I'm starting my blog "Islam in a New Media Age" today and I'm hoping it will help nurture an emerging discussion about Islam and Muslims beyond the customary fixation with extremism and fanaticism. You've probably heard and read about how religion has found technology, but what does that imply for the way religious beliefs and practices are discussed and re-imagined as new media are adopted? The interpretation of Islam is no longer the prerogative of a few learned scholars who've spent years studying the complex body of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), nor is the space for this interpretation limited to Islamic universities and halaqas (gathering of people to study Islam) at the mosque. A new generation of Muslims -both in the Muslim world and in diaspora- speaks for Islam using a variety of media, including television, radio, magazines, the Internet, music, and film. All religions have been mediated in one form or another, but what's new and different about today's mediation is its ubiquity, the spectacularity of the religious performance, and the unprecedented adoption of its practices by regular people.

This blog is about these new voices who arguably challenge the clerical authority of traditional Islam. It's about the implications of mediation for the ways in which contemporary Muslims understand and speak about their faith. It's also about the impact of the intersections of religion, consumption, and popular culture on our obsolete dichotomies of tradition versus modernity, the religious versus the secular, and East versus West. I've written about some of this in other forums, but I'd like this blog to function as a resource for anyone interested in learning about a dynamic Islam as experienced by millions of Muslims across the world in an age of easy and creative access to means of media production.