A LOOK AT ISLAMIC DA’WAH WEBSITES: REALITY AND EXPECTATIONS

Mustafa BothwellMheta

Ph. D Candidate (Islamic Studies)

Dept of Religion Studies

Faculty of Humanities

University of Johannesburg

Republic of South Africa

Contact no. +27768045215

Email: musmheta@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

A search for the word “Islam” on the Internet yields links

to thousands of sites featuring everything from shopping to

sermons to “web-muftis” who try to provide answers to

Islamic theological and legal questions and to both national

and international Islamic organization websites. Empirical

evidence points to the fact that there are even Muslims who

have taken the shahadah (declaration of faith) over the

Internet. The Web allows almost anyone to air a broad range

of views and perspectives, and much of the resultant

discussions and debates can be found in online forums and

chat rooms. What used to take decades, even centuries to

agree on interpretations in the Qur’an, for example, has

been accelerated by the Internet’s ability to give instant

access to the teachings and thoughts of distant Islamic

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scholars and original texts. But there are dangers: The

Internet also allows anyone to take up the mantle of

authority and some Muslim leaders worry that the growth of

this “cyber community” comes at the expense of local Islamic

communities.

This article will venture to highlight and examine the

quality of Islamic da’wah websites. It will then provide a

critic on the quality of these websites, before suggesting

some useful information on how best to improve on them in

its conclusion.

1. INTRODUCTION

The study of media effects1 is one of the most central to the

discipline of communication and encompasses a vast array of

theoretical perspectives, methodological tools, and applications

to important social contexts. However, in light of the

extraordinarily rapid changes in the media environment over the

last 20 years, media effects research is at a point where the

innovations in content and technology have outpaced the theories

typically applied to them. Thus, the timing seems right to

reflect on and critically evaluate not only where the field of

1It is defined as “a theory that relates how stories published in the mediainfluence or amplify current trends.” People will read an article and beinfluenced to act quickly on the news. retrieved on the 5th August 2013 fromhttp:/www.investopedia.com/terms/m/media_effect.asp

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media effects has been over the past several decades, but more

important, where it would be most fruitful to go in the years

ahead. These are the underlying motivations and goals of this

study (Nabi & Oliver, 2009, p. 9).

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer

networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP)2

to serve several billion users worldwide. It is a network of

networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic,

business, and government networks, of local to global scope, that

are linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless and optical

networking technologies. The Internet carries an extensive range

of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked

hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (www), the

infrastructure to support email, and peer to peer networks. The

terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used interchangeably

in everyday speech; it is common to speak of; “going on the

Internet” when invoking a web browser to view Web pages. However,

the Internet is a particular global computer network connecting

millions of computing devices; the World Wide Web is just one of

the many services running on the Internet. The web is a

collection of the interconnected documents (Web pages) and other

Web resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs3 (Uniform Resource

Identifiers). In addition to the Web, a multitude of other

2Stands for Internet Protocol Suite3Uniform Resource Identifiers

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services are implemented over the Internet, including email, file

transfer, remote computer control, newsgroups, and online games.

Web (and other) services can be implemented on any intranet

accessible to network users.

Muslims are among the many millions of people who have taken to

the use of the World Wide Web either for business or for

religious purposes like da’wah (mission). Many Islamic da’wah

organizations have set up da’wah websites on the World Wide Web

(www). The majority of them do so in a non-profit making

category.

This study will in the first part, venture to examine the quality

of Islamic da’wah websites on the Internet. Islamic da’wah

websites will be divided into the following two categories:

individual da’wah websites and organizational da’wah websites. It

will then evaluate and provide a critic on the quality of these

websites in the second part, before suggesting and offering

information on how best to improve on them in the third part. It

will then in the end draw up a conclusion of the findings.

However, before embarking on that, the study will provide

information on the core components to managing a Website and the

top 10 mistakes on Web management which would be used as a

criterion or yardstick to measure the quality of the da’wah

websites under review.

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The methodology to be followed in this article will be to select

randomly as samples 10 non-profit making da’wah websites in each

of the above mentioned categories (individual and organizational)

on the World Wide Web (www). For the purposes of avoiding libel,

this study will not name the reviewed websites. The following

sub-divisions will discuss the core components to managing a

website.

2. THE CORE COMPONENTS TO MANAGING A WEBSITE

As a project manager or web master, the team leans on your

guidance to get to the finish line. To ensure the finish line

doesn’t turn into a moving target, it’s critical to stay

organized and on track. Managing a website well requires a focus

on a core component of the project, communication. Use the

strategy and planning phase to set the stage for project

communication. It may be a challenge to peel away from

information overload considering this when you are learning all

you can about your audience expectations and identifying business

objectives for the website; nevertheless, you don’t want to miss

essential details at the onset of the project. Here are some

techniques and tools that you may find to be instrumental for

streamlining communication from initial strategy, through to

every subsequent phase of the website building process. Liestol,

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Morrison & Rasmussen, (2004, p. 7) have narrowed the core

components as follows.

1. Virtual meetings

Nothing beats a face to face discussion to get the most out

of a meeting; but realistically, face time is not always

possible. Don’t let this slow the project down. The ability

to have several people join in discussing how to improve on

your website is quite beneficial.

2. Screen shot markup

Nothing says it better than a screen shot. When you are

relaying information back to the development team you don’t

want to leave room for misinterpretation. This tool lets you

take a screen shot, highlight a specific are on the screen

and insert notes.

3. Email

Love it or hate it, email is a must! It’s an essential way

of communicating, documenting, and archiving conversations

with everyone and anyone that has been part of the project.

4. Good old fashioned phone calls

Sometimes it just makes sense to avoid the long string of

emails and have a conversation over the phone. It also lets

your audience (clients) get a peek at that winning

personality that they miss out on the email.

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5. Project management software

Your project management tool is your risk management tool.

There are a number of project management tools available.

Find one that you and your team will use consistently and

refer to often. You want to find out as soon as possible if

there is a risk of not meeting your next milestone.

6. File sharing

Who wants to hunt through their emails for an attachment or

have an email bounce back because the file is too large? Use

good tools (programmes). These tools keep all the necessary

files (documents, image, videos, etc) organized for everyone

on the team and they are accessible from any device.

7. In review

The organization website is probably the most complex

marketing tool of any organization. When an organization

makes the decision to rebuild their website, it’s an

opportunity to examine their current position and explore

fresh, creative ideas for connecting with their audience.

Take precautions to ensure great ideas are not forgotten and

details are not over looked. Don’t stress, stay organized

and use a few helpful tools along the way.

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Having discussed the core components to managing a website, the

following sub-section will venture to highlight the common top 10

mistakes of web management.

3. TOP 10 MISTAKES OF WEB MANAGEMENT

According to Nabi & Oliver (2009, p. 106), web design and

development basically involves the following three levels:

1. Web management

2. Interaction design (navigation support, home page layout,

templates, search, etc).

3. Content design (the actual writing on the pages, as well as

the design of any other media types used to communicate

content as opposed to site interaction).

Just as in a hamburger, the middle layer is the tastiest and

attracts the most attention, including much of my own observation

on web usability. I have come to realize that the outer two

layers are more important in many ways: users only care about

content (in other words, no, the medium is not the message; the

message is the message) and usability of a website is more a

function of how it is managed than of how good its designers are.

Content will be the topic of many other columns; here I will

address some classic mistakes in managing the design of a website

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1. Not knowing why

This is the number one problem; I am amazed how many

websites are built simply because some executive or director

told somebody to do it without telling them what the site

should achieve. And no, it is not an acceptable reason that

“everybody else is doing it.” Granted, these days, you need

a website simply to be considered a professionally run

organization, not being on the web is like not having a fax

machine: people think you are a fly by night organization.

Thus, it is ok to make a “business card site” with a small

amount of corporate image building directions to your

various facilities, and the annual report and other

information. However, doing so is not the most effective use

of the web, and a site along these lines should only be

built as a result of an explicit decision not to invest in

active use of the web for business. According to Meyer

(1997, p. 126), most organizations should start their web

design project by finding out ways in which they can provide

true customer value on their site. He posits that “give

users benefits from spending time on your site, allow them

to interact with you, and their appreciation will follow.”

2. Designing for your own VPs

Internally focused sites cause organizations to end up with

home pages full of mission statements, photos of the CEO,

and organizational history (all of which do fit on an “about

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this company” page; just not on the home page). Remember

that your organization is not the center of the universe for

your customers. The site should be designed with customers’

needs in mind and not to promote grandiose ideas of self-

importance. Do not build a site that your top executive will

love: they are not the target (Rosengren 2007, p 23).

3. Letting the site structure mirror your organizational

structure

Chun & Keenah (2006, p. 201) are of the opinion that a user

should not have to care how your organization is organized,

so they should not be able to deduce your organizational

structure from the website. Admittedly, it is easiest to

distribute responsibility for the site to divisions and

departments according to already established chains of

commands and budgets categories, but doing so results in an

internally centered site, and many sub-sites will have to be

managed in collaboration between multiple departments. A

classic sign of a mismanaged website is when the homepage

has a button for each of the senior vice presidents or

directors in the organization. Remember, you don’t design

for your directors and their deputies, so it will be quite

common that you can’t tell them what “their” button is on

the homepage4.

4Ibid p. 202

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4. Outsourcing to Multiple Agencies

If you outsource every new web project to a new agency, your

site will end up looking like one of those quilts assembled

from patches by each of the participants in a protest march.

Lesame (2005, p. 116) opines that the problem with using

multiple agencies is that each of them wants to put their

own stamp on the site: both because they have different

design philosophies and because they will want to use you as

reference account. It is no fun to say “I designed such and

such pages” if all pages on the site look the same.

Users get very annoyed when they move between pages on a

site and find drastically varying designs at every turn.

Consistency is the key to usable interaction design: when

all interface elements look and function the same, users

feels more confident using the site because they can

transfer their learning from one sub-site to the next rather

than having to learn everything over again for each new

page. According to McLaren, Hammer, Sholle, & Reilly (1995,

p. 176), the best way to ensure consistency is to have a

single department that is responsible for the design of the

entire site. If this cannot be done, at least have a central

group that oversees all design work and that is chartered to

enforce a single style guide. Even if the central group does

not actually design any pages themselves, considerable

consistency can be achieved if the various departments can

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turn to a single source of design advice. Even better, have

the central design groups maintain the templates and deliver

updated and revised graphics as needed.5

5. Forgetting to Budget for Maintenance

As a rule of thumb, the annual maintenance budget for a

website should be about the same as the initial cost of

building the site, with 50 percent as an absolute minimum.

Obviously, on costs even higher for news sites and other

projects that depend on daily or real-time updates. If you

simply spend the money to build a glamorous site but do not

keep it up to date, your investment will very rapidly turn

out to be wasted.

The web currently changes rapidly that a major redesign is

needed at least once per year simply to avoid a completely

outdated look and to accommodate changing user expectations.

Additional maintenance is needed throughout the year to

bring fresh content online, reorganize and revise old pages,

and avoid linkrot.

If you have established a design style guide and a set of

page templates in order to avoid the inconsistencies

mentioned under mistake 4 above, you also have to budget for

maintenance of these design resources. If the style guide

5Ibid p. 177

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and templates do not evolve with changing needs, you will

rapidly see design entropy set in and the site will fall

apart. The most common example is the need for new stock

graphics, new header bars, new navigation buttons, or new

icons. If you don’t have an art director on standby for this

type of requests, then the page developer who needed the new

graphic will out source it and the site’s look and feel will

start to diverge.6

6. Treating the Web as a Secondary Medium

One rarely gets a gourmet meal by repurposing yesterday’s

leftovers. Similarly, even if you repurpose very valuable

non-web content, you will at best get a slightly valuable

website. The web is a new medium. It’s different from

television, it’s different from printed newspapers, and it’s

different from glossy brochures, so you cannot create a good

website out of content optimized for any of these older

media. The old analogy still holds: “movies are not made by

filming a play and putting the camera in the best seat of

theater.”

The only way to get web content is to have your staff

develop the content for the web first. Then, if you still

6Ibid, Meyer 1997, p. 127

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have a need for printed collateral, transfer the text and

images to a desktop publishing application and massage it

into a form that is suited for print. Of course, your print

materials will suffer from this procedure, so if you want

great web content and great brochures, you will have to have

two teams develop two sets of content.

Content creators have been trained to develop linear content

for traditional media: they have spent their entire careers

doing so. They have to consciously push themselves to work

differently than their natural approach to content, so

unless you force your content developers to produce their

material specifically for the web, you will end up with sub-

standard web content.

7. Wasting Linking Opportunities

The web is a linking medium: the hypertext links are what

ties it together and allow users to discover new and useful

sites. Most companies and organizations have recognized this

phenomenon to the extent that they religiously include their

URLs in all advertising, TV commercials, press releases, and

even in the products themselves. Unfortunately, most of the

URLs are overly generic and do not provide users with any

payoff that is related to the context in which the user

found the URL. Do not link your homepage in your advert. If

potential visitors get interested in a new product you

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should not force them find out how to navigate the site from

the homepage to the product page. Instead, link directly to

the product (information) from the advert. Also, seed press

releases with specific URLs that support your message:

reporters may follow these links for additional detail and

outline publications may use specific links instead of

generic ones to better serve their users.

If you are running a campaign with a certain theme, have it

include URL to a page that follows up on that theme. The

payoff page should not be a copy of the advert (the visitor

or customer, presumably already read the advert before going

to the web), though a link to an online version of the

advert might be appropriate to help users who go to the page

without having seen the advert. Instead, use each medium for

what it’s good at. For example, a game company could use TV

commercials to make people think that a game looks good and

use the web to allow them to play a simplified version of

the game.

8. Treating Internet and Intranet sites the Same

Internal Intranet web sites need to be managed very

differently from public internet sites. The key difference

is that each company or organization only has a single

Intranet and thus can manage it to a much greater degree of

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consistency and predictability than we can hope for on the

wild web for many years. This is why there are hundreds of

separate usability guidelines for Intranet design. Also,

employees use the Intranet for corporate productivity,

meaning that any waste of users’ time is a direct hit to the

bottom line. I am appalled when I hear of Intranet managers

who put advertising on their site to pay for their equipment

costs. If, for example, the value of an average employees’

time is $1 per minute and users spend 3 seconds more per

page because of the adverts, then each advert costs the

company 5 cents in lost employee productivity.

9. Confusing Market Research and Usability Engineering

Thankfully, many sites have embraced the value of customer

data for design, but unfortunately many of them rely solely

on traditional market research like focus groups. Most of

these methods relate to creating desire for a product and

getting it sold and do not provide detailed information

about how people operate the product. A web design is an

interactive product, and therefore, usability engineering

methods are necessary to study what happens during the

user’s interaction with the site.

Users are not designers: no matter how many focus groups you

run, they cannot tell you how to design your navigation.

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Focus groups are great for getting information about users’

current concerns and areas where they would help, but they

will rarely teach you how to reinvent the fundamental way

you do business. Listening carefully to customers/visitor

will often reveal frustrations that can turn into

opportunities for improvement, but once you have an idea for

an improvement, you must create a prototype design and try

it out with users in a usability test to see whether it

really works for them.

There are endless stories of customers or users who say in

focus groups that they would love a certain feature, but who

never use it once it is launched because it is too

cumbersome, or doesn’t really meet their needs in real use.

The point is that market research forms the starting point,

but has to be supplemented with usability engineering if you

want a design that works when people try to use it. You may

commission a traditional market research firm to question

thousands of customers’ users to measure whether they like

your website more or less than your competition. Once you

know that your site scores say 3.6 and your worst competitor

scores, 5.9, you may know that you need to improve, but you

will not know how to improve. Specific insights into the

detailed design of your site and the parts that must change

because they are confusing slow users down, or do not match

the way users want to work can be derived from watching four

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or five users as they actually use your site to perform real

tasks. A day or two in the usability lab and you will have a

long list of changes that will improve your design. It is

less common to find sites that only do user testing and

never conduct any market research, but that would be a

mistake.

10. Underestimating the Strategic Impact of the Web

It is a huge mistake to treat the web as if it were an

online brochure and manage it out of the communication

department. The web should be considered one of the most

important determinants for the way you will do business in

future. Ask your head of marketing what strategic thoughts

they have relating to terms like “disintermediation”,

“virtual project teams”, and “micro-transactions.” If they

don’t have any thought, they had better start thinking now

before it is too late. The web enables completely new ways

of doing business such as true globalization for example,

“work around the clock”, where projects are passed on to

teams as the globe turn. If you don’t grasp these new

business opportunities you will be toast in a few years.

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The two classic errors in predicting the future of a

technology shift are to over-estimate its short terms impact

and under estimate its long term impact. The web has been

hyped to such an extent that people over-estimate what it

can do the next year or two: most websites are not going to

turn a profit anytime soon. But please don’t under-estimate

what will happen once we reach the goal of everyone,

everywhere: connected. The impact of networks grows by at

least the squares of the number of connections, and the true

value of the web will only be seen after extensive business

process re-engineering.

From the above discussion, it is important to point out that the

10 mistakes of web management that have been pointed out above,

do not represent all the mistakes that are associated with web

management. There are many others which I might have not

mentioned. However, the ones which have been discussed here sort

of represent the most common ones. In the discussion that follows

attention will be focused on the randomly chosen Islamic da’wah

websites for analysis. This observation was carried out on the

World Wide Web or Internet over a period of three Months, from

May to August 2013.

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4. A SURVEY ON THE QUALITY OF ISLAMIC DA’WAH WEBSITES ON THE

INTERNET

There are two types of da’wah websites on the Internet. There is

what can be called personal da’wah websites and organizational

da’wah websites. The personal da’wah websites are those that are

run by individual du’ats, whereas, the organizational da’wah

websites are run by specific da’wah organizations. There is no

doubt that the quality of Islamic da’wah websites on the internet

has improved remarkably over the years. However, there is a lot

that still needs to be done especially, if we take into account

some of the above mentioned essential components. While one is

generally satisfied with the quality improvements made thus far,

there still exist some very serious mistakes that need to be

taken into account. In this part of the study, I will attempt to

discuss separately the two kinds of da’wah websites that you get

on the Internet. For the purposes of this study, an attempt will

be made to define these two kinds of websites that you get on the

Internet and discuss their quality. Following is a definition of

the two categories of websites found on the World Wide Web (www)

i.e. those of personal da’wah and organizational websites.

4. 0. Defining Personal and Organizational Da’wah Websites

According to the Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic

(1976), the word da’wah is defined as follows: “appeal”,

“bidding”, “demand”, “request”, “call”, “convocation”, and

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“summon.” My definition of personal da’wah websites is that they

are those websites that are built or set up by individual (Muslim

scholars [Ulama] or other professionals, and Muslims in general

for the purposes of da’wah [call] to Muslims or non-Muslims

alike. Organizational da’wah websites are those that are built by

Islamic da’wah organizations for more or less similar purposes.

In da’wah, there are different areas of concentration which

target different groups of people. Others may be set up solely

targeting non-Muslims with the message of Islam, while, others

target Muslims or both. In addition, others combine da’wah with

welfare services such as food relief and other philanthropic

services. By extension, this is applicable to both these

categories of da’wah efforts made by individuals or

organizations. Following is a discussion on personal da’wah

websites.

4. 1. Personal Da’wah Websites

While conducting my survey on the Internet, the first website

that I came across is run by a very prominent du’at.7Looking at the

websites home page layout, it looks fantastic; it contains almost

all the components that would enable it to be classified as a

good and professionally built website. It is worth mentioning

that not all of these personal da’wah websites can be classified

as not meeting the professional or standard approved criteria, in

fact, some are professionally well built and maintained. Out of

the 10 websites that I surveyed using the above mentioned7The one who calls to the Islamic faith

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criteria, 4 websites in this category seem to meet the

professionally acclaimed standard measures. However, some seem to

display a number of weaknesses. One of the most common weaknesses

is that, they are built for the owner rather than the audience

they are intended for.8 Everything about it is personal; it is

what I would call electronic curriculum vitae (e-C.V) in outlook.

You get on its home page the biographical information of this

particular person, his educational background, detailing the

number of Universities and degrees he has, the number of books he

has written and the number of organizations he is affiliated to

etc. With regards to the actual content, some of these websites

do not display real Islamic da’wah content for which they were

built to portray. However, one link you are sure not to miss is

that link for donations with bank account details asking the

donor community to donate generously. Nothing much of Islamic

teachings is visible on some of these websites, rather it is an

individual persons achievements of what they call their da’wah

efforts. There is no feedback link to enable visitors to ask

questions and expect answers that could help and satisfy their

quest for Islamic knowledge. These kinds of da’wah websites seem

to have been built for the individual’s glorification

respectively.9 Furthermore, you get websites that seem to have

been updated three, four, or five years ago still displaying

material from many years ago and without current material

8Cf. with point no. 1, on the core components to managing a website9Cf. with the top 10 mistakes of web management, particularly, points no. 1, 2, and 5 respectively

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whatsoever. For instance, a conference or seminar that happened

years ago can still be found advertised on the home page.

With regards to pictures posted on the websites, 5 out of the 10

websites that I surveyed had poor quality pictures. Some of the

pictures upon close scrutiny seem to have been cut from elsewhere

and pasted onto the website. They are not original pictures. The

main culprits in this regard are those personal websites that

also do welfare services like food relief. One can find for

example, on an African da’wah website, pictures of Asian looking

people receiving food handouts when the message being portrayed

is that of a hardworking African da’wah organization doing work

in Zimbabwe or Kenya for instance. I also found pictorial

material taken (cut and paste) from UN agencies and other

international organizations’ websites doing relief work somewhere

in the world, how these pictures found themselves on these

websites remains a guess. In my part of the world where I come

from, there has been times when du’ats have threatened each other

with court cases accusing one another of using pictures of Masajid

[Mosques] or water wells claimed to have been built or dug by the

other du’at’s or da’wah organizations efforts.

In examining these types of da’wah websites, one can rightly say

that some of them do not deserve to be on the Internet.

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Critically speaking, some of these are a mockery to the Ummah10.

There is need for such individuals running these websites to

either improve on them or close them down. Furthermore, those who

use them as a means to siphon money from unsuspecting Muslims for

their personal use should also be warned of Allah’s (God’s)

chastisement. It is important for those doing da’wah especially

on the Internet to be exemplary and know that the eyes of the

world are on them. People (Muslims) included, should be aware

that when embarking on projects of this nature, one should try to

do it to the best of their ability. It’s not just another part

time project; it is a noble cause which should be done to its

successful conclusion. There should be no room for doing things

for people to acknowledge how great a da’iyyah one is; instead all

should be done to the glory of Allah (God). There is also a

tendency by some of the people running these websites to insult

other [Ulama] (Muslim scholars) whom they have ideological or

other differences with through this medium. In this regard it is

important to reflect on these words of wisdom from Allah (SWT) in

(Q. 3: 105): “Be not like those who are divided amongst themselves and fall into

disputations after receiving clear signs: for them is a dreadful penalty. The internet

is public space; Muslims shouldn’t be seen insulting each

other[s] on such public space. This defeats the very purpose of

why they are set up for, which is to do da’wah for Allah’s sake.

4. 2. Organizational Da’wah Websites

10Islamic World

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Islamic da’wah organizations do play a major role in the

dissemination of information about Islam to the whole world today

via the Internet. Millions of people surfing the World Wide Web

(www) are able to come face to face with Islam in the comfort of

their homes, offices and cell phones. Empirical evidence

available does tell stories of thousands of people who have

embraced Islam through the Internet. Furthermore, many Muslims

have had some of their theological and juridical questions

answered on the Internet thus helping to dispel some of the

misconceptions that they might have had. During my survey on the

Internet, I came across different qualities of websites, some

good and some bad. Out of the 10 websites, 7 were of what can be

termed of a good quality, while 3 would be considered as

unsatisfactory. The 7 websites could be described as meeting the

professionally accepted standard measures. These websites do

display good screen shot markups, a tool which help them take a

screen shot thus enabling them to highlight a specific area and

insert notes easily. The home page seems to be well built with

leads pointing to other information available on the website; one

is left without any doubt as to its purpose which is that of

disseminating information on the different aspects of Islam.

Furthermore, information is carefully put into different clusters

thus making it easy for any visitor to find what they are looking

for. Some of these websites are exclusively aimed at reaching out

to non-Muslims with the message of Islam, while others

concentrate on reaching out to a broader Muslim audience or both.

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Regarding the 3 websites which I deem as unsatisfactory, they

lack some of the most basic requirements in web building. They

are not managed at all; they seem to have been abandoned by their

owners. There is no life on these websites. Just like the

personal websites, the history of the organization and the

profiles of the executives take much space. It is all about who

is who in the organization that matters. Examining these types of

websites in the light of the top 10 mistakes of web management,

one notices a plethora of mistakes, some common ones. Indeed it

seems like the organizations which set them up did not in the

first place, know why they were setting them up. It seems like

they were set up just for the sake of it, like everybody else is

doing it why not us?, kind of mentality or granted, these days

you need a website simply to be considered a professionally run

organization. Their home pages seem to be full of photos of the

executives and mission statements than the actual da’wah content.

The site should be designed with the visitors needs in mind, not

grandiose ideas of self-importance.

Furthermore, these website are also guilty of the same sin like

their counterparts, of not being properly managed. This is

evident in what one sees when they browse through. One gets

outdated information from way back as 2, 3, or 4 years still

there, Allah knows best when last they were updated. The quality

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of content is also not interactive with the target audience. You

get on some of these websites information which may be irrelevant

to the target audience. For example, you find on a da’wah website

targeting non-Muslims, information on the different madhahib in

Islam, information that should be for mature Muslims. This brings

us to another common mistake that one notices on these websites

which is that of duplication. We cannot all be the Ahmed Deedat’s

or Dr Naik’s of this world, there are different ways of making

da’wah, especially on the Internet. It is therefore important for

these da’wah organizations to innovate and come up with new ideas

on how to reach their target audience with the message of Islam.

5. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The study presented the core components to managing a website as

outlined in this paper. Among some of them are the following: the

need to have virtual meetings from time to time with a view to

discussing on how best to improve on the websites, to improve on

the screen shot markup which make it easier for the development

team to make sure that there is no room for misinterpretation of

their intended content. This tool also lets you to take a screen

shot and highlight a specific area on the screen and insert note.

The use of email is a must; it is an essential way for

communicating, documenting, and archiving conversations with

everyone and anyone that has been part of the project. Since the

purpose of a da’wah website is to communicate Islam to the

27

masses, it is also important that you use phone calls (in follow

ups) to avoid the long string of emails and actually have a

conversation with your audience if necessary. You require also

good project management software. Your project management tools

are your risk management tools. These tools help you to find out

as soon as possible if there is a risk of not meeting your next

milestone. Equally important is file sharing. These tools keep

all the necessary files (documents, image, videos, etc.)

organized for everyone on the team and they should be accessible

from any device. Constantly, keep reviewing your project

(website); remember it is the most complex marketing tool for

your organization.

The paper also touched on the top 10 mistakes of website

management. Based on these mistakes together with the core

components to managing a website, afforded this study an

opportunity to examine the selected da’wah websites on World Wide

Web (www) using them as the criterion or yardstick. Here are some

of the mistakes often made by da’wah websites: not knowing why

they set up website, designing the website for them (officials)

and not the audience it is intended for, letting the site

structure mirror your organizational structure, a development

which does not interest the audience, they don’t need to know

your organizational structure, they need pure da’wah content.

Always budget for maintenance of the website and do not treat the

28

website as a secondary medium. Get career content creators or

your staff to be trained as content creators who are able to

develop linear content for traditional media. Do not waste

linking opportunities, the web is a linking medium and the

hypertext links are what ties it together and allow users to

discover new and useful sites. Make a distinction between

Internet and Intranet sites. Internal Intranet sites need to be

managed very differently from public Internet sites.

With regards to the quality of da’wah websites on the Internet,

this study categorized them into two separate entities. These

are: personal da’wah websites and organizational da’wah websites.

The study randomly selected 10 websites in each of the above

categories. It then looked at them using the core components to

managing a website and the 10 most common mistakes in website

management as a criterion to examine and analyze them. This was

then followed by a definition of the two categories. Personal

da’wah websites are defined as “those websites that are built or

set up by individual Muslim scholars or other professionals, and

Muslims in general for the purposes of da’wah to Muslims or non-

Muslims alike.” Organizational da’wah websites are defined as

“those that are built and run by Islamic da’wah organizations for

more or less similar purposes. And in further categorizing them,

others are solely targeted at non-Muslims with the message of

Islam, while others target Muslims or both.

29

The findings of this study were that personal da’wah websites

seem to be the most mismanaged websites on the Internet. Out of

the 10 website surveyed only 4 of them seemed to be

professionally run. The remaining 6 had serious defects which may

be considered as unprofessional. These defects range from their

appearance and content. Content wise, one gets personal bio

information more than the actual da’wah content meant to inform

viewers how good Islam is. Most of them are not maintained at all

in the last 4 years and one still gets content from yesteryears.

Furthermore, they are used as tools to attack other scholars

[Ulama] who differ to them ideologically.

As for organizational websites, the trend is not different to

that of personal da’wah websites. The difference is only that in

this category of websites, 7 out of 10 websites under survey were

found to be of good quality. They appear to be professionally run

and have in them the entire core components needed to be

classified as a professionally run website. However, the

remaining 3 seem to display similar weaknesses as that of the

majority of personal da’wah websites. It would be appropriate at

this juncture to say that overall, there seems to be a lot of

improvements in the quality of da’wah website now than there were

in the last 5 years, but still, more needs to be done.

30

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