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IslamOnline.net: Independent, interactive, popular

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In sum, IslamOnline plays two distinct roles.  It is a forum for Muslims – both in Muslim-majority countries and elsewhere – to discuss news, receive advice and communicate, but it also aims to correct or complicate the often simplistic image of Islam that other media present to non-Muslims.  Playing to these dual audiences is clearly marked by the adaptation of categories between the Arabic and English portions of the site.  The site’s myriad categories and constantly changing features combine to illustrate IslamOnline’s core ideology emphasizing the variety of experiences of Muslims around the world.   This emphasis on variety also reflects the wasatiyya doctrine espoused by Qaradawi and others following 9/11 to offer a more pluralistic and by definition non-radical school of thought. 

Organizational structure

By the end of 2005 IslamOnline employed some 150 staff, most of them young, not including freelance employees abroad.[13] Roughly 85% of the IOL workforce is based in Cairo, and most content for both the Arabic and English sites is produced there.[14] Only an inconspicuous sign on one of the buildings in Cairo's Dokki district announces the existence of this relatively large enterprise, which is registered under the name Media International in Egypt.[15]  IOL’s headquarters in Doha employed 25 employees as of 2005. This office is in charge of management, coordination and supervision of content production, and also contributes to editing portions of the Arabic site.  The Doha office handles IT support and also houses the “Business Development Unit,” a department founded in 2005 to coordinate the marketing and sales strategies of IOL products. The full staff, including the Indian IT experts, are Muslim.  IslamOnline is managed by two people: general manager Tawfiq Ghanem and vice chairman cAli Qurah Daghi. Tawfiq Ghanem is Egyptian and studied journalism at Cairo University. Before IOL he worked for various newspapers and magazines. cAli Qurah Daghi is a legal scholar of Kurdish origin from Qatar. He teaches at the Sharica Faculty of the University of Qatar in the al-Fiqh wa-l-usul department and specializes in Islamic finance and economy. Like Yusuf al-Qaradawi, he is a member of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, which was founded in 1997.[16] 

In sum, IslamOnline employees come from all over Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, though the majority is Egyptian. Their professional background is heterogeneous and can be roughly subdivided into journalism and communication studies, computer sciences, Islamic theology and jurisprudence, medicine, psychology, administration and economics, as well as social and political sciences. Hierarchies are flat, and a distinctive discussion culture is prevalent. The portal's success is predominantly based on the commitment of its workforce, all of whom feel obliged to perform dacwa, the calling of others to Islam. 

Financing and marketing

Marketing and the continuous search for financing possibilities are an integral part of the operations of IslamOnline. The ability to finance a project of this scale is to a large extent determined by consumer confidence in Internet projects, the worldwide market for halal products and the imaginativeness of the operators. The market for "Muslim" products has grown in recent years, especially in Europe and America where new perceptions of identity associated with consumption, success and individual spirituality have developed among young Muslims. This trend, which Boubekeur calls “Cool Islam,“ values halal foodstuffs and clothing made in accordance with the rules of sharci.[17] Canadian clothing company MuslimGear, for instance, advertises with the slogan “Believe in what you wear.“[18]  The company’s sales pitch directly ties in to the image and dacwa goals of the site: ”MuslimGear is a clothing company that aims to strengthen the Muslim identity through its modest, stylish apparel, and through its beneficial work within the community. It helps sponsor youth and community activities within Montreal to benefit the area and show the world that Islam is a beautiful religion of peace and compassion.“[19] 

Whether the development of markets with specific religious or ethic claims can be described as alternative globalization in contrast to the idea of a neoliberal globalization of profit-oriented multinational corporations is a subject under discussion in academia. Alternative globalization means that, in contrast to the anti-globalization movement, global economic networks are not called into question per se.  Rather, the actors use existing experiences and structures and analogously develop markets under different, ethical conditions, such as justice, solidarity, protection of the planet etc, thus challenging neo-liberal economic practices. These alternative economic enterprises tally with the interests of some Muslim thinkers, including Qaradawi, who aspire to Islamize modernity or to encourage globalization in an Islamic setting. Fatwas play an essential part in the realization of these ideas: in 2003, for instance, a fatwa allowing the production and distribution of a beverage named Mecca Cola was issued by Qaradawi and posted on the Internet.[20]   For their part, Mecca Cola continues to feature this fatwa on their website. 

Advertising, however, does not nearly cover the costs of this high traffic website because the Arabic language Internet market is not sufficiently profitable.  In 1997 the project received a generous donation from the Qatar Foundation, which was established in 1995 by Shaykha Muza, the wife of the new emir.[21] Hamid al-Ansari, who led IOL’s fundraising from 1997 to 2005, notes that raising money for an online project during the end of the 1990s was by no means an easy task. While new mosques or Qur’anic schools opening at this time had no shortage of patrons, an Internet project was something few could imagine and associate with.[22] The founding of the charitable organization Al-Balagh Cultural Society facilitated IOL's fundraising efforts, and so did, according to Maryam al-Hajari, a fatwa issued by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, in which he described Islamic websites as “the jihad of our time.”[23]

Another source of income for IOL up until 2005 was a stake it held in the IT company AfkarOnline. Since 2005 the company‘s Business Development Unit in Doha has been in charge of developing new concepts for raising and obtaining additional funds. Today, for example, IOL sells books and CD-ROMs within the scope of marketing campaigns.[24] In addition, a newly-compiled media kit informs potential clients about advertising possibilities, formats and costs.[25] The handling of the advertising trade is also done by IOL in Doha. The good relationship with the Doha-based satellite television station al-Jazeera has proven advantageous in this respect. IOL commercials broadcast on al-Jazeera and seen by millions of viewers around the world are charged at low rates.

In recent years IOL's know-how and expertise in website production has turned into another important source of income. IslamOnline employees in Cairo program, design and support Internet sites of other institutions, for instance the awqaf ministries of Libya and Morocco and like-minded Islamic organizations, such as the International Union of Muslim Scholars or the Kuwait-based Global Center for Wasatiyya Studies.[26]

Counseling and fatwas online

 One of the most popular sections on the IOL website is the Arabic-language section Sharci. This can be put down to the opportunities it presents to search and receive fatwas. The Sharci section, along with the various fatwa formats, contains the page Islam wa-qadaya al-casr (Islam and Contemporary Issues), edited by the Syrian academic Motaz al-Khateeb, which offers essays on contemporary topics, comments on conferences and analyses of political events on an abstract level. The page is open to all convictions, from conservative to the progressive, and this juxtaposition highlights variations among Islamic opinions. The section also features audio files with spoken renditions of texts by Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Muhammad al-Shacrawi, the first Egyptian media shaykh of all.

According to IOL coordinator Mutiullah Tayeb, an Afghan publicist who studied in Pakistan, fatwas, together with psychological and social counseling, constitute the core of IslamOnline.[27] Maryam al-Hajari, the founder and IT manager, regards online fatwas as “decision supporters” that help people to make their own decisions. [28]  For her, fatwas are starting points for reflection rather than authoritative doctrines or instructions on how to act.  She argues that scholars are no longer able to provide answers to all questions, and thus IslamOnline’s counseling service aims to consult a range of specialists that can include psychologists or social scientists. Each thematic section of the site, as outlined in the above chart, offers counseling (istrisharat) on relevant subjects. The staff members responsible for the counseling service tend to specialize in specific fields, e.g. psychologists and social scientists offer social counseling (istisharat ijtimaciyya camma), physicians offer medical consultation (istisharat sihhiyya), and so forth. These counselors are not given the title mufti, but rather khabir (expert) or mustishar (advisor).[29] All the advice offered, including the fatwas, is issued according to standardized rules which the site terms “quality management regulations” (Watha’iq nizam idara al-jawda). [30]   These quality management regulations seem to replace the classical adab al-mufti instructions. 

As already mentioned, IslamOnline’s counseling service comprises several subject areas, which are managed by specialists in the respective fields. Contrary to the assumption that someone like Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a conservative Azhar-trained scholar, might object to these practices, he perceives this form of production of knowledge by experts from other scientific provinces as no danger for the interpretation of Islam by theologians and legal scholars (culama’). He describes these processes as partial ijtihad (ijtihad juz’i), and subordinate to the methods of legal and normative interpretation as practiced by the culama’ [31] which he calls ijtihad intiqa’i (selection of certain doctrines from old legal traditions) or ijtihad insha’i (interpretation of the two sources, Qur’an and Sunnah, adapted to the new life circumstances).[32]

At IslamOnline fatwas are researched, processed, edited or issued and published in the fatwa department (qism al-fatwa). The following is an introduction of the different types of online-fatwas available on the Arabic portion of IslamOnline:

a) Edited fatwas: Is’alu ahl adh-dhikr

These are edited versions of previously-issued fatwas originating from well-known muftis that IslamOnline staff members present in response to user questions.[33]  Edited fatwas feature a heading, date of publication online, the name and origin of the questioner, the question itself (al-su’al), the fatwa text (al-hall), a concluding Allahu calam (God knows best),[34] and a disclaimer.[35] A short text written by IslamOnline staff members introduces each fatwa and the issuing mufti or institution. Significantly, the date and place of issue and the source of publication of the original fatwa are not mentioned, nor is the question that led to its pronouncement. The texts might be mere excerpts from previously published fatwas or contain other text formats, neither of which is labeled as such. Of particular interest are edited fatwa texts assembled from several other fatwas (one might call these collage fatwas), which tend to leave the answer to the question up to the questioner (mustafti). This system gives considerable leeway to IslamOnline staff to select responses from a massive database of, sometimes contradictory, fatwas.  The removal of the original question and the staff-written introduction gives further agency to IOL staff members to craft and package the site’s responses.

b) Fatwa bank: Bank al-fatawa

The fatwa bank is an online archive that users can search to find previously issued opinions. The names of the muftis are listed, and the user can choose among some 150 scholars in the Arab-language site and 170 in the English site.[36] The orientation of the archive is unmistakable. Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s fatwas have the strongest presence (672) out of approx. 6,000 fatwas on the Arabic site. The number of collage fatwas is large (810), which underlines the influence of IOL staff members on the composition of online-fatwas. Remarkably, fatwas issued by Rashid Rida rank on fifth position with 150, which is likely due to the digitization of al-Manar, a religious magazine Rida published for over 35 years.  Also at the top ranks in the number of fatwas accessible by users are the Lebanese Faysal Mawlawi (248) and the Qatari scholar cAli Qurah Daghi (72), both of whom are influential members of the European Fatwa Council.

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[1] In the August 2005 worldwide ranking of Internet sites, IslamOnline occupied position 596 in terms of hits. This puts the site at roughly the same level as the news portal Aljazeera.net at position 275 or The New York Times website at spot 155. In the same month, IslamOnline ranked eighth among the top ten of the most-visited Arab-language websites worldwide.  According to Alexa Traffic Rank in September 2007 most hits came from Egypt (21.4%), followed by the Palestinian Territories (11%), the United Arab Emirates (10.3%), Saudi Arabia (8.9%), and Morocco (8.7%). The USA-based users made up 2.1% of the traffic volume and Germany and the UK 0.9% each.

[2] For Yusuf Qaradawi, see his three-part autobiography that covers his life up until 1977, Ibn al-qarya wa-l-kuttab. Malamih sira wa-masira, vol. 1-3, Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2002, 2004, 2006. In the secondary literature amongst others (in chronological order): cAmmara, Muhammad (1997): ad-Duktur Yusuf al-Qaradawi: al-madrasa al-fikriyya wa-l-mashruc al-fikri. Kairo: Nahdat Misr (Fi l-tanwir al-islami; 10); Salvatore, Armando (1997): Islam and the Political Discourse of Modernity, Berkshire: Ihaca Press; Talima, cIsam (2000): al-Qaradawi faqihan. Kairo: Dar al-Tauzic wa-l-Nashr al-Islamiyya; Talima, cIsam (2001): Yusuf al-Qaradawi: faqih al-ducat wa-da’iyat al-fuqaha’. Beirut: al-Dar al-Shamiyya/Damaskus: Dar al-Qalam (cUlama’ wa-mufakkirun mucasirun; 15); Zaman, Muhammad Q. (2004): "The Ulama of Contemporary Islam and their Conception of the Common Good", in: Armando Salvatore, Dale Eickelman (eds.): Public Islam and the Common Good, Leiden: Brill, pp. 129-156; Wenzel-Teuber, Wendelin (2005): Islamische Ethik und moderne Gesellschaft im Islamismus von Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovac; Krämer, Gudrun (2006): "Drawing Boundaries: Yusuf al-Qaradawi on Apostasy", in: dies., Sabine Schmidtke (eds.): Religious  Authorities in Muslim Societies, Leiden: Brill, pp. 181-217; Zaman, Muhammad Q. (2006): "Consensus and Religious Authority in Modern Islam: the Discourse of the cUlama", in: Gudrun Krämer, Sabine Schmidtke, op. cit., pp. 153-180; Kassab, Akram (2007): al-Manhaj al-dacwi cinda l-Qaradawi: mawahibuhu wa-adawatuhu, was’iluhu wa-asalibuhu, simatuhu wa-atharuhu. Taqdim cAbd al-cAzim al-Dib, cAbd al-Salam al-Basyuni. al-Qahira: Maktabat Wahba.

[3] Brochure, printed on the occasion of the IOL's first anniversary and distributed during the Cairo book fair in 2000: Mashruc al-umma fi-l-qarn al-hadi wa-l-cashrin. IslamOnline. Uktubir 1999-uktubir 2000 (Project of the Islamic community in the 21 century. IslamOnline. October 1999-2000).

[4] Wasatiyya is a term supported not only by Yusuf al-Qaradawi but by many others, especially after 9/11. The term was coined by Qaradawi in as early as the 1970s. It refers to the maintenance of balance between old and new as well as among the different Islamic legal schools and doctrines (including the shica) based on the "umma justly balanced" concept in the Qur’an (2/143), see: Baker, Raymond W. (2003): Islam Without Fear: Egypt and the New Islamists, Cambridge Mass., London: Harvard University Press; Baker, Raymond William (2005): "Building the World in a Global Age", in: Armando Salvatore, Mark Le Vine (eds.): Religion, Social Practice, and Contested Hegemonies. Reconstructing the Public Sphere in Muslim Majority Societies, N.Y.: Palgrave, pp. 109-131; Gräf (forthcoming): “The Concept of wasatiyya in the Work of Yusuf al-Qaradawi”, in: Gräf/Skovgaard-Petersen: The Global Mufti.

[5] IslamWeb.net for instance copies the news stories directly from Aljazeera.net.

[6] Interview with Maryam al-Hajari, Doha, December 2005.

[7] Interview with Maryam al-Hajari, Doha, December 2005.

[8] Interview with Hamid al-Ansari, Doha, December 2005.

[9] Interview with Hamid al-Ansari, Doha, December 2005.

[10] Dawr al-intirnit ka-wasila li-l-dacwa (The role of the Internet for Islamic dacwa), topic of the program al-Sharia wa-l-hayat on Al Jazeera on 3 October 1999. At that time Qaradawi already was one of the very first scholars to have an own homepage, which was produced by the Qatari company iHorizon, see Gräf, Bettina (2007): “Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi in Cyberspace, in: Die Welt des Islams, 47 (2007) 3-4 (Special issue, ed. by Abdulkader Tayob).

[11] Discussion with Hiba Ra’uf cIzzat, Doha, July 2007.

[12] To compare the English and the Arabic sites of IOL would demand an article itself.

[13] Interview with Mutiullah Tayeb, Doha, November 2005. During my visit to Cairo in April 2007 I was told that the number of employees had risen to around 180.

[14] An office in Washington operated between 1999 and 2000, but had to be closed due to its high costs. Contact with the context of the site's users was apparently the reason for establishing it. Interview with Mutiullah Tayeb, Doha, November 2005.

[15] IOL is to move into new premises in Cairo on 6 October. The building was planned specifically for IOL and will accommodate the company's entire workforce.

[16] For the European Council for Fatwa and Research (www.e-cfr.org), see Caeiro, Alexandre (2008): “Transnational ‘Ulama, European Fatwas, and Islamic Authority: A Case Study of the European Council for Fatwa and Research”, in van Bruinessen, M. and Allievi, S. (eds): Production and Dissemination of Islamic Knowledge in Western Europe, London: Routledge.

[17] Cf. Amel Boubekeur, Cool and Competitive. Muslim Culture in the West, in: ISIM Review 16, Autumn 2005, 12f.

[18] Ibid., www.muslimgear.com.

[19] About MuslimGear, www.muslimgear.com/default.aspx (accessed March 15, 2007).

[21] A lot of things started around the same time in Qatar: the Qatar Foundation in 1995, al-Jazeera channel in 1996, IslamOnline in 1997. This certainly has to do with the political changes and the new emir Shaykh Hamid b. Khalifa Al Thani coming to power in 1995.

[22] Interview with Hamid al-Ansari, Doha, December 2005.

[23] Op.cit. 

[24] Interview with Muhammad al-Banna (BDU), Doha, December 2005.

[25] IOL, “Media Kit“,  http://www.IslamOnline/English/mediakit/index.shtml (accessed January 22, 2007) or “Iclan macana“, http://www.islamonline.net/Arabic/MediaKit/index.shtml (accessed January 22, 2007).

[26] Interview with the journalist and editor of the Arabic Tazkiyya section Hamam cAbd al-Macbud, Kairo, March 2007.

[27] Interview with Mutiullah Tayeb, Doha, November 2005.

[28] Interview with Maryam al-Hajari, Doha, December 2005.

[29] Mutiullah Tayeb describes these counseling formats as „adaptation of ifta“. Interview with Mutiullah Tayeb, Doha, 30 November 2005.

[30] Interview with Muhammad Ibrahim Zaydan (head of the Arabic Sharci department), Cairo, April 2007.

[31] Yusuf al-Qaradawi, al-Ijtihad al-mucasir bayna l-indibat wal-infirat (Contemporary ijtihad between discipline and neglect) (Beirut, Damaskus, Amman: al-Maktab al-Islami, 1998, second edition, first 1994), 50f.

[32] Ibid. 46f.

[33] Cf. a corresponding page at IOL: Istisharat al-hajj wa-l-cumra: http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?cid=1121779389930&pagename=IslamOnline-Arabic-Hajj_Umra/Page/HajjCounsellingA (accessed January 22, 2007).

[34] Brinkley Messick, while talking about the „modernity of (...) fatwas“ in the turn of the 20th century, calls this kind of classical features „hallmarks of the old generic form“ of fatwas, see Messick, B. (2005): “Madhhabs and Modernities”, in: Bearman, P. et al.: The Islamic School of Law. Evolution, Devolution, and Progress, Harvard University Press, p. 169.

[35]: The text translates as: “All advice published on IslamOnline’s expresses the opinions of the authors of these advices and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of those who are responsible for IOL.”

[36] See for the English section, IOL, “Fatwa Bank“,

http://www.islamonline.net/completesearch/english/CounsellorSearch.asp?hID=0 (accessed January 22, 2007), for the Arabic section, IOL, „Bank al-fatawa“,

http://www.islamonline.net/completesearch/arabic/CounsellorSearch.asp?hID=0 (accessed January 22, 2007). There are two women among the approx. 170 scholars in the English-language section.

[37] Cf. Masud, M. Khalid et al. (1996): Muftis, Fatwas, and Legal Interpretation, in: Masud, M. Khalid et al.: Islamic Legal Interpretation: Muftis and Their Fatwas, Harvard University Press, pp. 3-32.

[38] http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?cid=1195032322989&pagename=IslamOnline-English-Ask_Scholar%2FFatwaE%2FFatwaEAskTheScholar.

[39] http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?pagename=IslamOnline-Arabic-Ask_Scholar/FatwaA/FatwaA&cid=1122528618724.

[40] The fatwas which have recently been issued during the fatwa programs of satellite television stations are described either as Fatawa fada’iyya or by the expression Fatawa mubashira. Despite the existence of certain similarities, this is a different format (the mustafti can see and hear the mufti, and the mufti can hear the mustafti (and his dialect etc.).

[41] The choice of mufti in IslamOnline’s case is also another point of difference between its live fatwas and traditional ifta’. 

[42] IOL, Sharci, Fatawa mubashira, al-Arshif, http://www.islamonline.net/livefatwa/arabic/oldresult.asp; (accessed January 22, 2007).

[43] No. 3, January 13, 2000, no. 12, March 6, 2000, no. 28, August 8, 2000, no. 94, May 30, 2001 and no. 1406, January 18, 2007.

[44] Articles on this subject carry titles such as al-Fatawa al-mubashira fi wasa’il al-iclam (Live fatwas in the media) by Ali Qurah Daghi, http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=ArticleA_C&cid=1173087876178&pagename=Zone-Arabic-Shariah%2FSRALayout (accessed January 17, 2007) or al-Fiqh wa-l-faqih wa-l-dawla al-haditha (Islamic jurisprudence, the jurist and the modern state) by Motaz al-Khateeb, http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=ArticleA_C&cid=1183484227231&pagename=Zone-Arabic-Shariah%2FSRALayout, (accessed July 12, 2007) or Mufti al-fada’iyyat hal min dabit? (Are there (general) rules for satellite muftis?) by Salman al-Awda, http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=ArticleA_C&cid=1189064939859&pagename=Zone-Arabic-Shariah%2FSRALayout, (accessed September 15, 2007) or al-Fatawa wa-l-nawazil wa naqa’id al-islam al-siyasi (Fatwas, judical cases and the contradictions of political Islam) by Ridwan al-Sayyid, http://www.islamismscope.com/index.php?art/id:362 (accessed April 17, 2007).

[45] Interview with Mutiullah Tayeb, Doha, December 2005.

[46] IOL, “Violence: Causes and Alternatives,”

http://www.islamonline.net/English/In_Depth/ViolenceCausesAlternatives/index.shtml (accessed July 25, 2005).

[47] IOL, “Violence: Causes and Alternatives,”

http://www.islamonline.net/English/In_Depth/ViolenceCausesAlternatives/Articles/Editorial/2005/07/01.shtml; (accessed July 25, 2005). In contrast to this view, IslamOnline supports the position of Yusuf al-Qaradawi and others, who legitimizes Palestinian suicide attacks arguing that these are the weapons of the weak against a long-lasting, unequal and unjust war of aggression.

[48](IUMS was formerly called IAMS, International Association of Muslim Scholars).   On IUMS, see Gräf 2005. 

[49] IOL, “Bombing Innocent: IAMS’s Statement“

http://www.islamonline.net/English/In_Depth/ViolenceCausesAlternatives/Articles/topic08/2005/07/01.shtml (accessed July 25, 2005).

[50] IOL, “A Fatwa by Fiqh Council of North America,” http://www.islamonline.net/English/In_Depth/ViolenceCausesAlternatives/Articles/topic08/2005/08/01.shtml (accessed August 4, 2005).

[51] Qur’an Sura 5/32.  Yusuf cAli translation. 

[52] These organizations include the Fiqh Council of North America, the European Council for Fatwa and Research, the International Union of Muslim Scholars, and the Global Wasatiyya Center in Kuwait.