Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

A “Virtual Club” of Lithuanian Converts to Islam

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Muslims and the New Information and Communication Technologies

Part of the book series: Muslims in Global Societies Series ((MGSS,volume 7))

Abstract

Since its inception in the spring of 2004, the online forum at www.islamas.lt had throughout the 6 years of its existence been almost the sole source in the Lithuanian language for interactive online religious guidance and religious knowledge seeking among Lithuanian converts to Islam. In effect, the Forum had become a sort of “digital diaspora”, based on the converts’ invented exclusive “symbolic ethnicity” itself comprising two natures – a primordial Lithuanian and an acquired Muslim. As such the Forum served not only the religious needs of the members but was also a space of shared co-ethnic belonging for a particular group of people. In other words, it was both for and about Lithuanian converts to Islam. The chapter reveals, through an in-depth analysis of the by now defunct islamas.lt forum, the ways religious knowledge has been built and sought among Lithuanian converts to Islam, especially on an intra-communal basis. As sharing of knowledge inevitably involves those giving and receiving it, it is sought in the chapter to expose nascent internal authority structures and hierarchies within this “digital diaspora”. In a direct relation to this, the contents – nature and quality – of the (often “negotiated”) religious knowledge is also looked into.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    For analysis of a Swedish Muslim online discussion group and an international Islamic chat-room, see Larsson 2005 and Barak 2006 respectively.

  2. 2.

    I thank the anonymous reviewer at Springer for suggesting this important aspect in the context of the workings of the islamas.lt forum.

  3. 3.

    Since then a new website and an online forum at http://islam-ummah.lt/index.html/ were launched in October of 2010 and by late 2013 the online forum had accumulated over 40,000 posts by over 320 registered users and visitors. As the majority of the registered users are the same as in the closed forum, one can consider the new forum to be essentially a continuation of the earlier discussions. The present chapter, however, is exclusively limited to the analysis of the defunct forum.

  4. 4.

    Statistics taken from the main page of the online Islamas.lt forum at http://www.islamas.lt/forumas/index.php?act=idx. Accessed 21 April 2010.

  5. 5.

    Such position was enshrined in the rules of the Forum, where the rule number 5 stated: “No one from among the members of the islamas.lt forum is an official Islamic scholar, (except for those cases when it is publicly announced in the forum), therefore no one has a right to proclaim fatwas or a right to boast that has some sort of privileges to explain to others how they ought to live”. At http://www.islamas.lt/forumas/index.php?showtopic=273. Accessed 13 January 2010.

  6. 6.

    Quazi-legalist Islam in this article is a term used to designate a hybrid sub-dimension of revivalist Islam common to contemporary converts to Islam in the West, the main features of which are longing for a non-denominational fiqh and unreserved hostility to folk Islam.

  7. 7.

    For the “basic tenets of neofundamentalism”, see Roy 2004: 243–247.

  8. 8.

    With the election of a new Mufti in 2008, who is a graduate of an Islamic college in Lebanon, the situation started gradually changing – more and more converts would engage with the Mufti and seek his spiritual guidance. The current Mufti, in his turn, has made himself more accessible to believers than the previous one.

  9. 9.

    Personal e-mail communication from Vanda Vaitekūnienė, Head of the Population Census and Survey Organisation Division, Department of Statistics of the Republic of Lithuania, October 3, 2012.

  10. 10.

    Data from observations of on-line Muslim Internet forums and personal experience of the author. A note has to be added here – many of Lithuanian converts to Islam temporarily or permanently reside outside the Lithuanian borders.

  11. 11.

    A similar distribution was found in a research on 70 British converts to Islam (Köse and Loewenthal 2000: 101–110).

  12. 12.

    Expression ‘conversion career’ has been borrowed from Conversion Careers: in and out of the New Religions (Richardson 1978).

  13. 13.

    Hostility of Lithuanian converts to Islam toward the Lithuanian culture, though of a complex nature, is in part caused by the generally negative reactions to the conversion fact on the side of family members, colleagues and friends whom the converts eventually often distance from or even loose for good. Ultimately, left alone the converts tend to creative alternative identities, like the earlier mentioned ‘symbolic ethnicity’, which by default sets them apart from the mainstream culture (as a rule directly related to dominant ethno-confessional group(s)).

  14. 14.

    For more analysis of the islam-ummah.lt forum, see Račius, E. and Norvilaitė, V. (Forthcoming).

References

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Regional Studies, Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania

    Egdūnas Račius

Authors
  1. Egdūnas Račius
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Egdūnas Račius .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Theology, Section for Biblical Exegesis, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Thomas Hoffmann

  2. Department of Literature, History of Ide, University of Gothenburg, Göteborg, Sweden

    Göran Larsson

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Račius, E. (2013). A “Virtual Club” of Lithuanian Converts to Islam. In: Hoffmann, T., Larsson, G. (eds) Muslims and the New Information and Communication Technologies. Muslims in Global Societies Series, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7247-2_3

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation