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History_of_Allah-com, page : 42
and thus spread “The Leading Islamic Revival Plan.” This particular case
may reflect an inflated self-confidence, but it merely magnifies the growing importance
of the role the individual assumes in picking and choosing and remixing
and interpreting for him- or herself what Islam means.
Of course, we must not ignore that Ahmad set himself up in the garb and as
the successor of Islamic scholars ("ulama#), as the one who serves and completes
Tradition. But his own words (in the preface to his al-Ta"qib al-matin" ala
“Manahij al-mu"addithin”) betray that behind the ostensible defence of tradition
there lingers a new distribution of roles. The scholar—that is now me: “Praise be
to God—I was the first to establish Islamic sites on the Internet (…) I was
Shaykh of the Internet in the early eighties, all in order to serve our traditional
heritage (al-turath) [and on my sites can be found] most of what God has made to
come about through my hands and those of my wife.”
Defining ‘myself’ as the foremost scholar signals a dialectic whereby traditional
learning is not merely reconfirmed as a model but is consciously reconstructed
by the individual. Allah.com illustrates this reconstruction of tradition,
illustrates how an individual uses new technology to make sense, by way of bricolage,
of the world and of his religion, reducing and simplifying the canon for the
sake of facilitating access to what “every Muslim needs,” and breaking down hierarchies
may reflect an inflated self-confidence, but it merely magnifies the growing importance
of the role the individual assumes in picking and choosing and remixing
and interpreting for him- or herself what Islam means.
Of course, we must not ignore that Ahmad set himself up in the garb and as
the successor of Islamic scholars ("ulama#), as the one who serves and completes
Tradition. But his own words (in the preface to his al-Ta"qib al-matin" ala
“Manahij al-mu"addithin”) betray that behind the ostensible defence of tradition
there lingers a new distribution of roles. The scholar—that is now me: “Praise be
to God—I was the first to establish Islamic sites on the Internet (…) I was
Shaykh of the Internet in the early eighties, all in order to serve our traditional
heritage (al-turath) [and on my sites can be found] most of what God has made to
come about through my hands and those of my wife.”
Defining ‘myself’ as the foremost scholar signals a dialectic whereby traditional
learning is not merely reconfirmed as a model but is consciously reconstructed
by the individual. Allah.com illustrates this reconstruction of tradition,
illustrates how an individual uses new technology to make sense, by way of bricolage,
of the world and of his religion, reducing and simplifying the canon for the
sake of facilitating access to what “every Muslim needs,” and breaking down hierarchies