Islamic Algorithms: Online Influence in the Muslim Metaverse

This book examines how Islam is digitally mediated across devices and contexts, in a constantly shifting framework of technological change, enhanced access and digital literacy, and proactive engagement in Islamic online content by authorities and influencers.

What is the impact of this on societies, believers, and understandings of Islam? Islamic Algorithms provides a thorough exploration of cyber Islamic environments (CIEs) through representations of significant historical and religious influences across contexts and diversities. This ranges from jinn and angels through to contemporary influencers. Influence is built and developed across and within categories of interpretation, context, origins, and historical patterns - from the emergence of the Qur'an through to Islamic expansion in space and time. This includes the power dynamics of CIEs, incorporating a range of specific influences and ideas explored in Allah Algorithms. Religious authority and influence take multifarious forms, with underlying archetypal patterns that can relate to context and combinations of other factors and influences - traditional, historical, legalistic, cultural, genealogical, linguistic, interpretative and, in contemporary contexts - technological.

Islamic Algorithms raises issues of how digital content is embedded in contemporary understandings of Islam and their dissemination. Gary Bunt shows how perceptions of pivotal figures in Islam are informed by new generations of digital influences, which present a primary source of information and dissemination within younger Muslim demographics, with user expectations commensurate with other areas of online expression - such as apps, interactivity, and peer networking.