How Ancient Empires and Modern Algorithms Connect Faith (By Timothy Chang)

A twenty-first-century believer does not have to turn to the religious leaders of his/her home church or mosque to learn more about faith. The believer logs into TikTok, Instagram, or Reddit. Within moments, a teenager living in Chicago finds himself/herself arguing theology with a peer residing half a world away in Jakarta, Indonesia, while browsing through religious videos analyzing doctrines, discussing personal testimony, or breaking down centuries’ worth of religious history. One cannot help but see this ultraconnected digital religious environment as something totally new that sprang forth as soon as the fiber optic cables and silicon chips became ubiquitous. History, however, shows that this notion could not be further from the truth. While our modern algorithms and digital grids represent the latest evolution of this phenomenon, history proves that the physical trade routes built by the Christian European empires and the great Islamic empires served as the original World Wide Web, connecting the continents not only as trade routes but as channels of religious change.

The network effect can be observed in the context of massive empires. Historically, Western scholarship tends to think of a consistent, uncompromising, antagonistic rivalry of the Christian West against the Islamic East. The truth was far more integrated. While European empires and Islamic powers clashed, they were equally intertwined in matters of trade and rule. In fact, the most successful periods of empire saw European rulers govern most of the Islamic world. The single ruler who controlled the most Muslim followers was the British monarch: the British Empire, along with its French, Russian, and Dutch rivals, accommodated more Muslims within their realms than did any of the independent Islamic countries.

These great empires depended on global trading pathways, like the Silk Road, the trans-Saharan trails, and maritime connections in the Indian Ocean, to exercise their power. Merchants were the main “influencers” of the day. As they sailed from port to port, peddling their silks, spices, and incense, merchants brought their ideas with them. Empires came to realize that in order to control their empires economically and politically, they had to incorporate and institutionalize the religious networks. For instance, after Napoleon conquered Egypt in 1798, French colonialists decided to govern the territory with Islamic judges and translated the French Emperor’s declarations into Arabic. The British and Russian empires employed bureaucracy to regulate religious ceremonies, one example being the annual Hajj trip to Mecca. The historical networks were safe havens where diverse communities were engaging in dialogue, exchanging information, and evolving in belief, proving that globalization and religious expansion have always existed in synergy with each other.

At present, the internet represents a modern-day “Digital Silk Road” in that the physical geography of camel caravans, mountain passes, and sailing vessels has been replaced with computer algorithms determining which users we communicate with and whose ideas we embrace. In the same vein, whereas in ancient times religious people from around the world had to converge into crowded bazaars, today young people from different cultures and backgrounds meet within the virtual environments created by popular social media platforms. Modern Christians and Muslims use the internet as a place to develop their religion-based identities, to explain why they believe what they believe to others, and to establish transnational bonds beyond the traditional geographical limits. Just as the news about Islam could travel across Central Asia by word of mouth, the modern version of this religion can spread globally within seconds as a result of watching some YouTube videos. As a result, young believers have become empowered by technology and are free to define their faith on its own terms, irrespective of local limitations.

At the end of the day, examining the development of religion from a historical perspective forces us to realize that while our technologies change drastically, humans do not. The tools of human interaction have advanced tremendously, from ancient trade routes across the dusty, harsh desert floor and wooden ships that crossed distant oceans to fiber-optic cables and screen-lit computers. But human nature has not changed one bit; young people today are connecting to the worldwide web for precisely the same reason their predecessors took to ancient trading caravans: to belong to something greater, to discuss the highest truths, and to discover sacredness in an increasingly interconnected world.

Works Cited

Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History. Volume 4 (1200-1350). BRILL, 3 Aug. 2012.

“Islam in the Ancient World | EBSCO.” EBSCO Information Services, Inc. | Www.ebsco.com, 2022, www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/islam-ancient-world.

MOTADEL, DAVID. “ISLAM and the EUROPEAN EMPIRES.” The Historical Journal, vol. 55, no. 3, 3 Aug. 2012, pp. 831–856, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0018246x12000325.

Wikipedia Contributors. “Spread of Islam.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 4 Nov. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spread_of_Islam.