Another factor crucial to the Salafi Da’wah’s [Salafism’s] success as a global religious movement was that its emergence coincided with one of “the biggest revolutions” of our times—the internet.[1] Marking its debut in the virtual religious landscape at about the same time as SPUBS was formed in 1996, www.salafipublications.com soon became a household name for those practising Salafism and an essential resource for those in search of ‘authentic’ Islamic material online:
The internet provides a lot of facilities, books, daroos; even the scholars and du’aat are ‘knocking’ on your computer. Just sit down and listen to anything you want. (Nada)
The website’s content, which originally emanated from campus activity during the early 1990s, was created by Abu Iyaad Amjad Rafiq, an active member of the University of Essex Islamic Society, who took the original contents of the University of Essex website with him when he left Essex in 1997 and went on to establish the official website for SPUBS, of which he remains a founding member. Abu Iyaad’s efforts in the digital space illustrate the impact and influence of “the emergence of [a] digitally literate” student, who could “go beyond traditional boundaries of imams, mullahs, and sheikhs” (Bunt 2018:3). The availability of ‘authentic’ online articles (i.e., with proofs and source references) compiled by the same du’aat who formed SPUBS, and its corresponding website became indispensable in clarifying the Salafi manhaj and clearing up any doubts and confusion for those in need of reassurance that they had found certainty and truth. The importance of only relying on an ‘authentic’ website was expressed by one respondent, who said she would only refer her relatives to websites that were truthful in their conveyance of the correct aqeedah (creed), as anything less would lead them to the Hellfire because of the misguidance contained within them[2].
Undoubtedly, therefore, the role played by translators during SPUBS’ infancy was crucial to its success as a revivalist religious movement (RRM), especially in terms of its online presence, and in many ways ended up being part of what Roy (2006) calls the “re-Islamisation” of Islam in the West (Roy 2006:22). Of equal significance was SPUBS’ ability to use these new “opportunity spaces”, which enhanced their missionary project by transforming “previously inaccessible or limited social arenas for the transmission of values” into public spaces of social interaction, thereby creating new possibilities “for augmenting shared meaning and associational life” (Wiktorowicz 2004:272). Hence, the emergence of a Salafi movement could be seen as the “coming out” of the private Muslim identity into public spaces, where the struggle for identity recognition is expressed in how “lifestyles are performed, contested, and implemented” (Wiktorowicz 2004:272). As a result, the global reach of the Salafi da‘wa in Britain also benefitted those who were unable to reach Salafi centres because of where they were based. Many of these people became part of a global Salafi community by tuning in to live duroos (lessons) that were broadcast using Paltalk (an internet chat room service).
This is a good example of how Islamic revivalism at the time differed from traditional forms of Islam in its “aim to rise above sectarianism” and “universalize the ummah” (Franks 2001:15):
It’s not just people in England who benefit from listening online, there are conferences broadcasted from other parts of the world too that we can listen to such as America. (Fatima)
Maryam’s case also exemplifies how the “world we now live in is in some profound respects quite different from that inhabited by human beings in previous periods of history” (Giddens: 1994/1990:5). Her “mediated experience” brought by the internet influenced the development of Maryam’s identity, enabling her to find the truth she was desperately in search of. Being able to access “a universe of social activity in which electronic media have a central and constitutive role” allowed Maryam to access articles from SPUBS’ website and take an academic approach to learning the fundamentals of Tawheed and the Salafi manhaj, which she achieved by combining downloaded reading material with audio lectures in English by Abu Khadeejah and translated Arabic lectures by one the most senior scholars of contemporary Salafi da‘wa h, Shaykh Ubaid al-Jaabiri. Maryam believes that at the time, she was most likely the only Salafi in the Caribbean island where she lived.
[1] ‘What Werner Herzog’s new film “Lo and Behold” reveals about the internet’, by Alexander Nazaryan, 1st September 2016, accessed 14th August 2020.
[2] Winter’s (2017) article entitled ‘Internet Piety: Cyber-Hinduism and the Performance of Online Devotion’, describes similar developments within Hinduism in the West whereby wider audiences are reached using internet apparatus. The paper explores how “ritual services available for purchase online … [relates] to canonical representations of bhakti (devotional ecstasy)” (abstract). Source:https://www.academia.edu/33101719/Internet_Piety_Cyber_Hinduism_and_the_Performance_of_Online_Devotion, accessed 21st November 2020.
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