How simple would it be to make a Glatt kosher version of YouTube? All it takes is a bit of technical savvy (OK, a lot), people willing an interested in uploading videos and a team of editors who are willing to remove pictures of women. At least that's what transpires from Ynetnews.com's introduction to GlaTube, titled "Kosher version of Youtube hits Web."
Lesley Hazleton, the accidental theologist, sat down one day to read the Koran. And what she found -- as a non-Muslim, a self-identified "tourist" in the Islamic holy book -- wasn't what she expected. With serious scholarship and warm humor, Hazleton shares the grace, flexibility and mystery she found, in this myth-debunking talk from TEDxRainier.
I just watched an amazing multimedia presentation of a Sufi shrine. I recommend you to immerse yourself (full screen volumes turned up, no interruption), as much as you can on a computer screen, into the world re-imagined and captured here. More on the experience after the official description:
The Saturday issue of The New York Times had an article about a YouTube video and the people behind and in it. The piece opens with these lines:
A recent spate of arrests of Muslims accused of terrorism in the United States has revealed that many of them were radicalized by militant preaching they found on the Internet. Sheik Hamza Yusuf is one of nine influential American Muslim scholars appearing in a YouTube video repudiating radicalization. Now nine influential American Muslim scholars have come together in a YouTube video to repudiate the militants’ message. The nine represent a diversity of theological schools within Islam, and several of them have large followings among American Muslim youths.
Then it goes on sharing some of the words from the video and the background of those who said them. Here are the quotes from the article that are relevant to my topic: online religion.
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, director of the Center for the Study of Terrorist Radicalization at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said of the video: “It can be a powerful outlet. It is the kind of thing that, formatwise, is matching what’s being done by the jihadist groups.” Mr. Magid [leader of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society] said in an interview: “This is the beginning of a greater effort. Imams have to be virtual imams, answering questions on the Web, having blogs. We have to have open discussions for youths to talk about what is frustrating them.”
And now the video (that has a viewcount of about 10000 right now):
Last November a YouTube user, Haemony--or as I learned based on the link she provided Tiffany Christian, who is a graduate student in Oregon--posted a series of videos on "The Practice of Religion in Cyberspace." She described the videos as:
This video log is the culmination of a term-long project for a class of mine at the University of Oregon. My goal with this project was to investigate some of the ways people practice religion (specifically, neo-paganism) in cyberspace in order to assess the "artificiality" of the spirituality.
My opinions here are my own, created by my own research and aided by various published scholars. I do not claim to speak for the entire neo-pagan community. Citations: Berger, Helen A., and Douglas Ezzy. "The Internet as Virtual Spiritual Community: Teen Witches in the United States and Australia." Religion Online: Finding Faith on the Internet. Ed. Lorne L. Dawson and Douglas E. Cowan. New York: Routledge, 2004. 175-88. Print. OLeary, Stephen D. "Cyberspace as Sacred Space: Communicating Religion on Computer Networks." Religion Online: Finding Faith on the Internet. Ed. Lorne L. Dawson and Douglas E. Cowan. New York: Routledge, 2004. 37-58. Print.
