Going Global Already: Muslims, Islamic Propagations and Internet Usage

Shorttitle: This study investigated the use of the Internet as a channel of religious communication by Muslims. As revealed in the pre-research investigation, Muslim Web Sites are not entirely dedicated to Islamic propagation. Therefore, it is expected that documenting these pre-research findings would provide preliminary data on future investigations regarding Muslims use of the Internet. The study found that the level of "educative" and "informative" articles on Islamic propagation displayed on Muslim home pages was still very low. These home pages were found to contain more "informative" type of articles, a type that concentrated on news about Muslims affairs around the world rather than on propagating Islam. The result of the study disclosed that 48% of information on Muslim home pages was "informative", and only 37% of the sites were found to be "educative" on Islamic doctrinal issues. And "other" information amounts to 15%. In addition to this, considerable amount of misinformation about Islam were found to be present in some Christian sites.