ABSTRACT
The chapter addresses the social transformations, shifting authority and gender hierarchies, and new opportunities for trans-local and transnational engagement made possible by digital and other “new” technical media. It traces long-term continuities in how Muslims in Africa employ mediation materials and platforms to debate, reflect on, and revise understandings of proper religious practice and communicate with the divine. The chapter also discusses the implications of the massive spread of digital technologies and social media platforms for the identity constructions, self-understandings, and learning endeavors by different categories of Muslim actors, and for their opportunities to partake in increasingly transnational arenas of controversy over religious and mundane matters. Regardless of a significant digital divide among Muslims, there is a clear trend toward online engagement with matters coined “religious” or “moral”. Internet-related platforms and activities enable the recombination of conventional learning with do-it-yourself formats of knowledge acquisition, decentering conventional modes, and sources of religious authority. The spread of digital technologies and internet platforms open up possibilities for Muslims to come together in new sociopolitical formations and religious constituencies and to mobilize followers in the name of an Islamic renewal of society and self.
