Taking selfies in Mecca: haram or still the venerable Hajj?

The article discusses issues associated with undertaking the Hajj, an Islamic pilgrimage, for whose performance Muslims around the world have embraced and actively use numerous new technologies, from driving cars to recording one's presence in the holy places by various means. Current disputes among the believers about the very possibility and ways of using technology to perform the Hajj and the search for 'divine' justification of the new phenomena indicate the increased importance of Internet communications and the growing virtualisation of Islam. This trend makes the use of cyber-ethnography methods in the study of the religious community a topical issue to consider. The interaction between Islam and the modern media is analysed through the cyber-discourse regarding the appropriateness of taking selfies in the holy places of Mecca and Medina. The study shows that the development of mobile and network technologies has a significant impact on the formation of identity and models of religious behaviour, improves Internet users' understanding of Islam, and leads to a greater offline involvement of the believers in pilgrimage practices. Taking selfies have become popular with the believers, irrespective of their age, nationality, or place of residence, though no clear attitude to this phenomenon has been formulated as yet. In the article, we discuss different views on selfies expressed in anthropological, social, psychological and philosophical studies, in the Saudi authorities' and Russian theologians' statements, and in online comments by ordinary Muslims.

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