VR Islam? Systems of Sensory Perception in Virtual Reality and the Prospects of Virtual Devotion in Islam
This research raises new and exciting questions about the use of VR technologies in religious devotion and ritual practice. It shows how VR technologies make it possible to render the Sacred tangible and perceptible to the human senses and how that can strengthen affective bonds between human and more-than-human beings in religious life-worlds. On the other hand, it engages with the concerns and fears of religious digital content creators and users, including the fear that interactivity may lead to the “manipulation and distortion of the creed” and “transform religion … into a video game, determined not by God Almighty, but by the choices of the gamer” as well as the concern that immersiveness may result in “overstepping the boundaries of appropriateness and decency” in the relationship between the profane and the Sacred. I survey the opinions of VR content creators and users, revealing that attitudes toward the use of VR in Islamic devotion coincide noticeably with generational and gender divides. I ask what all of this means for the future of religion and VR, sketching in the process new directions in the study of sensory-perceptual systems and immersive experience in VR, the value and virtue of virtual action, and the im/permissibility of virtual interaction in religious contexts and beyond.