Omaha: Darul Ifta, an Islamic website that publishes religious rulings on everyday life by scholars at the Darul Uloom seminary in Deoband, Uttar Pradesh, had to field this unusual question: “Is the use of Google Pay, PhonePe and bank associated payments apps halal (permissible in Islam)? If halal, can we use the rewards of these apps in the light of the Quran (the words of Allah) and the Hadith (the words of Prophet Mohammed)?”
The questioner was concerned that accepting cashbacks and discounts might be haram (impermissible) as Islam has rules against accepting interest payouts. (The question has been edited for clarity.)
The Darul Uloom’s response to the question was unequivocal. “The definition of interest does not apply to cashbacks or discounts received on purchases made through these apps, but falls into the category of rewards. Therefore, it is allowable to take advantage of them,” it declared.
Among other questions on the Darul Ifta website: Can I buy something on instalments? What is the position on taking a loan to buy a house? Is there anything in the Quran about using a dining table?
These questions, ranging from the prosaic to the esoteric, represent people’s attempts to reconcile religion and everyday life in a country where civil laws exist but are sometimes unevenly administered, paving the way for religion to fill the void.
They also represent something unique: the unexpected mix of modern technology and religion. And unlike what you’d expect, this marriage is happening not because of some politician’s decree or a religious leader’s diktat but because of ordinary folk.
From Islamic scholars in Deoband answering theological questions to a small Hindu temple in Kerala’s Thrissur using WhatsApp to make religious services available to the diaspora to a church that found a way to hold mass through the covid pandemic, every religion is harnessing technology to address the needs of its followers.
This is happening because of a peculiar set of circumstances, including the availability of cheap mobile phones and low data tariffs, which have widened the availability of the internet. In 2023, India had as many as 821 million active internet users, or 55% of the total population, according to a report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India. Of them, nearly 54% live in rural India.
The faithful have become consumers who have to be wooed.
To be sure, using technology to aid religion isn’t a new phenomenon.
In the mid-15th century, the invention of the moveable-type printing press by German inventor and craftsman Johannes Gutenberg laid the ground for the Bible to be printed and make its way into every Christian home. Closer in time, American tele-evangelists used the medium of television to popularise their faith, while Indian gurus of various faiths have leveraged YouTube to acquire a followership.
The increasing use of mass media and social media has meant that religious institutions and personalities have acquired features that are like more secular institutions, said Nandagopal R. Menon, research fellow, cluster of excellence ‘Religion and Politics’, University of Münster, in Germany.
For instance, religious institutions and personalities even resort to advertising or marketing to build a “brand” to differentiate themselves. “The faithful (have) become consumers who have to be wooed, and new strategies to reach them have to be constantly developed.”
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The temple
While technology has been used for nefarious purposes, it can also be a force for good. Take the case of Karkidathu Kavu, a small Hindu temple set amid the rolling rice paddies in rural Thrissur, Kerala. The principal deity is Vishnu, personified by an incarnation known locally as Atoor Thevar.
Even as late as the early 2010s, the nearest all-weather road was a kilometre away. The tiny temple could only be accessed by a dirt path that was barely wide enough for one car. When this writer used to visit as a child, storks catching fish in flooded rice paddies would watch somnolently as the occasional vehicle manoeuvred perilously close to the edge to allow an oncoming vehicle to pass.
The temple, which caters to some 125 families living in the area, used to be a small decrepit structure in a sea of paddy. Until a few years ago, the entrance to the temple was a small tiled structure where ritual offerings for the gods in their separate shrines were kept before being distributed.
On the financial front, things were so bad, says Ravi C.C., a member of the temple’s executive committee, that there were times when the priests had to buy paraphernalia for rites from their own pockets because the temple did not have enough income. To address the problem, in January 2021, the temple leaders decided to start a WhatsApp group. It grew slowly and today has 456 members, according to Ravi.
Many of the members were diaspora who once lived in villages around the temple, including this writer’s mother. At some point, Ravi said, the temple began advertising poojas or ritual offerings. They shared details of the temple’s bank account, making it easier for devotees to transfer money, which they did.
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The temple was in a “sad state” before the WhatsApp group was formed, said Ravi. But now it makes about ₹50,000 a month on average. That’s not a significant amount but the priests no longer have to pay out-of-pocket to keep the temple going.
Today, an ornate arch heralds the temple’s entrance. The surrounding path has been tiled and the dirt path leading to the temple has become a tarred road.
To be sure, this is not the first Hindu temple to have an online presence. The Guruvayur temple Android app has been downloaded more than 100,000 times. And the official app for the Tirupati Thirumala temple in Andhra Pradesh—among the richest Hindu temples in terms of annual earnings—has been downloaded more than a million times.
The temple in Tirupati, where between 60,000 and 80,000 people wait in line every day for hours to view the main deity, also sells tickets for so-called online darshans, where, for a fee, devotees can view various rituals online.
A website, titled Kshetradarshan, provides information on how to pay for an online darshan. The temple’s YouTube handle posts videos with instructions, and services are publicized through Facebook, Instagram, Telegram and X (formerly Twitter). Additionally, the trust that runs the temple offers e-books on Hinduism and devotional music, which can be downloaded.
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The church
Fr. Roji Mathews Abraham was preparing for a prayer meeting at a parishioner’s house one day early in 2020 when he got a circular issued by Joseph Metropolitan, the head of the Malankara Marthoma Church, a sect of eastern Christianity based in Kerala.
It was Lent, a 40-day fasting period leading up to Easter, and Fr. Abraham’s church was conducting prayer meetings in the homes of the laity. But covid was raging across the world. In India, Kerala was particularly affected. The government of India responded by imposing restrictions.
At the parishioner’s house, the young vicar informed the people gathered that he had just received a message from the high priest asking that they obey government restrictions and avoid the assembly of people in a church. People could offer worship at home and the church would help, he said. Then came the lockdowns.
About 300 families worship at Fr. Abraham’s small Zion Marthoma Church in Elikkattoor. The rural, largely middle-class parish, situated in the lower reaches of the Western Ghats, is about 75 km from state capital Thiruvananthapuram.
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Elikkattoor is the kind of place where everybody knows everybody else. The village parsonage adjoins the local lower primary school, where kids congregate every evening to play volleyball. The river Kallada flows through the village. Rubber is the main crop and a major occupation, although some grow other crops such as tapioca. Even the church has some 10 rubber trees, although there is no real revenue from them.
The church is a focal point for the region’s Christian families. On important days of the Christian calendar, as well as Onam, the harvest festival celebrated by Malayalees irrespective of religion, and celebrations such as Independence Day, people gather at the church to give thanks and worship. Local youth and children put on dances, plays and other cultural programmes.
During the pandemic, Fr. Abraham and a group of young priests tested the waters by holding clergy meetings online. These meetings served to reassure the clergy of the soundness of their plan. Eventually, the church conducted a public worship for a parish in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates, through a video messaging app, says Fr. Abraham. This was a proof of concept of sorts before rolling the service out to the public.
The madrassah
The Darul Uloom is arguably the most noteworthy part of the otherwise dusty Uttar Pradesh town of Deoband. The madrassah, established in 1866, employs some 400 people, of whom nearly a fourth are teachers.
Deoband is a small town in Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur district. The 2011 Census (the latest for which numbers are available) records some 92,000 people living in Deoband, nearly two-thirds of whom are Muslim.
The Darul Uloom’s department of internet and online fatwa (religious ruling) receives as many as 1,000 questions in a month. Since 1866, the seminary has issued more than 50,000 fatwas, according to Muhammadullah Qasmi, who is with the Darul Uloom’s internet and online fatwa department.
Darul Ifta, the seminary’s website, receives questions through email, post, courier or manually, and the organization replies to all these questions, said Qasmi. While a select few fatwas are published online, the others are answered through email, he said.
Ensuring access to religious guidance is paramount, particularly in today’s fast-paced world.
“It was a conscious effort to make our scholars’ knowledge and guidance more accessible to a wider audience, particularly those who might not be able to visit Deoband in person or face difficulties to post questions and receive answers through post,” Qasmi said, in response to an e-mailed query.
“While some may argue that convenience could lessen the perceived importance (of the institution and its rulings), we believe that ensuring accessibility to religious guidance for a broader audience is paramount, particularly in today’s fast-paced world.”
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Wooing the faithful
“Media, especially mass media like TV to social media like YouTube and Facebook, etc., have definitely changed the landscape of all major religions,” said Menon of the University of Münster.
“My experience, mostly drawing on my work among Muslims in Kerala, is that new media has allowed ordinary lay Muslims (I mean those who do not have a systematic and years-long education in the Islamic subjects like scriptural interpretation and law—something that Deoband provides) to enter the Islamic field,” he added.
While Muslim scholars are sometimes critical of mass media and social media, they “use the same media extensively to make direct contact with the faithful. The ulama also are not averse to lay participation—to a limited extent—as long as it is not critical of them”, Menon said.
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Several Muslim religious organisations in Kerala even have their own newspapers and YouTube and television channels, Menon pointed out. “So, rather than a simple story of decline of traditional authority and the emergence of new lay power centres, it is more a story of a deeply contested media field with multiple voices speaking for Islam,” he said.
There are also concerns around commercialisation or cheapening the faith by making something that took effort earlier easily accessible now. For example, a Christian Mass particularly among Catholics was not considered complete without the ingestion of the sacred host distributed by the priest after the ceremony, but when service shifted online, this was not possible, Menon pointed out.
“The Hindu case is comparable. The prasad distributed after the pooja cannot be received directly when viewing the ritual online. But nowadays that can also be “sent” to the devotee by courier or post.”
Rahul Chandran is a former Mint journalist and now a writer based in Omaha, Nebraska.