thread throughout. So, for example, different forms of media—including cinema, the telephone, and the Internet—have at one time or another been perceived as encouraging improper social contact between men and women, including the potential for zina (improper sexual relations).

Despite the strengths of this book, a notable drawback to the broad historical sweep pursued by Larsson is a tendency sometimes to deal with important and interesting issues in a brief and even superficial way. While Larsson repeatedly brings forward a range of salient topics, raising many fascinating questions, there is occasionally the need for a deeper and more probing analysis. Having said this, the purpose of...

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