ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how Muslim youth engage with Islam through the technological affordances of interactive websites and social media. The construction and dissemination of digital counter-narratives occupies the rest of the analytical discussion in this chapter, with inclusions from the online voices of young Muslims themselves. Muslim youth websites run the whole gamut of taste and lifestyle distinctions, from fashion to jihad, and from ascetic piety to halal dating. The jihadi may be a figure of fear, but becomes a figure of fun in humorous counter-narratives. Online posts from the diaspora often mock and satirise the juvenile jihadi. The chapter suggests that the sheer number and diversity of Muslim-based websites frequented by youth constitutes a heterogeneous and non-stop deluge of claims and counter-claims in relation to the Islamist position and to exhortations of extremism. Each Muslim ethnic group in the worldwide diaspora has its own set of websites through which current issues affecting Islam are constantly updated and debated.
