Religion Dispatches has an interview with the people behind a new report on how Muslims use virtual worlds like Second Life. They are highly ambitious about what these worlds might offer in the way of understanding across cultural divides. Make sure to catch the video at the end.
Our work was a bona fide listening effort. We went into communities in Second Life that either self-identified as Muslim or were self-declared efforts to better understand Islam and we asked people about their stories. In the end, this project was about storytelling. What people are doing is building new narratives to find ways to co-exist. That said, we are not Pollyannas, and Second Life is not a utopia. We encountered numerous situations where tense, impassioned dialog occurred. But the virtual nature of the space provided an opportunity for people to find new ways to work through differences.
Read more at Religion Dispatches.