However, this gap cannot merely be reduced to economic difference and financial access to Internet technology. Certainly, what appear to be cultural reasons for the digital divide are often due to differences in economic opportunity. But while it is difficult to distinguish whether economic or cultural factors are more salient in explaining the digital divide, the different levels of interaction between religious traditions and technological changes raise several crucial questions: how will a computer revolution shape the changes within religious doctrine, and how do religious traditions affect people's ability to adapt to such a revolution?

Examining how technology has affected doctrine and gender in Islam will illuminate a key example of the interplay between technology and religion. By exploring the effect of the Internet on the internal logic of Islam, as well as the enlarged global influence Islam must play when digital barriers are broken, we hope to highlight the possibilities for a dual reformation.

Information to Reformation

The impact of the first industrial revolution on western Christianity undoubtedly led to the momentous movement of the Christian Reformation. Will the impact of the new revolution of information lead to a comparable Islamic Reformation? In the 20th century Westerners have debated whether the Protestant Reformation was the mother of capitalism in Europe or whether the Christian Reformation was itself a child of earlier phases of the capitalist revolution. Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism advances the view that the Protestant Reformation was the mother of capitalism rather than a child of economic change. Other thinkers, however, have identified pre-Reformation technological inventions as part of the preparation for both the birth of Protestantism and modernday capitalism.

Francis Robinson, professor of history at the University of London, has placed the printing press at the center of the Protestant movement and within the Catholic counter-offensive. He writes, "Print lay at the heart of that great challenge to religious authority, the Protestant Reformation; Lutheranism was the child of the printed book. Print lay at the heart of the Catholic counter-offensive, whether it meant harnessing the press for the work of Jesuits and the office of Propaganda, or controlling the press through the machinery of the Papal Index and the Papal Imprimatur." The question here is whether the Internet and cyberspace and the third industrial revolution will do to Islam what the first industrial revolution did for Christianity.

In some respects the Christian Reformation was a return to the biblical roots of Christianity. Likewise, the information revolution may help Islam realize some of its earliest aims more effectively. The first casualty of the information revolution, however, may be national sovereignty, which will shrink in the wake of the Internet and cyberspace. The printed word played a major role in the construction of nationhood and in reinforcing national consciousness. Computer communication, on the other hand, is contributing to the breakdown of nationhood and may play a role in the construction of trans-ethnic communities.

While the first industrial revolution of capitalist production and the Christian reformation became allied to the new forces of nationalism in the Western world, the third industrial revolution and any Islamic reformation will be increasingly hostile to the insularity of the state. Islam and the information revolution will be allies in breaking down the barriers of competing national sovereignties. The new technology will give Islam a chance to realize its original aim of transnational universalism. The Internet could become the Islamic super-highway.

Many Muslims have already risen to this challenge of the new information age with Islamic resource guides on the Internet, Cyber Muslim Guides, the Islamic Information and News Network and web servers with Islamic material. As Childers writes, contrary to some assumptions that "modern communications would engender a new and generally Western-oriented cosmopolitanism, they are predominantly spreading the idea of a freedom that is translated by the receivers as endogenous freedom including freedom to rejoin one's real kinship (whether larger or smaller) and to re-examine the validity of one's own ancient social values." Thus, the Internet may have the effect of rekindling community.

The Ballot Enters the Harem

But there is one fundamental area where Islam and the new information revolution have yet to converge: the relationship between men and women. Will the new information technology fundamentally alter gender relations?

The Muslim world has traditionally vacillated between two doctrines on this issue. One doctrine has been to treat genders as separate but equal. Genders co-exist in homes; separation of genders is inevitably moderated by family ties. This is qualitatively different from the separation of races and ethnicities. The gender doctrine of "separate but equal" could survive the new information revolution.

Under the new technology the computerized hijab is at hand: women can more easily stay at home while continuing to participate in a computerized workplace. This possibility is amply demonstrated by a woman from the British Asian community in her response to a BBC radio presenter who expressed concern that the computer can, in fact, enhance the isolation of women. The woman commented, "Well, if they're just stuck at home then why not use the Internet to get connectivity with people across the world... the Internet can also provide an access for women to possibly start providing their own services-- maybe hobbies that they're interested in or business that they have a keen eye on." By gradually abolishing the distinction between home and the workplace, Internet technology may give women the opportunity to integrate themselves into the economic and political global community.

But many Muslim societies treat women as "separate and unequal." Aspects of that perspective are rooted in a view of the Shari'a that dictates that women inherit half of what men inherit and that, in certain circumstances, holds the testimony of women in court to be worth less than that of men. Such Muslim societies have assumed that there were two different doors of knowledge, one for each gender. Many Muslim societies had assumed that there were branches of knowledge that were not fit for women and children under 16. The Taliban regime in Afghanistan has carried this theory of two tiers of gender knowledge to its extreme.

New information technology is going to destroy the social justification for gender discrimination. Increased information may be insusceptible to gender differentiation. The digital divide may give way to digital democracy. While it is true that what men know about sex, pornography, politics, and corruption may also be accessible to women through the Internet, the new technology will pass a death sentence on the old tradition of female seclusion that has existed since the Abbasid dynasty in many Muslim societies. The traditional forms of seclusion of women will no longer survive a technology in which women can declare their presence and, in time, assert their rights.

Toward Islamizing the Internet

In spite of these new freedoms and new possibilities afforded by the Internet, the technology is not necessarily free of influence from existing systems of economic, political, and social inequality. New computer technology and the Internet may be inaugurating new kinds of stratification and reform, and Muslim countries are bound to be affected. Distribution of real power in the world is not based on "who owns what" but on "who knows what." It has not been the power of property but the power of skill that has been the ultimate international arbiter. For example, oilrich Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia or Kuwait have not been able to exploit their own petroleum resources without the skills of Western companies and their engineers.

How is the Muslim ummah to relate to these "negative" consequences of the Internet and computer communication? There is now a growing movement among Muslims that seeks to Islamize scientific (and other forms) of knowledge for the greater project of Islamizing modernity itself. The Islamization of computer communication is seen as a core component of this quest. As Nasim Butt explains, "As information technologies are becoming the basic tools of manipulation and control, access to them will become the decisive factor between control and power or manipulation and subservience. In this powerful dilemma, the way forward, surely, is to modify the technology at the point of use to meet the needs and requirements of Muslim society." Butt suggests an alternative scientific paradigm that supposedly maintains the values of Islam and provides some broad guidelines for the Islamization of science and technology.

Science in the more isolationist Muslim discourse has often been viewed as distinct from religion. More recent Islamic revival initiatives, however, insist on a greater convergence between the two. There is a new nostalgia for ancient scientific practices. Advocates seek to enforce Islamic ethical parameters on both scientific research and, more importantly, on applied science. Some Islamicist interpretations would now regard any scientific venture that carries the potential for harmful or unnatural consequences as un-Islamic. Under this paradigm, research into germ warfare would probably be disallowed outright. But how about areas of mixed blessings, like genetic engineering, which may have beneficial or unnatural and harmful uses? The verdict here may depend on the particular application. For example, nuclear weapons have been seen as defensive against Zionist, Hindu, or Western enemies. Pakistan's development of a nuclear weapons program may be a rationalization of this interpretation.

The Islamization of science may also refer to attempts to accord science greater Islamic identity and Muslim representation. At some point this quest may entail both indigenization and domestication. Indigenization involves increasing the use of indigenous resources, ranging from native personnel to aspects of traditional local knowledge, in the process making them more relevant to the modern age. Domestication, on the other hand, involves making imported versions of science and technology more relevant to local needs.

In the realm of computer technology, domestication would begin with a substantial employment of indigenous personnel. This would require, first, greater commitment by Muslim governments and institutions to promote relevant training at different levels for Muslims, both men and women; second, readiness on the part of both governments and employers to create a structure of incentives that would attract Muslim men and women to those fields; third, greater political pressure on computer suppliers to facilitate training and cooperate in related tasks; and fourth, stricter control by Muslim governments of the importation of computers.

The indigenization of high-level personnel in the local computer industry should in time help indigenize the functions of computer technology. When the most skilled roles in the computer industry in a Muslim country are in the hands of Muslims themselves, new types of technological tasks will emerge. This Islamization of computer personnel should also facilitate further Islamization of users of computer services. But efficient indigenization and domestication of the computer still require a gradualist and planned approach.

The difficulty of this task is compounded by the technological dependence engendered by multinational corporations and their respective governments. As technology levels increase in Muslim countries, so too may these countries' dependence on external corporations in order to maintain the technology. Additional strategies for decolonization of computer technology are thus required. These may include diversification of the sources on which a country is dependent, horizontal interpenetration to promote greater exchange between Muslim countries themselves, and vertical counterpenetration to enable Muslim countries to work in the citadels of power in the West.

Launching Islam

The possibility that the Internet may stimulate an "Islamic Reformation" is based on the assumption that individual Muslim men and women are real actors in the information revolution and not merely objects, and that they are producers of knowledge and not merely consumers of knowledge. Are Muslims of both genders making progress in narrowing the technological gap between Islam and the West?

But what would be the larger global implications of an Islamic Reformation? Will not a reinvigorated Muslim ummah lead to the clash of civilizations, as predicted by Harvard professor Samuel Huntington? It can be argued that Islamic renewal will not only galvanize the Muslim ummah from within but also, by rekindling the spirit of itihad, it will reopen the doors of constructive engagement with other civilizations.

At the height of its glory Islam attempted to protect religious minorities, even if Muslims did not always respect women's rights. Jews and Christians had special status as People of the Book, a fraternity of monotheists. Other religious minorities were later to be accorded the status of dhimmis (protected minorities). Under the system Jewish scholars rose to high positions in Muslim Spain. During the Ottoman Empire, Christians also sometimes attained high political office: Sulaiman I (1520-1566) had Christian ministers in his government, as did Salim III (1789-1807). The Mughal Empire integrated Hindus and Muslims into a consolidated Indian state; Emperor Akbar (15561605) carried furthest the Mughal policy of bringing Hindus into the government. All this may be an indication that Islam is inclusive and open to dialogue precisely when it is politically most influential. It is this historical precedent that is likely to undergo a resurgence under an Islamic Reformation. A self-confident and self-assured Islam is a better partner for peace than a threatened Islam.

The toughest synthesis of all is yet to come - synthesizing the rights of women with the rights of men to create a more balanced moral equilibrium. It would be particularly fitting if the Martin Luther of the Islamic Reformation turned out to be a woman, posting her 95 theses of reform not on the door of a Wittenberg mosque but universally on the Internet.