Cyber Devotion

2017

The course aims to explore Islamic Cyber‐Devotion, the practice of undertaking religious devotion in cyberspace (online/offline). Cyber‐devotion mediated by digital media is hugely diverse in scale, complexity, content, design and purpose. We will examine cyberspace as a tool for the exchange of devotional sights, material religion, and rituals among Muslim devotees, saints and God. By the end of the course, students will be expected to demonstrate that they have met the following learning objectives: • When Muslim devotees take cyber‐devotion online, what are they seeing and being seen by? • What do Muslim devotees think of the forms of sacredness and holiness available in cyberspace? • How do cyberspace and digital media change the classic ways of devotion for Muslim devotees?

Cyber Orient, 2020

The article argues that the debate over the online prayer is not just an ordinary fatwa issued by religious scholars for the Muslim Ummah, but it rather goes through a complicated process of social, identarian, cultural, authoritative, and transnational caveats. The physicality entailed by this debate over the online prayer shows how the place of worship along with the physical presence in it while performing the prayer is considered as an identity marker, a tool for sustaining the social fiber and the culture of the Muslim community. The article concludes by situating the debate over the online prayer within a broader framework of online religion versus religion online and the impact of the virtu-alization of rituals on the perception of the religious experience.

Is internet 1 really a new "electronic temple" where both traditional and New Religious Movements (NRMs) can find and gather their communities? The cryptic rules of ICTs and their capacity of " de-massifyng " and relativizing time and space raises deeper reflections about the human condition as well as the possibility for individuals to reach new levels of transcendence. Several scholars have observed how the internet's " mysterious " nature and functions have opened new possibilities of " re-enchantment of the world " through generating new personal and spiritual empowerment. This research looks at the internet's influence on the virtual activity of Damanhur Spiritual Community, a small esoteric village in Northern Italy. The analysis of the structure of Damanhur's website demonstrates that internet is not merely a tool of communication, but embodies the spiritual philosophy of Community, becoming an empirical part of its values.

Handbook of Contemporary Islam and Muslim Lives, 2021

European Journal of Science and Theology, 2015

In this paper, the author is studying the existence of spirituality in media (cyber-spirituality), taking as an example the videogame called World of Warcraft. He states that cyber-spirituality does exist, though it takes a different form from the traditional religion. Cyber-spirituality favours especially the mental "submerging" into cyberspace and experiencing a new, magical and fascinating world. In traditional religion, human body represents an important component that keeps human in reality and gives him a chance to experience spirituality in broader sense, including direct communication with other people. Beside this, traditional religion in interested in growing spiritually through self-knowing, while knowing is set on constructed images and stories in cyber-spirituality. The only exception that the author was able to find was in techno-shamanism, in which real self-knowledge can exist together with spiritual growth of man. The author states that in spite of the fact that cyber-spirituality does not reach the level of traditional spirituality it can saturate spiritual needs of a hypermodern man, even though it cannot be fully understood as a new form of religion.

This course introduces students to the study of digital religion from a lived religions perspective. It begins with an examination of the history, concepts and methods of the field, and continues with thematic explorations of digital religion scholarship across varied religious traditions. Students develop an understanding of how scholars study religion and spiritual identities, beliefs, and practices online, and how the religious and digital arenas influence and shape one another.

"Performing Devotion: Religious Rituals, Religious Practices

The development of the Internet has ushered in new ways of relating to oneself and one’s environment by allowing geographically disparate communities to gather and discuss issues specific to their interests and cultural backgrounds. Alternately, the same Internet apparatus fosters conflict through the clash of these diverse online communities. Hindu temples and their communities, both in India and the European, American, and Southeast Asian diasporas, have consistently used the Internet as a means of reaching a wider audience and appealing to their established congregations. Since the late 1990’s, forums such as USENET, which operates as a general discussion site, have offered sections dedicated to talking about different religious traditions, Hinduism among them. More recently, Hindu temple administrations have created online sites specific to their temples, offering virtual congregation services (puja) to their lay communities. Ritual services available for purchase online include (but are not limited to): aarati (light offering), alankara (adorning an icon with flowers), the offering of prasad (consecrated food), as well as seasonally specific offerings made for festival icons or processional deities. This paper examines the shifting orientation to the comportment of Hindu ritual made possible through the apparatus of the Internet and attempts to unpack its relation to canonical representations of bhakti (devotional ecstasy). The online sites and ritual offerings of California Hindu temples are the focus of this paper and constitute an expression of Hindu religious comportment and identity in the North American Hindu diaspora.

Chapter from the Encyclopedia of Cyber Behavior. Cyber behavior and religious practices on the Internet have grown in popularity and acceptability over the past decade. Consequently, a number of religious traditions and individuals frequently use the Internet, while also negotiating between the offline and online world. The study of religious use of the Internet is contextualized within a number of phases and trends, which emerged as early as the 1980s and came to prominence in the 1990s with the study of religious rituals and behaviors online. Over the last fifteen years, the examination of religion online has moved from descriptive analysis toward more in-depth questioning as well as addressing some of the methodological challenges of studying religion online. The future direction and next phase in the study of religious cyber behavior includes targeting a number of areas yet to be analyzed thoroughly and in doing so, providing a more holistic understanding of cyber religious behavior.