About 5.7 per cent (946,000) of the Dutch population is Muslim (Pew Research Center 2009 Pew Research Center. The German Muslim population is estimated at 5 per cent (4,026,000) of the total population. In order to facilitate the reading of Arabic terms, I have dispensed with diacritical marks with the exception of the ‘to indicate the Arabic letter ‘ayn (as in shari‘a) and’ to indicate the Arabic letter hamza (as in Qur'an). Translations from Dutch, Arabic and German have been made by the author. This contribution argues that the diverse outcomes of ritual transfer processes are partly the result of the interplay between affordances of CMEs and the exigencies of ritual segments. Furthermore, in the case of some rituals like the Muslim prayer, a migration is not even attempted, while, on the other hand, some religious practices can become increasingly ritualized in the new environment and enter the ritual repertoire of a community. The ritual landscape of a religion undergoes a transformation in the course of the transfer process with mixed results: some rituals like the Muslim conversion ritual migrate successfully while other transfer processes yield ambiguous results, as the discussion of the ritual acts of gender segregation shows. Two questions stand in the centre of the analysis: How are rituals transferred to new CMEs? And what accounts for the varying success of transfer processes? Religious rituals are understood to be successful when they (a) reproduce the core values and norms of a community (b) involve a significant number of believers and (c) protect the sacred from the profane. This article aims to contribute to this field by analysing the ritual dynamics in Dutch and German chat rooms as well as Internet discussion forums popular among Muslims following the Salafiyya. The transfer of religious rituals into computer-mediated environments (CMEs) has attracted the attention of scholars in recent years.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |