Everyone knows that the work of scholars in America is often considered to be irrelevant to the real issues of life. According to the mild anti-intellectualism that seems to be an endemic feature of American culture, anything that is “academic” is automatically impractical, complex, and impenetrable—in short, it is bad. This is a little hard for professors to live with; no one likes being called a pointy-headed intellectual or an egghead. The very skills and specializations that are the keys to academic success can be seen by the public as defects that remove scholars from the sphere of ordinary existence and disqualify their pronouncements. Here I would like to argue that the gap between academics and an unappreciative public is in good part a function of the language and style of communication that scholars commonly practice in all fields. But if in fact there are large segments of the public who are keenly interested in issues relating to subjects like Middle Eastern studies, or the study of Islam, it should be possible for academics to communicate the results of their labor in clear and meaningful ways. If qualified scholars do not respond to the demands of the public, we know what the alternative is: the public will remain content with the standard media sources of information and disinformation.

There is no question that it is easy to get lost when climbing outside the ivory tower of academia and becoming a socially engaged scholar. In my case, such engagement has substantially delayed many other projects that are dear to my heart. Nevertheless, in the course of my fourteen year sojourn on the web, all in all the time spent outside has been worth it. In this paper, I will discuss three web-based projects that I have created: my “Islam and Islamic Studies Resources” website, an international discussion group on Sufism called “Sufis Without Borders,” and a daily world news service, “Sufi News and Sufism World Report.” I will also make some recommendations based on insights gained over the course of these projects.

As an avowedly secular anthropologist who studies Islamic cultures, what better way to orient myself than a fairy tale of the Brothers Grimm. As the story of Rapunzel is spun, a young maiden is trapped in a tower by a wicked witch and forced to let down her golden hair for the old dame to climb. One day along comes a prince, who with the best of intentions tries to free the girl but is pushed out of the tower by the witch and blinded by thorns. In the children’s version the couple is eventually reunited and lives happily ever after. In the real world ever before us there are seldom such happy endings. As scholars of Islam, institutionally holed up in the Ivory Tower of Academic Isolation, there are not many opportunities to let down our doctored hair and allow our golden voices to escape the classroom. One such opportunity, seemingly out of a fantasy world not even imagined by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, is opened up by the Internet.

Academics who concentrate on the study of Islam live in challenging times. The proliferation of “popular” sources of news and information evokes both significant concern as well as tremendous possibility. This is true across the academy, not only in our own field. In a recent issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, a team of medical scientists analyzed 153 videos about vaccination and immunization on YouTube. What they found was very disturbing. A staggering number of YouTube videos portrayed vaccinations in a negative light, and about half contained messages completely contradicting established medical science. Furthermore, the research team found that videos with negative portrayals of vaccinations were highly provocative and powerful, and received more views and better ratings by YouTube users than those videos that portray vaccinations in a positive light. The study concludes that this situation is extremely dangerous and that public health officials must consider how to effectively communicate their scientifically founded viewpoints through internet video portals.