Gathering Storm

4 www.digitaldaya.com Moreover, the Internet penetration among the global Muslim community has been swelling at a compound annual growth rate of 30% since 2006; projecting forward we will see a total online population of 1 Billion people by 2015. So, we come to the big question, of great concern at home and across theWest,what impact will the use of the World Wide Web by Muslim leaders have on one-quarter of the world’s population? This big question requires an examination of the foundations upon which Muslim cultures are built and the impact of the creation of global interaction at the personal level.Anyone can log on and find news of interest to both Muslims and non-Muslims, and with the phenomenal growth of the web in just 20 years,we have empirical evidence that web reach is expanding at the speed of digital. Accordingly,who are the leaders within the Islamic community who maintain an active web presence. What are they doing with it? And what are the implications of foreign policy for the U.S. and the rest of theWestern world? The Changing Face of Middle East Leadership Formorethanfivedecades,MiddleEasterncountries have been governed by highly-centralized power structures – hereditary monarchies, strongman military governments, highly organized theocracies and other agents that relied on controlling the flow of information to the people. We see this “old-school” approach today in Iran, a country that has seen regular protests from the Green Movement – protestors made up of the middle class, the educated, the moderate progressives within Iran’s hard-line, theocracy- based government.When these brave, progressive protestors take to the streets in reaction to an alleged “rigged” election, broadcast media are prevented from showing these protests. Reports of Iran’s “people voting with their feet” still filtered out. Grainy images from cell phones spread organically across the globe despite Iranian government efforts to keep internal these reports of rebellion.And the West was quick to show its support of the protestors on social media sites. Facebook: A Platform for 21st Century Politics Winning Hearts and Minds on the World Wide Web Source: World Internet Usage and Population Statistics December 31, 2009; Global Muslim Population,A Report on the Size and Distribution of theWorld’s Muslim Population October 2009 by Pew Research Center; U.S. State Department Religious REGION Freedom Act; CIAWorld Factbook; and Digital Daya Intelligence Databases Note: Middle East region comprises the ArabWorld (the Gulf, Levant, and North Africa regions), Israel, Iran, andTurkey. East Asia includes the Muslim populations in ASEAN and Far East regions. Central Asia includes Muslim populations of CIS (except the Baltic), Russia, Western China, and Afghanistan. Middle East EastAsia SouthAsia/Indian Subcontinent CentralAsia Sub-SaharanAfrica Americas & Europe 459,878,950 228,599,000 485,970,000 128,639,000 240,333,000 24,880,400 1,568,300,350 104,127,683 38,631,352 31,448,814 19,912,079 16,964,966 14,963,535 226,048,428 MUSLIM POPULATION ONLINE MUSLIM POPULATION % OFTOTAL ONLINE MUSLIM 46% 17% 14% 9% 8% 7% 100% Muslim Population Online by Region