Review: Cyber Sufis: Virtual Expressions of the American Muslim Experience (Islam in the Twenty-First Century)

Author(s) Wael Hegazy
Contact Wael Hegazy, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA. E-mail: wael_hegazy@ucsb.edu
Issue CyberOrient, Vol. 14, Iss. 2, 2020, pp. 99-103
Published December 15, 2020
Type Book Review
Abstract If you have made up your mind that the embodied rituals are the main dominant phenomenon in modern Sufism and the cyberspace can only contribute to the marginalization of religious experience, this book is out to persuade you otherwise. This is an ethnographic study that investigates the virtualization of Sufi rituals, religious education, spiritual practices, and public outreach adopted by the Inyati Sufi order. It is also an attempt to explore an American Sufi digital paradigm that helps to balance the traditional ways of performing rituals and coping with the new age of shifting to cyber rituals.
Keywords Disembodied Sufism, Online Sufi Experience, Cyber Islam, Online Sufi Rituals, New Sufism, American Sufism, Inyati Order, and Cyber Sufi Identity.