La présence de religions dans le numérique (document en anglais)

SUMMARY

I. THE EXAMPLE OF A COMPANY NAMED OUMMA.COM (3)

⇨ Presentation of the company (3)

⇨ The principal mission (3)

⇨ Website contents (3)

⇨ Attendance (3)

⇨ Controversies around its old forum (3)

⇨ Current debates (4)

II. PRESENCE OF RELIGIONS ON THE NUMERIC TERRITORY (4)

1. INTRODUCTION (4)

2. NEW PRACTICES: I’M HALAL OR CATHOOGLE (4)

⇨ Applications for practicing his religion (5)

⇨ The boom of religious dating sites (5)

⇨ Educating and gathering (6)

3. E-PRACTITIONERS, YOUNG PEOPLE ARE NOT AFRAID TO PRAY ONLINE (6)

⇨ Example of the Catholics (6)

4. WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF RELIGIONS ON NUMERIC? (7)

5. CONCLUSION (7)

EMERGING RELIGION COMMUNITIES IN THE WEB AREA

I. THE EXAMPLE OF A COMPANY NAMED OUMMA.COM

Oumma.com is a website created in September 1999, he is used by the Mussulmen community in France. The website is managing by SARL Oumma media.

⇨ Presentation of the company

The website describes itself as “an independent initiative of cultural, civic and informative” indented to the Mussulmen community in France. The website is the result of a collaboration between Muslims and non-Muslim intellectuals from several countries. The name’s origin for the site comes from the Arabic “umma”, which refers to the Muslim community, beyond the Schisms and borders, but also in a double fraternity the Adam (of all men) and Abrahamic (between all religions).

⇨ The principal mission

The main mission of the website is the free flow of information on the religious and ritual life of the Arab world. Its slogan is “Islam en toute liberte”, it means Islam in complete freedom.

⇨ Website contents

The website publishes articles written by various stakeholders. It also provides online video interviews with various personalities in OummaTV2 a WebTV. A selection of books is also available; they all deal with the Islam.

The site has proposed in the past sections dedicated to practical life, such as ads or dating agency.

A U.S. diplomatic cable revealed by WikiLeaks refers to Oumma.com, Ambassador Charles Rivkin said “this is a remarkable website”. Oumma.con is considered by the United States as an appropriate platform to meet “political and media actors” with which values are shared.

⇨ Attendance

Claiming a number of more than six million connections per month and over 120,000 subscribers, the site presents itself as “the first Francophone Islam website by his visit rate per day”.

According to Alexa Internet , most of the connections are made from France (67.8%), but a significant proportion comes from other francophone countries like Algeria (3.8%), Morocco (1.8%) and Senegal (3.6%) and then we find Canada (5.2%).

⇨ Controversies around its old forum

Until 2004, the site hosted a forum. Some comments were held by users on this forum and these comments have earned to the website some accusations to be an Islamic extremism, it was reported by the newspaper Marianne . The editors of the site have responded to these allegations. The National Consultative Commission on Human Rights denounced in his report in 2004 the “multiple overflows racist” and “many heinous contained, Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites” As a result of these abuses; the leaders of Oumma.com transferred the forum to another independent site Mejliss.com.

⇨ Current debates

The Prochoix Association criticizes the site for his support to Tariq Ramadan, which Oumma.com publishes his texts. Particularly because they diffused a polemical article in October 2003 “Critique of (new) intellectuals community”, the consequence was accusations of anti-Semitism from the Observatory of communitarianism.

The website Oumma.com strongly refutes any association with Islamic fundamentalism in his responses to his writing to Prochoix Association. And refutes to be the official organ of the Muslim brothers in France. These critics were revived in March 2008 when the site published a controversial tribune of Bruno Guigue in response to the published February 27 of 2008 in the daily newspaper “Le Monde”, titled “The UN against the human rights”.

In 2012, Oumma.com interviewed Dario Hunter , the first rabbi who was born Muslim, and then refused to publish the interview because of the sensitive nature of the subject. Dario Hunter responded by publishing the full interview on his blog (KosherUnicorn.com), he described the perspective of the website as “narrow-minded and fundamentalist”.

II. PRESENCE OF RELIGIONS ON THE NUMERIC TERRITORY

1. INTRODUCTION

Religion in numeric version, most of the practitioners do not believe or do not want. According to a survey about religions and numeric by the CSA institute of the Observatory Terrafemina-Orange , 69% of them believe that it is not desirable that the different religions are present on Internet. This is an impressive figure, Isabelle Jonveaux (sociologist of religions) explained by the fact that these believers “insist that religion keeps its difference and do not trivialized, religion has to keep its place out of time”.

An attitude that worries Delphine Horvilleur, rabbi in Paris “we should not fall into this simple equation”, she also said “technology is equal to the death spirituality, our generation can do something noble and spiritual, and this can be a vector of a

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