The Media Line – Google Your Way to God

The Media Line

Google Your to Way to God
Written by Hadas Kroitoru

Just years ago, imams would physically climb up the steps of a mosque’s minaret to recite the five-times-a-day call to prayer. It was the actual voice of the imam from the top of the tower that drew Muslim worshippers to the mosque.

With the advent of technology, however, that arduous climb is simply a labor of the past.

Today, the traditional announcement is pre-recorded and broadcast over a loudspeaker from the top of the mosque’s minaret, set on a timer to be delivered five times a day.

Technology has influenced religion in other ways as well – the Internet has created a global community for worshippers of all faiths, connected by just a click of the mouse.

Internet users can experience a virtual prayer service, be digitally transported to Jerusalem’s Western Wall, read the Koran from their I-Pod, and electronically send prayers to holy sites and places of worship – all from the comfort of their own homes.

Geography is no longer a limitation; technology is providing unprecedented opportunities to reach God.

Self-pronounced “cyber rabbi” Kalman Packouz reaches more than 300,000 people every week through a religious newsletter e-mailed and faxed to subscribers through the net’s largest Jewish content website, Aish.com. The Shabbat Shalom newsletter has allowed the Miami rabbi to create a “cyber congregation” numbering in the thousands, which for many, he says, is their only connection with Judaism.

“The Internet has made my ability to increase 1,000 or 10,000 times what I could do just sitting in Miami Beach,” says Packouz. “I am reaching 300,000 people a week, and that is hard to do if you are just one person without the Internet.”

For the Muslim community, countless websites offer transcriptions and recordings of Friday sermons, prayer services and lectures from around the world, allowing Internet users to access a wide range of Islamic thought.

“Audio uploads are very popular and podcasts are also catching on, says Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra, chair of the inter-faith relations committee of the Muslim Council of Britain.

“You are not only teaching your circle of worshippers in your local mosque, but people who have logged on anywhere in the world are also listening and learning from you.”

And it is not just the outreach power of the Internet that is giving religion a boost.

Nazareth’s Church of the Annunciation is offering a new service through its website, Mirezo.com, which allows Internet users to receive a personal blessing from the church’s priest over the Internet. For a $10 donation, worshippers can make a prayer request online and then log onto the website at a pre-arranged time to watch the priest say their name, their blessing, and light a candle on their behalf through live video feed.

“Christians from every corner of the world have been logging on to our site. Some pray for health, love or happiness, others on behalf of a sick relative or friend,” says Mirezo project manager, Sa’id Salem.

“We feel wonderful about being able to give Christians from across the globe the ability to light a candle and pray at this site, even if they are doing so remotely. The fact that they can watch the service live adds a tremendous amount to their aspiration to fulfill their wishes,” he says.

Worshippers from around the world can watch other sites in the Holy Land as well.

Every year, millions of Jews and non-Jews make the trip to the Old City of Jerusalem to visit the Western Wall, considered Judaism’s holiest site. Traditionally, messages and prayers are written on scraps of paper and placed in between the stones of the wall, where they are said to directly ascend to God.

Those who can’t make the physical trip, however, can simply visit one of several Internet sites broadcasting live footage of the Western Wall, or send a prayer by email or fax to Jerusalem to be placed in the cracks of the holy stones – a method that is often quicker than making the local commute – and certainly the international flight – to Jerusalem to deliver a message yourself.

“People feel the Western Wall is deep in their hearts, they are interested in it, and they are taking advantage of our generation’s technological developments to connect to the glorious past of the Jewish nation,” says Shmuel Rabinowitz, rabbi of the Western Wall.

In addition to providing live footage of the wall through its Kotel.org website, the Western Wall Heritage Fund receives about 100 emailed prayers and messages per day.

“In recent years, people have used a fax and then an email. We are emissaries of these people. We don’t read their messages – we simply press on the printer, print their requests and then we put them in the Western Wall stones,” says Rabinowitz.

Over the past 10 years, about 23 million people have made the trip to another such site, hosted by Aish.com. Providing live feed from the Western Wall 24-hours-a-day, Rabbi Packouz says Aish’s “wall-cam” uplifts people’s spirituality and increases their interest in Judaism. It gives them the opportunity to feel a bit of the “electricity” he says visitors often experience when they physically touch the wall.

“People have written me that they have the wall on their computer all the time,” says Packouz, who founded the site in 1996. (Dr. Ronald Goldstein created the site.) “They feel that it connects them to the Almighty, to the Jewish people, to Israel.”

Packouz recalls the story of a woman from Seattle who told Packouz she was bedridden and unable to travel to Israel. She thanked him, he said, because the wall-cam brought Israel and the Western Wall to her.

For one North American site user the only dilemma was which direction to face when praying. He wrote to Packouz: “I know you are supposed to pray to Jerusalem – to the east – however, my computer faces south – do I daven (pray) east toward Jerusalem or south so I am looking toward the wall [on my computer]?”

Lori Guterman, from Staten Island, New York, has an image of her two sons together at the Western Wall set as the “wallpaper” on her computer. The picture, she says, is a freeze frame she saved off the wall-cam site.

“I often go to Israel and love being at the Kotel. So when I can’t be there, I look at it every day from the Aish HaTorah website,” she says.

“It is so amazing, the technology of today,” says Guterman, who also uses the dedication option on the wall-cam site to commemorate the death of her late husband, posting his name “where the whole world can see it on the anniversary each year.”

“It brings me great comfort to see his name with the Kotel,” she explains.

One of the main appeals of Internet technology is that it gives worshippers easy – and usually free – access to religious resources, teachings and prayer services at significant religious sites throughout the world.

Such is the case at Jerusalem’s Al-Aq’sa Mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites.

“A worshipper can read the sermon’s transcript from the Internet. He can also appoint someone from his family to record the service in his absence,” says Sheikh ‘Ikrima ‘Sabri of Al-Aq-sa Mosque. “People with a video camera or a small recording device can enter the mosque and record. We see it happening, and we aren’t opposed to it.”

“I may not be able to attend a major Muslim conference in Malaysia, or in Qatar or somewhere, but I can log in and follow the proceedings from the comfort of my home,” says Mogra, who uses the Internet to listen to sermons and lectures of Muslim imams and scholars.

Islamonilne.net has some of the highest ratings on the web among religious and Islamic websites, attracting an average of 13 million page views per month from users in more than 200 countries.

The site’s discussion forums and live dialogue services are some of the most widely viewed pages on the site, says Nadia El-Awady, head of the Islanonline.net office of outreach and cooperation. Its recordings of Friday sermons, she says, allow people from all over the world to listen to what imams are saying thousands of miles away.

The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a Catholic community of oblate priests and brothers, allows Internet users to request to have a votive candle lit on their behalf in churches all over the world through a service offered on the missionary’s website.

Administrative assistant June McGeehon, who has used the service herself, says people often choose to have a candle lit at certain significant times and places. The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem during Christmas, St. Joseph’s in Nazareth during Fathers’ Day, and Ireland’s Shrine of Our Lady of Knock during St. Patrick’s Day, are all popular picks, she says. The service received 379 requests for votive candles in 2006.

It is the next best thing, says McGeehon, to visiting the church yourself.

Internet users can even consult a religious scholar anonymously online, or use the Internet as a resource for religious education.

With just a click from her computer in Westwood Massachusetts, Nancy Mollitor, teacher and tutor at Temple Beth David, is connecting Jewish youth to Israel. She plans to have her students send their own email messages to the Western Wall, a service she says will make the holy site more “real” for the young children of this reform community, most of whom will likely never travel to Israel themselves.

Visitor feedback provided by Islamonline.net indicates that users find the site’s content has been helpful in combating negative representations of Islam in the mainstream media, serving as a resource for both Muslims and non-Muslims.

A 20-year-old male from Finland wrote that the site was “brilliant” in its ability to provide an alternative to news sources like BBC and CNN. Similarly, Judy Bennington-Dykes from the U.S praised the site, writing that it served as a wonderful tool to inform her students about “what Islam in Iraq really is” – as opposed to the American media which she says has her students thinking Iraqis are all “terrorists to be converted to democratic citizens.”

Faisal Quader from Toronto wrote:”[IslamOnline.net] is an incredible anddynamic resource. . . Our youngergenerations require in-depth guidance in this era where a harmonious fusion ofhigh-tech with principles of Islam is becoming increasingly challenging. To thatend, your site does a lot of justice to a noble cause”.

While there is growing concern about misrepresentations of religion being spread over the Internet, for the many worshippers who choose to log on and surf the net toward spirituality, technology offers unparalleled paths to practicing their faith.

“I believe this is a way of bringing people closer, in case someone needs it. It makes communication easier and quicker,” says Father Gabriel Naddaf from his office at the Church of the Annunciation. “Today the Internet web is wide – it’s huge. The church can also benefit by these means in order to reach as many people as possible, to which it can convey its message.”

“We regard science and religion as two parallel lines which do not cross each other,” says Sheikh ‘Sabri of Al-Aq’sa Mosque. “We benefit from science, as it is strengthening religion. We say science calls for religion, and that it is what it should be.”