Sociologica, 1/2016 - Copyright © 2016 by Società editrice il Mulino, Bologna. 1
Essays
A Response to Comments.
by Adam Possamai, Bryan S. Turner, Joshua M. Roose,
Selda Dagistanli and Malcolm Voyce
doi: 10.2383/83888
Belonging and community is a common thread running through all of these
commentaries. Another common theme is the question of religious authority, hierar-
chy and power in cyber practices of religion. In a sense, these broad thematic points
are linked; one cannot be considered without the other. Hierarchical power structures
and authority dictate the dominant religious interpretations to the exclusion of mi-
nority and marginal religious interpretations. In the examples provided in our paper
[Possamai et al 2016], pronouncements from facilitators of fatwa sites, those claiming
an authoritative voice as regards everyday Shari‘a practices, reveal clear boundaries
of inclusion/exclusion that define notions of community and belonging. In this sense,
cyber religious practices do not differ much from offline congregations. This point of
similarity between the online and offline adherents informs, in turn, the idea of re-ter-
ritorialisation. That the cultural and geo-political/territorial situatedness of religious
communities shapes the practice and interpretation of religion should come as no
surprise even though there is an ever-present sense of belonging to a wider collective,
a global ummah. In other words, practicing Islam in a shared secular cultural context,
breeds a particular interpretation and everyday practice of the faith while a sense of
belonging to and identifying with other Muslims across the globe also acknowledges
how faith is always already globalised, transcending national boundaries. New tech-
nologies facilitate this process of globalisation further but, as some of these academic
commentaries show, religion has elided and transcended geographical borders long
before the internet.