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History_of_Allah-com, page : 43
in the process.
The process whereby such individualized reconstruction of meaning displaces
the traditional self-evidence of a world-view defined by scholarly experts
may be regarded as an important component of modernity. The internet facilitates
this process, but it has not caused it. The website Allah.com is embedded in
a longer historical dynamic where Muslims at the social periphery of the scholarly
establishment questioned the epistemological basis of scholastic tradition and
employed a variety of means including the new media of the time to make every
individual responsible for understanding a simplified body of knowledge and for
130 WEB HISTORY
implementing it in practice (Hofheinz, 1993). Website history, at bottom, does
not begin with the web.
NOTES
1. Allah.com, Nov. 2001 vs. May 2005. Until Aug. 2004, the site called itself “The First Mosque of
the Internet—Since 1986.” As for other domains based on the name “Allah,” “Allah.org” was
registered March 19, 1996 by islamicity.com (the oldest and still one of the biggest Islamic
portal sites); it contains an interface to RealAudio and text versions of the “Names of Allah”
The process whereby such individualized reconstruction of meaning displaces
the traditional self-evidence of a world-view defined by scholarly experts
may be regarded as an important component of modernity. The internet facilitates
this process, but it has not caused it. The website Allah.com is embedded in
a longer historical dynamic where Muslims at the social periphery of the scholarly
establishment questioned the epistemological basis of scholastic tradition and
employed a variety of means including the new media of the time to make every
individual responsible for understanding a simplified body of knowledge and for
130 WEB HISTORY
implementing it in practice (Hofheinz, 1993). Website history, at bottom, does
not begin with the web.
NOTES
1. Allah.com, Nov. 2001 vs. May 2005. Until Aug. 2004, the site called itself “The First Mosque of
the Internet—Since 1986.” As for other domains based on the name “Allah,” “Allah.org” was
registered March 19, 1996 by islamicity.com (the oldest and still one of the biggest Islamic
portal sites); it contains an interface to RealAudio and text versions of the “Names of Allah”