philosufi

“Rapid Liberalization of the Wiki”: The Muslim Brotherhood & Social Media

Hey kids, the Muslim Brotherhood has launched IkhwanBook.com! (Ikhwan = brother.) Now you’ve finally got a place to post all those wild pictures of you, Omar, and Naguib protesting like gangstas at the Al-Fath mosque demo. Those bitchin’ cross-posted videos of angry bearded men sitting behind desks? Yup, them too. Got to post up-to-the-minute gossip on Mubarak's government? IkhwanBook has it all, and angry smileys with swords to boot! If you’re a little concerned you might enjoy yourself too much on Facebook, head on over to IkhwanBook, scheduled to open September 2010. (Bummer: There's no Philosufi page on IkhwanBook.)

IkhwanBook is the latest part of the Brotherhood’s plan to stay relevant and accessible to Egypt’s population. Egypt bans all religious political parties, so this is the Brotherhood’s end run around the restrictions. Since the government controls traditional media, the Brotherhood has turned to social media to make their voice heard. Their reason for IkhwanBook? To “promote moderate Islam and clarify who we are.”

So where exactly do you watch and upload videos of angry bearded men sitting behind desks? Well, IkhwanTube.org of course! Often I wish I spoke Arabic. Al-Gama’a is one reason, and IkhwanTube might just be another. No doubt there’s hours of power in convenient 10-minute chunks just waiting to school me. Can’t say much more until I sit with someone who can translate for me.

The third part of the trinity is IkhwanWiki.com (why not WikIkhwan? Seriously, if you want to name something, talk to us first), which has teh awesum Flash-carousel-entry-page-that-does-nothing-but-rotate-slowly-and-show-you-pictures-of-bearded-men and a difficult-to-find-entry-point-into-the-website (just below a picture of a befezzed, bearded man – I’ll leave it to you to guess who that might be. Hint: He’s pretty important to the MB). You can’t turn off the music, which is always a good sign. On the other hand, there’s music, so we know they’re not complete buzzkills (thanks, Deborah, for pointing that out). I ran the site through Google Translate, and the title for the page on how to edit entries has the best translation – “Rapid liberalization of the wiki.” The logo is the Wikipedia puzzle-piece globe coloured green with the MB swords superimposed. That worked out pretty well for them.

Copyright violations aplenty. But I totally get that the Muslim Brotherhood isn’t afraid of Facebook’s lawyers. Messrs Zuckerberg et al can say whatever they want about owning “-book” like the IOC owns “-lympics” but big whoop. (Can Wikipedia even afford lawyers?) What’s really interesting about the move to social media for an Islamist group is this: It makes perfect sense. It is the right move for them, as it draws people together, gets them to network, and allows others to mine the networks and cultivate relationships for their shared goals. Sure, I mocked the idea of IkhwanBook, but that’s because I’m coming from my skewed “the world is my source of entertainment” perspective. For me, social media is about being social. For them, social media is about strengthening the bonds of brotherhood and gaining control over their message and narrative.

The more governments exercise their power to control and limit communication, the more people will find a way around it. And those ways around it? They’re usually underground, which makes them harder to penetrate, and their members have already shown commitment. Luckily for the Egyptian government, IkhwanBook is right on the surface, which will make it easier to monitor. I wonder what the Muslim Brotherhood thinks of that? If nothing else, it makes Waheed Hamed’s job much easier.

The Ornament of the (Virtual) World: Second Life’s Al-Andalus

 

I am not a gamer. I say that with no arrogance or judgment. I learned, from alarmingly strong (albeit thankfully short-lived) addictions to things as simple as Tetris, Solitaire, FreeCell, Minesweeper, Wolfenstein (yeah, I’m old), and various word games that I am far too inclined to spend too much time that I simply don't have in such pursuits. I just have to stay away from such things. I don’t have enough discipline to devote only small amounts of time to them, to spend just a few minutes taking a mental break. No, I start playing and three hours later, I feel I have nothing to show for my time. (Strangely, I don’t feel this way if I spend, say, nearly three hours playing real-world Scrabble.) Knowing this about myself, I have always been too nervous to explore virtual worlds, computer role-playing games, etc., fearing I would never again get anything done in the “real” world.

So of course I was especially intrigued to discover an article called "Al-Andalus 2.0" in the July/August issue of Saudi Aramco World (a very well-produced print magazine that is always full of interesting and original stories, and which will give you a subscription free for the asking) about the virtual community of Al-Andalus in the 3D online game Second Life. The article is written by Joshua Fouts, the Senior Fellow for Digital Media and Public Policy at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, a non-partisan NGO, who did a study with Rita J. King (whose list of roles is too long and varied to include here) called “Digital Diplomacy: Understanding Islam Through Virtual Worlds”.

King and Fouts chose to look at Second Life for various reasons, including the fact that it is completely user-created, it is the largest of the virtual worlds, and the vast majority (more than 70%) of its users are from outside the US. Given my ongoing interest in interreligious encounter and dialogue, one of the things I found most compelling about their research is this:

In our study, we learned that the more time that users invest in their Second Life experiences, the more they come to express high degrees of creativity and understanding of each other.

Apparently, in the Second Life community of Al-Andalus, hundreds of users from all over the world are exploring modern-day manifestations of convivencia, a term that evokes the predominantly creative and peaceful coexistence of Jews, Christians,and Muslims that once prevailed in medieval Spain under Muslim rule. We are reminded, however, in a 2009 lecture by Islamic studies scholar Dr. Franz Volker Greifenhagen of the University of Regina, that convivencia is often “romanticized and idealized” and that “this age was also characterized by violence and conflict.” He sees convivencia, therefore, as describing “not just the co-operative, but also the conflicting co-existence of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities.”

I suspect this is an accurate characterization of the tensions present in Second Life’s Al-Andalus. While the Saudi Aramco World article paints a very positive picture of convivencia in the game, the short video documentary the researchers made about it (see below) suggests that there are significant interreligious and intrareligious tensions: the video makes mention of one player’s avatar, who is perpetually upset about visitors to the virtual mosque who don’t remove their shoes, and wants to ban them from the simulation. Other players oppose his wishes.

I was also fascinated to read, for example, that one player from Singapore performs some of the optional prayers (known as nawafil) in La Mezquita, the virtual mosque. There’s obviously a great deal going on within this game; the video doc (below) gives a taste of what it must be like.

I am definitely captivated. But when I’m two weeks away from starting my honours thesis, it’s probably not the time to start exploring virtual life. On the other hand, my thesis is on multiple religious belonging, so maybe I can work SL’s Al-Andalus into it somehow…