Developing text-based measurable reliability factors for Islamic websites

Abstract

Over the last two decades, the internet has been rapidly developing resulting in many organizations setting an online presence in order to preserve and form an online relationship with users. Similarly, Muslims use internet as a medium to disseminate Islam; and this is seen necessary due to the wide distribution of Muslims all over the world and difficulties to establish Islamic centres to teach Muslims and making dacwah. Along with this, the issue of whether Islamic online information can be reliable has been raised. The increase in cases of finding unreliable and sometime Islam-phobia content and websites, and questionable authenticity of online information has imposed researchers and organizations to respond to the reliability issues. In previous researches, only limited interest was on reliability of Islamic website, despite Islamic websites is growing significantly and it is expected to have huge amount of users (Muslim population exceed one billion) and their growing reliance on the internet for their religious education and Islam dissemination. Therefore this study explored reliability perception in relation to Islamic websites from Muslim users’ perspective, as well as, how to make reliability factors tangible and measurable to be recognized by computer software. This study proposed a measurement model for reliability of Islamic websites based on literature review and Islamic heritage of reliability that was established in Islamic knowledge branches, particularly science of Hadith. The measurement model was analyzed using exploratory factor analysis, partial least squares, and confirmatory factor analysis. The sample was gathered by online survey at Islamic facebook groups, email lists, international Islamic University, University of Malaya, University of technology Malaysia and University of Taiz in Yemen. A total of 1117 responses were collected. The findings of this study proposed that availability of Quranic verses, availability of citations for authentic prophetic biography, referencing authentic Hadith, reflecting mathahib perspectives, scholars’ and organizations’ involvement, and recommended websites’ content features are the factors that influence the reliability of Islamic websites’ content. Those factors are the belief that Islamic websites have reliable, authentic, and well-referenced content. Emphasizing these factors would increase the perceived level of reliability at Islamic websites, which would increase the acceptance for Islamic message delivered. The findings helped to develop software prototype to automate the process of reliability evaluation for Islamic websites’ content.