Source: The Economist
FOR young people of Muslim heritage, the internet can either be a deadly temptation or a breath of fresh air. At worst, for some frustrated kids with time on their hands, it opens a window into a world of extremism where all moderating influences from real life (parents, teachers, imams) can be cast aside.
For other Muslim kids, however, the web seems to offer an escape of a healthier kind. As a counterpoint to a real-world existence where they are obliged to think, pray and behave by hard-and-fast rules, the net can bring them into a modern or post-modern realm where many different ideas and cultural styles can be questioned, discussed, discarded or combined. That was the experience of Amir Ahmad Nasr, a young writer and entrepreneur of Sudanese origin who was one of the participants in this year’s Oslo Freedom Forum (OFF), an annual human-rights festival that attracts brave and enterprising opponents of despotism from all over the world. At this year’s forum, the opportunities and perils of the net, and how to keep legitimate private communications safe, were much on people’s minds.