Evaluation of multimedia elements in Islamic websites development

Abstract

The multimedia computing revolution has affected all aspects of our life, including shopping, studying, research, and entertainment; thereby causing us to communicate differently. Such change is inevitable as revolutions displace traditional beliefs and practices. In the status quo, multimedia is not only advanced, but advances everything around us as well as everything we use. The key problem is that we Muslims have yet to reach the advanced phase of applying and using multimedia tools in Islamic contexts, as seen for example in the fact that most Islamic websites suffer from the major failing of not being able to come up with a fully interactive website. This research aims at examining five Islamic websites in terms of implementing Multimedia tools and how they use such tools in e-publishing their information. The five websites are as follows: islamway.com, islamweb.net, islamtoday.net, islamonline.net, and islam-qa.com. The general purpose in choosing these Islamic websites is to compare their usage of Multimedia tools to the recent implementations by other information resources through the web and to evaluate their level of improvement attained by using those tools to publish Islamic content to diverse audiences. Finally, it is hoped that the outcome of this research will help a great deal in setting up a guideline for the improved global development of Islamic websites in terms of the use of multimedia tools. Consequently, this will lead to better audience interaction, which will further aid in realizing the Islamic perspective in IT.