Religious authorities in the digital age: the case of Muslims in Canada

Drawing on qualitative interviews with 278 self-identified Muslims from across Canada, this article examines how Muslim Canadians engage with sources of religious authority online. We focus on how participants assess the authoritativeness of websites, which figures they follow, and whether the Canadian context factors into how they interpret Islam- related material online. We both agree and disagree with scholarship that characterizes the Internet as democratizing the traditions of Islam ( Bunt, 2018; Eickelman & Anderson, 2003; Mandaville in Theory, Culture & Society, 24:101-115, 2007; Robinson in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 19:339- 354, 2009; Sands in Contemporary Islam 4:139-155, 2010), and with who see it as unchanging (Berkey, 2016). Our interlocutors suggest that the online context fosters a notable and visible bi-directionality of authority; moreover, content remains shaped by view counts and algorithms. Lastly, despite the online nature of the World Wide Web, the materiality, textuality, and visual markers of the Qur'an remain vital for our interlocutors.