Muslims Finding Answers Online

His e-mail flickering, his brain churning with 7th century verses from the Koran, Muqtedar Khan--sporting a trim beard, Indian pajama bottoms and a Georgetown University T-shirt--hunches over his Falls Church, Va., computer at midnight.

Beneath a Chicago Bulls schedule and a picture of the Muslim holy city of Medina, Khan, 31, begins his favorite late-night activity: his life as an online alternative mufti.

Once Muslims seeking muftis--Islamic legal experts--would have had to travel from village to village to find wise and respected folk. The muftis--some of whom had no formal education but committed the Koran to memory--provided legal opinions on questions that came up in everyday life: Was it permissible to use perfume tinged with alcohol? What kind of man was ideal for marriage?

The demand for a good fatwa, decision on religious doctrine or law, continues. But to get one today, Muslims can just surf and click. Poof! A whole World Wide Web of cyber fatwas appears, including those laid down by respected muftis from Egypt, some iconoclasts with no credentials at all, and a few younger, hipper alternative muftis like Kahn with Islamic legal backgrounds but without official titles.

Khan won’t formally label himself a mufti--in part because of the political baggage. Today, “grand muftis” in some Muslim governments issue controversial fatwas--like the well-known 1989 edict from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which in effect condemned author Salman Rushdie to death.

But Khan, a doctoral candidate at Georgetown, admits he and others have added their voices to a traditional custom and made it a detached, e-mail, virtual highway of muftis and fatwas.

“The Internet has made everyone a mufti,” Khan says. “In the past there was only the local mufti. The Internet has opened up a variety of opinion. It’s the globalization of the mufti.”

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The Internet mufti is part of the endless stream of God on the Internet. From cyber Seders to virtual confession rooms, religion is almost as big as sex on the Internet. (Type “God” into the Google search engine and, at last count, you get 14,994 hits, the exact number you get from keying in “sex.”)

Like virtual monks and online meditation centers, Internet muftis are both lauded and loathed for unconventional methods and spins on their religion.

“Muqtedar is part of the new phenomena where people on the Internet--some may want to call them the New Muftis--give an opinion on Islamic legal issues,” says John Esposito, director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and a professor of Islamic studies at Georgetown University. “The Internet allows for this absolute freedom and free play. The downside is any idiot can say anything. The upside is it allows for what Muqtedar winds up doing--adding another voice.”

Khan, a tidy-looking man who usually wears pressed khakis, polo shirts and white sneakers, didn’t plan to plunge into the world of Islamic advice, let alone advice on the Internet.

Four years ago he arrived at Georgetown to study for his doctorate in international relations and political theory. He plunged into the area’s active Muslim life, writing articles for journals, speaking at conventions and surfing the Muslim sites on the Internet.

He soon became managing editor of the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences and editor in chief of American Muslim Quarterly, two progressive academic journals for Muslims in America. Last year he was named one of the 40 most influential Muslims in America by Majalla, an Arab weekly newsmagazine in London.

“It’s just one magazine’s opinion,” Khan says. “I’m sure there are other ones that would put me in the worst lists.”

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People seeking advice sometimes engage in “fatwa shopping” if they don’t initially hear the answer they want, says Yvonne Haddad, a professor of Islamic history at Georgetown University who researched fatwas and muftis on the Internet.

This kind of fishing for the answer they want to hear--sex before marriage, anyone?--is what some scholars and members of the Muslim community find troublesome.

“I personally find the cyber fatwa ill-advised,” says Yusuf DeLorenzo, former advisor on Islamic affairs to the president of Pakistan. “First, you don’t always know who the mufti on the Net is. In the old days, people knew the mufti as a member of the community, and he was respected for more than a Web page.”

Khan acknowledges such criticism. But he sees himself as a younger, Muslim American voice, who won’t lead people to hell but might lead them to a realistic life in the United States.

“I dare to think on my own,” Khan says. “And more and more people come to me.”