By: Sonny Zulhuda
Today I shared my thoughts on the theories of cyberlaw from the Islamic perspective at this Tazkia Institute Bogor, Indonesia. The event, named Monday Forum, is entirely online and was attended by dozens of academia and students from the Institute.
The lecture centres on a very crucial question: How does Islam perceive cyberspace and its regulations? The 1.5-hour talk started with the explanations of the origin and development of cyberspace, the converging nature of Internet technology as well as the rise of User Generated Content (UGC). I also highlighted four main components of the talk, namely cyberspace, law, cyberlaw and the shariah.
The main takeaways of the talk are as follows:
- Cyberspace is a beautiful innovation that presents limitless opportunities and poses disruptive challenges to the society. As a beneficial technology, Islam encourages us to utlise all those opportunities presented by the Internet for the purpose of upholding the maqasid of Shariah (Preservation of faith, life, intellect, lineage and wealth).
- Islam emphasises on the idea of justice and social welfare. So much of this can be achieved (or battled) in the Internet. We need people to familiarise, capitalise and exploit the Internet to achieve the the ideal of justice and social welfare. Therefore Islamic educational institutions shall embark into this area and prepare people with the correct skillsets to be able to conquer this digital disruption.
- Islamic higher educational institutions shall quickly look into developing the cyberlaw syllabus and programmes to prepare the leaders and workforce needed to win the this digital battlefield.
More can be explored from my slides here.
TRIBUTE 