Introduction

This chapter introduces the topic of the research presented in this volume, explaining its conceptual basis and methodological approach. It discusses the limitations of a common perspective that sees Islam and modernity as the two abstract poles of a dichotomy, which has led in many cases, especially in the Western academic, media, and political circles, to treating Muslims from a purely securitarian point of view. An alternative sociological perspective, already effective in academic research, which focuses on the everyday lives of flesh-and-blood Muslims in modern societies, is discussed. It is argued that this approach, however, has so far produced mostly qualitative results that need stronger quantitative evidence. Then, the new approach represented by the research presented here is outlined, which, while falling within the sociological perspective, is able to overcome this limitation with quantitative methods. In this new approach, research focuses not on the Islamic religious corpus or Islamic authorities but on spontaneous questions posed by ordinary Muslims to online muftīs, thus avoiding many of the drawbacks of the traditional sociological approach. To study these questions, a new quantitative methodology is applied using the tools of corpus linguistics to analyze large linguistic databases.