The Digital Transcendental

Pieter Dorsman at Peaktalk translates the wise words of Gilles Kepel, on why the internet plays such a pivotal role in recruitment for jihad.

If you interpret the Islamic scripture – or that of any other religion – literally, then it contains an abundance of laws, but in the fourteen centuries of Islamic civilization prior to the introduction of the internet, the critical interpretation of these texts was the exclusive domain of the ulamas. Thanks to the internet we now have bearded cyber-salafists who have taken the place of the ulamas and they know only one interpretation: the literal one. To them everything that is digital is transcendental which creates a blur between the virtual and the afterlife in one separate world, disconnected entirely from the real world with its own laws. At the juncture of these two universes we can find a double death: the suicide of the martyr which relieves him from the tension – which is considered schizophrenic – between those two worlds and the slaughter of infidels.

Could you perhaps guess that Kepel’s French? I’ve read it a few times, but that last sentence still defies me.