(Sorry for cross-posting) Dear colleagues, the first issue of the renewed CyberOrient journal resulting from the collaboration of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association and the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague is online. CyberOrient presents original, peer-reviewed articles and books reviews on the online representation of any aspect of Middle Eastern cultures, Islam, the imagined "Orient" and the use and impact of the internet in the Middle East and Islamic countries. Vol. 5, Iss. 1, 2011 The Islam-Online Crisis: A Battle of Wasatiyya vs. Salafi Ideologies? http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=6239 Mona Abdel-Fadil Islam Online has been one of the most prominent and stable Islamic websites since it was founded in 1997. However, in March 2010 Islam Online suffered a major crisis, which has come to be known as 'the IOL-Crisis'. This is a suitable case for exploring whether multiple layers of authority are at play in online religious communities. At the time of the crisis, I was conducting fieldwork with the social team of IOL-Arabic. This article provides rich ethnographic detail about the time before, during, and after the crisis – as experienced by the social team. I outline how the social team made sense of the crisis through producing crisis-narratives that draw on Islam Online's institutional narrative. Moreover, I illustrate how narratives about the crisis gradually shift to alternate explanations, in tact with new developments of the crisis. I conclude with reflections on what types of authority were drawn on during the IOL-Crisis. Overcoming the Digital Divide: The Internet and Political Mobilization in Egypt and Tunisia http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=6212 Johanne Kuebler Comparing the patterns of Internet use for political mobilization in Egypt and in Tunisia, this article shows how the Internet as a relative free space can be a vital factor in opening windows and expanding the realm of what can be said in public. However, the Internet as such appears not to be sufficient to radically transform the society as a whole. Instead, the case of Egypt shows how traditional media such as the press can serve as a bridge to the general public sphere, helping to operate results of discussions online and to transform the newly acquired space of discussion into actual power on the street. Beyond the Traditional-Modern Binary: Faith and Identity in Muslim Women’s Online Matchmaking Profiles http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=6219 Anna Piela Finding a suitable partner in both diasporic and non-diasporic settings proves increasingly challenging for young Muslims, especially those unable or not wanting to search within their kinship networks. At the same time, religious matchmaking websites are becoming increasingly common especially among Muslim women. As studies of Muslim matchmaking sites tend to focus on the ever-popular topic of the headscarf and its associations in the matchmaking context, a much more comprehensive study of the specificity of the online religious identities and self-representation is required. This paper examines a number of profiles of young Muslim women using online matchmaking sites and discusses broad themes of faith, ethnicity and identity that emerge in the analysis. New Media and Social-political Change in Iran http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=6187 Mohammad Hadi Sohrabi-Haghighat The increasing penetration of new communication technologies into everyday life has attracted a growing interest in the social, economic and political implications of these technologies. Most studies have looked at Western democratic societies and the literature on the developing countries is unfortunately small in comparison. In 2009 Iran witnessed a political upheaval in the aftermath of the presidential election in which the Internet was utilized effectively by the political opposition. News and videos of police brutality and repression were uploaded online, including onto social networking sites, in what was called the ‘Twitter Revolution’. Expectations rose on the capacity of new media to bring about democratic change in Iran. Later developments, however, showed that ‘mouse clicks’ alone do not produce profound political changes. In this article we look at the role of the new media and the social and political functions it took on in the post election period. e-Islam: the Spanish Public Virtual Sphere http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=6206 Arturo Guerrero Enterría The increasing presence of Islamic content in cyberspace has made it possible for an ever-expanding Muslim public space to be established. In Spain, institutionalised Islam has found new routes for communication, information and visibilisation with these new technologies. However, as this paper will show, its strategy is based on traditional mass media models of communication, namely the one-way and one-to-many communication models. This leaves room for other types of actors to use strategies based on different communication models: two-way and many-to-many, taking better advantage of the potential in new information and communication technologies to more easily find a niche in Spanish Muslim cyberspace. Book Review: Islam Dot Com: Contemporary Islamic Discourses in Cyberspace http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=6202 Vit Sisler With growing Internet penetration rates and the proliferation of new media outlets in the Muslim world there is a simultaneously growing academic interest in possible social and political changes endorsed by these media. A recent contribution to this rapidly expanding body of research has been provided by Mohammed El-Nawawy and Sahar Khamis. They have co-authored a book called Islam Dot Com: Contemporary Islamic Discourses in Cyberspace, which deals with the virtual Muslim public sphere and the contestation of and deliberation over religious authority and Muslim identity online. Follow us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/CyberOrient! Feel free to forward or post this email online. All the best, -- Vit Sisler Charles University in Prague Faculty of Arts & Philosophy Institute of Information Science and Librarianship New Media Studies http://uisk.jinonice.cuni.cz/sisler/