A LONG STRUGGLE AHEAD: Sultan Shahin set up a website that has taken on the religious right head-on.
Praveen Swami, The Hindu, March 24, 2009
Back in the summer of 1999, Sultan Shahin found himself being hectored by an earnest young man outside London’s Finsbury Park mosque.
“You Indian Muslims are cowards,†Shahin was told “but soon you will have just two choices: either to become a true Muslim like us, or to perish.â€
For Shahin, the experience was transformative. “It became clear to me that the Islam that I believe in was under serious threat,†he says, “and that I would have to do something if the religion I loved was not to be demeaned by the evil that was being spoken in its name.â€
Last year, Shahin set up a website that has taken on the religious right head-on. Though run on a shoestring budget and without the help of full-time staff, New Age Islam (http://www.newageislam.com/) is visited by hundreds of readers every day. Its electronic newsletter has over 29,000 subscribers.
New Age Islam provides its audience to a wide range of original theological and political writing that does not figure in the mainstream media. In recent weeks, New Age Islam has seen debates on Niyaz Fatehpuri, a twentieth-century literary figure with unconventional ideas on the concept of divine revelation, as well as the neo-conservative televangelist Zakir Naik. Continue reading New Age Islam in the Digital Age →