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Virtual Negotiation of Sacredness and Rise of Digital Blasphemy
Abstract
The chapter outlines the interplay between religion and the everyday virtual lives of Pakistani Muslims, analyzing how social media platforms and online communities construct, express, and negotiate the concept of blasphemy as an enactment of their digital selves. Further, it delineates the emergence of mediated religious negotiations, discussing how the concept of blasphemy in both offline and online worlds intertwines in Pakistan. Additionally, it demonstrates how religious sensibilities articulated on digital platforms encompass far-reaching ramifications for the blasphemy debate in the country. Furthermore, the chapter examines the emergence of digital lynch mobs and how blasphemy killings are both commemorated and denounced across various social media platforms. It also explores social media as a reflection of everyday life, investigating the often-neglected shifts in religious sensitivities, the rising trend of atheism, and the movement towards secularization among young people. Moreover, the chapter addresses how social media’s widespread reach, coupled with its relative privacy and security, allows youth to express their religiously rebellious opinions, while also examining the underlying reasons for such attitudes. It further assesses digital surveillance, the radicalization of cyberspace, digital sectarianism, and the trend of online takfeer, scrutinizing the effectiveness of blasphemy and digital laws in preventing incidents of digital blasphemy.
... To make the digital environment safer, policy formulators need to address these weaknesses and provide a regulatory framework that ensures individual rights while encouraging innovation and security in the digital age. This meets the increasing call for an holistic approach to data government as well, one that considers balancing security needs with the intrinsic rights of citizens (Ali et al., 2024;Bilal, 2024;Akmal and Usmani, 2024;Jamal, 2024). ...
As digitization continues to expand and evolve, data protection acquires fundamental meaning, in direct relation to privacy and security and individual rights, as the volume of data generated increases with the ever-growing technological progress. Against this backdrop, it has become indispensable to protect all data against the rise in computer threats. Effective data protection measures improve individual privacy so that users can control personal information and mitigate risks caused by data violations. Besides that, the strong data protection paintings support individual rights like transparency and responsibility on the part of the organizations managing personal data. Data protection in this fast-changing era of technology gives way to a safer digital environment that supports the fundamental principles of trust and respect for individual autonomy.
This article discusses the relevance of the Barelvi-Deobandi schism in South Asian Sunnism to the understanding of Islam and Muslims about the modern Indian Ocean. By focusing on the status of Wahhabism in early Barelvi and Deobandi fatawa literature, it is argued here that the connections between South Asian and non-South Asian scholars represent longstanding relations that extend well beyond the Indian Ocean, revealing a history in the Indian Ocean as part of a global realm that predates European intervention. The European presence, however, did significantly impact the definition of Islam globally, giving rise to a modern Islam in the nineteenth century that is both a response to Europe and a rejection of pre-modern Islam. A history of the modern Indian Ocean as a discreet region nevertheless remains tenable when it is recognized that modern forms of Islamic universalism and cosmopolitanism arising in the region and connecting its constituent societies since the nineteenth century shape them differently from the past with significant consequences for inter- and intra-faith relations.
The recent digital revolution has brought a new form of social organization which has been
referred to as the Network Society. In the network society technological, social and media
networks define linkages of individuals, groups and organizations. Pakistan is no exception to
this development. The growth spurt in Pakistani social media use over the past decade indicates
a shift from traditional mass society to a (digital) network society, though the volume of network society in Pakistan is quite low compared to the total population. But the transition is
there, and the digital space allows faster and more information transfer along with provisions of
opportunities to develop larger networks to earn more social capital. However, it is important
to see how this digital world is being governed by the State and what sort of treatment is being
offered to its “citizens”, especially the religious minorities. This chapter explores key laws
related to cyberspace in Pakistan, and how religious minorities and dissident voices are being
treated in the online space.
Muslims have been the primary targets of Daesh’s attacks since 2014 in different countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. These attacks were based on its takfiri ideology. As Daesh official media and documents indicate, kufr (unbelief, infidelity) in Daesh’s approach is not limited to non-Muslims (original disbelievers), but Muslims are the most significant parts of kuffar (unbelievers) in its view and defined as incidental disbelievers. Through studying Daesh’s official documents and various Arabic, English, and Persian media productions, in an explanatory research, this article attempts to display Daesh’s takfiri approach toward Muslims and explains its historical and ideological roots, difference with Al-Qaeda’s takfiri approach, different approaches to takfir inside Daesh, main targets of Daesh’s takfir, and the reasons behinds its takfiri view. This article displays that for Daesh, the Muslims are limited only to Sunni Muslims who are accepting and following its approach. Other Sunni and non-Sunni Muslims are thus kuffar. This study also shows that the assertion of takfir has become a method for Daesh to discredit its opponents, such as Shi’a Muslims and other Muslim groups.
(Contemporary Review of the Middle East, vol. 7, no. 3)
In the post-9/11 scenario, the rise of the Taliban and their coalition with Al-Qaeda have engendered new discourses about Islam and Pakistan. In this paper, I present a multi-sited ethnography of Bari Imam, a popular Sufi shrine in Pakistan while re-evaluating certain suppositions, claims and theories about popular Islam in the country. Have militarization, Shariatisation, and resurgence movements such as the Taliban been overzealously discussed and presented as the representative imageries of Islam? I also explore the Sufi dynamics of living Islam, which I will suggest continue to shape the lives and practices of the vast majority of Pakistani Muslims. The study suggests that general unfamiliarity of people outside the subcontinent with the Sufi attributes of living Islam, together with their lack of knowledge of the varieties of identification, observance and experience of Islam among Pakistanis, limit not only their understanding of the land of Pakistan, but also their perception of its people and their faith (Islam).
The Internet in Everyday Life is the first book to systematically investigate how being online fits into people's everyday lives. Opens up a new line of inquiry into the social effects of the Internet. Focuses on how the Internet fits into everyday lives, rather than considering it as an alternate world. Chapters are contributed by leading researchers in the area. Studies are based on empirical data. Talks about the reality of being online now, not hopes or fears about the future effects of the Internet.
The past two decades have witnessed a notable escalation in sectarian violence in Pakistan. Since 1979 doctrinal disputes between Sunnis (who constitute the majority of Pakistan's population) and Twelver Shi‘is (who number between 15% and 25% of the population, and are to be distinguished from Islami‘ili, Khoja and Bohri Shi‘is) has given place to full-fledged sectarian conflict. Militant Sunni and Shi‘i organizations have carried out assassinations and bombing campaigns that have killed political rivals as well as children and the innocent at prayer in mosques. In the first seven months of 1997 alone—the year when sectarian conflict reached its apogee—one hundred people died in such attacks in Punjab. The violence escalated further when in the first ten days of August 1997 (immediately preceding the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the country's independence) another seventy people were killed in incidents of sectarian violence.
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