The fourth Nordic conference on Middle Eastern Studies:
The Middle East in globalizing world
Oslo, 13-16 August 1998

Marginal Muslims in Cyberspace

The implications of the Web for Traditionalists, and of Traditionalists on the Web for Islam

Mark Sedgwick
American University in Cairo

NB *This is the unedited paper as given at the Oslo conference. An updated and edited version has been published in Utvik and Vikør, The Middle East in a Globalized World, Bergen/London 2000, 251-69. Please quote or refer only to the published article.*

This paper explores, in the context of Traditionalism, two of the more interesting consequences of the web: that it may create new communities, and that it tends to blur various kinds of pre-existing distinction. Muslim Traditionalists are a loosely-defined group, mostly of Western origin, inspired especially by the work of Abd al-Wahid (René) Guénon (1886-1951), a French writer whose views on the nature of modernity and of religion have been very influential in bringing certain types of Westerners to Islam, as well as in reviving the interest and faith in Islam of some (mostly, very Westernized) Muslims. These Muslim Traditionalists operate far from the mainstream of Islamic discourse and are small in number, but are less marginal in their influence, especially in the West. [1] As we will see, not all Traditionalists are Muslim - some have applied Guénon's ideas to Christianity or Buddhism, to Free Masonry, or even to politics - but Muslim Traditionalists are the most important and influential stream of Guénon's inheritors. Despite this, a survey of the Traditionalist presence on the web reveals that Islam is at present only a minor part of Traditionalism in cyberspace. The possible reasons for this will be examined, and it will be concluded that as the web matures and as certain technical impediments are removed, the presence and influence of Muslim Traditionalists in cyberspace, and so perhaps their influence on Islam as a whole, is likely to increase. There is no reason why this conclusion should not also apply to other non-mainstream Muslim groups.

 The two consequences of the web which this paper considers are not especially controversial. That the web may create new communities or transform existing ones is very clear, and is especially significant for minorities. The web is here continuing and speeding up of the effects of earlier advances in other technologies of communication and transport. Whereas at the start of the twentieth century an academic might once have corresponded slowly and occasionally with colleagues at other universities and identified principally with his own institution, his successors become accustomed to traveling frequently to conferences where many others working in the same narrower field were present, and so to identifying more with these colleagues than with those in their home institution. With the advent of the Internet and the web, things have moved a stage further: most academics are now in frequent or even daily contact with the handful of others in the world who share their precise interests. When I first started teaching in Cairo, the Western academic community was still almost three weeks' away - that being the time it took for a letter to be delivered, replied to, and for the reply to arrive. Now I am no further away from a colleague in California than from one in a department housed in another part of my own campus. This is something we have all experienced, but of course the tendency applies not only to academics. The web reduces the isolation of minorities everywhere, whether historians interested in reform movements within early nineteenth-century Sufism (such as myself), collectors of strange butterflies, or Muslims in the West.

 The effect of the web on Muslims, including those in the West, is the subject of a forthcoming collection of articles (Islam in Cyberspace) [2] to which a version of this paper will be contributed, the but if I may somewhat anticipate their conclusions, the web makes Western Muslims less of a minority, increasing both the frequency of their contact, the range of their contacts (which might previously have been limited to their local mosque, but may now extend across continents) and the speed with which information is disseminated and - sometimes - acted upon (as we all saw recently in relation to impending events in Iraq). In making Muslims in the West less of a minority, the web increases not only their sense of identity as Muslims, but also their self-confidence.

 A second, somewhat less obvious, consequence of the web is that it blurs distinctions. In the same way that the web's implications for the formation and transformation of communities are a continuation of processes already visible, so blurring is also in part a continuation and modification of earlier processes related to earlier technologies such as printing. In the Muslim world, the advent of printing broke the 'ulama's long-established control of 'ilm -- no longer could a text only be 'taken' from someone whose ijaza to teach it certified his understanding of it. It could now be read and understood - or misunderstood - on its own merits, at home. The impact of this change over the last 150 years has not yet been fully understood, though an appreciation of the likely consequences of the blurring of lines and boundaries implied by printing explains the extreme reluctance with which printing was allowed into Muslim states in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and later. [3]

If printing blurred the lines dividing the 'alim from the non-'alim as reader, the web blurs the distinctions between writers. The consequences of this are immediately obvious to anyone who teaches undergraduate students. Once, given a research assignment, students were limited to the resources of the library; not every book or article in the average university library is equally useful or reliable, of course, but some sort of minimum guarantee is implied by the mere fact that a publisher or journal editor has decided that something is worth printing, and that a librarian or academic has decided that a title is worth buying or a journal worth subscribing to. Given a research assignment, weaker students now flock to web search engines and often return with the strangest material, much of it of dubious or negligible value - or even of negative value. Sometimes they will try to use mediocre essays written by their peers at other universities, sometimes the pronouncements of pressure groups; sometimes the ramblings of evidently unbalanced individuals; and sometimes, occasionally, something useful. Of course, as students learn more, they become more discriminating - as does any consumer - but the point, that a filter or layer of protection has been removed, is clear. Blurring of distinctions in this way does not only affect our students. Even those more educated consumers of information who (perhaps not even consciously) judge a book by its publisher or an organization by its premises are deprived of such useful clues. The web site of a serious body and of a single individual may be hard to tell apart.

 As well as a blurring of authority, the web has also resulted in a second variety of blurring: between categories of knowledge, between matters of general interest which are widely published and special interests, previously either catered for by specialist newsletters and meetings or not catered for at all. We will see an example of this below. There is even a blurring of the distinction between the public and the private: whereas once the doings of kings and ministers were widely known and those of 'private' individuals were obscure, a web search I carried out as part of my research for this paper revealed to me that I had previously done research on a related topic, information which once might have been more or less private but is now freely available to the whole world, courtesy of my university's public relations department.

 Two important possible consequences of the web, then, for non-mainstream groups such as the Traditionalists is to blur distinctions of various kinds, and either to create a community where none was before or to strengthen the identity of a community which already existed. Before we can examine to what extent this has already happened in the case of Traditionalists, and then consider to what extent it is likely to happen in the future, we must however first briefly review the status and community of Traditionalists before the advent of the web.

Traditionalism before the Web

 Although the West's belief in progress has become somewhat less naive as the twentieth century has 'progressed,' 'progressive' remains a term of approbation for most Westerners, and faith in 'the men in white lab coats' remains general. Meanwhile, for a growing number of Traditionalist followers of Guénon and related writers, 'traditional' has become a term of approbation which replaces the more general 'progressive.' One explanation of the continuing influence of Guénon's works is as follows. Alienation has been widely recognized as a classic reaction to modernity, and for some of those thus alienated, Guénon's writings have provided an explanation of, and so a justification for, their alienation. For many of those for whom Traditionalism has provided an explanation, it has also indicated a course of action; for those with a religious disposition, the course of action has most frequently been Islam. The reasons for the other courses taken by other Traditionalists cannot be considered here, but many of the courses themselves will be observed in our survey of Traditionalism on the web, below.

 Almost from the first, there have been two vehicles of Traditionalism, Sufi turuq and publishing, of which publishing came first. The Guénonian canon slowly emerged in a French journal, initially La voile d'Isis, later renamed Etudes traditionelles. From the early 1930s, individual Westerners who were moved by what they read in this journal to enquire further were referred to a branch of the Algerian 'Alawiyya tariqa led by a Swiss Shaykh, Nur al-Din (Frithjof) Schuon (1907-98). [7] >From shortly before Guénon's death in 1951, as a consequence of a series of disagreements and splits, the original journal and original tariqa were joined by others; by 1985, Traditionalist turuq and/or journals had been established in Switzerland, France, Italy, Spain, England, the United States, Iran and Pakistan, and Traditionalism had an impact in other countries as well. The public face of a Traditionalist branch of a tariqa was almost invariably either a journal and/or publisher, or a Centre for Traditional Studies, or both.

 In 1985, then, various small Muslim Traditionalist communities already existed. Turuq are amongst the oldest and closest-knit communities known in Islam, and Traditionalist turuq have followed very much the established pattern, being perhaps even closer-knit than usual, by virtue of their usual location in the hostile environment of non-Muslim countries. A certain blurring had also already taken place -- between Traditionalist Muslims and mainstream academics. Ironically, given that Guénon himself had no higher education and was actively hostile to academia, many leading Traditionalists have since been academics. Many Traditionalist journals are virtually indistinguishable in format from academic journals. Some Traditionalist-inspired centers - for example, Seyyed Hossein Nasr's Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy - have functioned as academic institutes, and a Traditionalist 'section' once existed within the American Academy of Religion, the vast professional body for departments of Religious Studies in US universities. [8]

Another notable blurring, this time of the distinction between Traditionalists and other varieties of Muslim, was the 1976 Festival of Islam, held in London. This was undoubtedly one of the most successful public relations exercises for Islam ever held in the West, and involved people from the Queen of England downwards. [9] It was based around a series of co-ordinated exhibitions, and spun off a variety of publications on Islam, special issues in various newspapers, etc. It presented Islam as a civilization and a culture to be explored in terms of its artistic and intellectual production, rather than as a body of doctrine or as an 'other' to be feared. [10] Almost no-one at the time seems to have appreciated the Traditionalist connection or occasional Traditionalist slant. [11]

The mention of a 'Traditionalist slant' brings us to the difficult question of the nature and extent of the difference between Traditionalist Muslims and other Muslims, a complex question which this paper can only touch on. [12] Some Muslims have rejected Traditionalists entirely, if only for usually being Sufis; whatever one's views on Sufism, however, the number of Muslims who have been and are Sufis is so great that one can hardly exclude them from Islam for that reason alone. More specific charges laid against individual Traditionalists must be evaluated on their own merit, and cannot be considered here for reasons of space. Even if one avoids the use of terms such as 'true' or 'orthodox,' it is clear that certain views characteristic of almost all Traditionalists do differ from the mainstream; foremost among these are Traditionalist views on the 'Transcendent Unity' of all religions. This question has been much debated, both among Traditionalists and between Traditionalists and outsiders, but in essence Traditionalists subscribe to a view of the 'validity' of religions other than Islam which is far more all-embracing than the average Muslim would countenance.

 Before the advent of the web, then, there were already Traditionalist communities, and there was already some blurring of the distinction between Traditionalist Muslims and academics on the one hand, and Traditionalist Muslims and other Muslims on the other hand. There was, however, little or no blurring between categories of knowledge, with Traditionalism as such (as distinct from Traditionalist-influenced academic discourse, or Traditionalist-tinged presentations of Islam) remaining very much a specialist interest. We will now consider how much the advent of the web has already continued these processes, and to what extent it may in the future, starting with a survey of the Traditionalist presence in cyberspace. Details of the sites mentioned will be found in the Appendix. [13]

Traditionalism on the Web

 The strongest Traditionalist presence in cyberspace is not only non-Muslim but also somewhat peripheral to Traditionalism itself, and is that of the political Traditionalists who derive equally from Guénon and Julius Evola (1898-1974). Evola falls far beyond the scope of this paper, [14] so I will mention only two groups of political Traditionalists who give especial emphasis to Guénon: the Italians and the Russians. Of these, the Italians - Azione Giovani and the related Alleanza Nazionali, the successor to the M. S. I. - are the most predictable (given the long- established importance of Evola as the chief ideologue of the Italian post-war right) and the Russians the most surprising - both for their 'creative' modifications of Guénon, the extent and quantity of their web pages, and the name of their political party. A variety of sites deliver the message of Alexander Dugin and of his colleagues in the National-Bolshevist Party, principally in Russian but also in English, French, Spanish and German; in addition there are on-line versions of two of the important Russian journals which deal partly or mainly with Russian political Traditionalism. These journals have very significant circulations, on a scale totally different from any other Traditionalist journal ever established. [15]

The 'best' mainstream (i.e. non-political) Traditionalist sites, judged in terms of content as well as design and construction, are also non-Muslim. The finest is that dedicated to the French Hindu writer Alain Daniélou (who was Traditionalist only in a certain sense); there are also one or perhaps two Californian Orthodox churches, and an Italian academic site dedicated to a Traditionalist Freemason and to Christian esotericism. Islam is given a significant mention only on two high-quality Traditionalist sites: that of the French Masonic lodge La règle d'Abraham (which espouses the Abrahamic unity of the three monotheist religions) and another French site, a small but well-constructed collection of links to high-quality sites on the major religious traditions, operated by an unidentified 'Agorati P.' 'Agorati P' is clearly a Traditionalist, though not self-identified as such (or, indeed, as anything); that he does not link any other Traditionalist sites is perhaps a comment on their quality. He is, for whatever reason, rejecting any membership of the existing Traditionalist community in cyberspace.

 The main European community of Traditionalist sites (three French and one Spanish, which all link to each other) is indeed somewhat uninspiring. It consists of the Cercle d'Etudes et de Recherches Traditionelles (CRET), which is essentially a one-man affair despite its name, and is somewhat given to disputation; much of its contents would benefit from rigorous editing. Another organization with various sites, the Place Royale, would strike many as bizarre because of its fascination with royalism; that it is also a commercial site for the sale of armorial rings, parchments, tapestries etc (the Place Royale will design a hereditary coat of arms for you if you do not actually have one) might devalue its contents in the minds of many. Denis Constales's one-man sites are really just bibliographies, little enhanced by their introductions. Finally, the site of the Spanish Traditionalist-esoteric journal Symbolos adds little to the print journal itself. A few other sites not specifically linked to these are outlying members of the same community. A US site related to a Traditionalist journal (Lumen, publishers of Gnosis) is of somewhat better quality, as are a Spanish site in Valencia and a Portugese site, but there is little here to impress a casual visitor, and this European cyberspace community seems to be quite small.

 Guénon himself can however be found on various sites outside this immediate community, sites which are dedicated to matters other than Traditionalism. Web surfers who light upon the high-quality French site dedicated to North-South affairs, @rchipress, may read extracts from Guénon's Crise du Monde moderne there; Italians might find him in a gallery review. For those with special interests to take them to more specialist sites, Guénon's books are listed on-line by esoteric bookstores in Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, and Chile, as well as mentioned or given in recommended reading lists on various other sites, most of which may be classified as belonging to New Age enthusiasts or New Religious Movements (NRMs -- a term used by many scholars of religion in preference to 'cult' or 'sect'). Guénon features on the readings lists of three French sites (Buddhists, numerologists, and 'Celtic renewal') and two Italian sites (one rebirthing and one 'bio-energetic research'). He is quoted on the sites of Polish followers of Archbishop Lefebvre and on the sites of mainstream English and Swiss Freemasons; he appears as an authority in articles in a Portuguese-language on-line journal from the University of São Paulo and is discussed in the popular English-language 'spiritual search' Ken Wilber Forum. Most of all, however, he is referred to on the sites of a variety of NRMs, in Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese, but above all in English - which may simply reflect the continuing hegemony of the English-language over the web. This is ironic, given that Guénon was such a stern and devastating critic of such movements in his own day. [16]

The reader, who may be forgiven for by now wondering what any of this has got to do with Islam (in cyberspace or elsewhere), should remember that Guénonian Traditionalism was never specifically or overtly Islamic. Abu Bakr (Martin) Lings (c. 1911-), the English Muslim writer and one-time personal assistant of Guénon in Cairo, suggested that Guénon may have written about Hinduism far more than Islam because Westerners who might reject Islam as 'another religion' ('we have had enough of religion') might more easily accept 'truths' which came from something 'on the surface very different.' [17] Whether or not this is the case, a clear pattern throughout the twentieth century has been that Westerners who first are convinced by Guénon's arguments of the need to follow an orthodox religious tradition, then find that the proper orthodox tradition for them (and others) is Islam. This pattern has continued from the 1930s to the 1990s, and there is no reason that what is true of the consequences of initial contacts with Traditionalism made in 'alternative' religious groups or journals will not now also be true of contacts made on alternative web sites - with the possible exception of that of the new 'universal religion' Aumism, which simply [mis-]quotes Guénon as one of many who prophesied the coming of 'His Divine Majesty Hamsah Manarah.'

 There are, however, various web sites on which people who are already Muslim or interested primarily in Islam, and have no interest in NRMs, may encounter Guénon. His works appear in such places as the on-line catalogues of the Islamic Book Club, the Swiss Librairie Arabe, and of Sufi Books, Pak Books and Fons Vitae in the US. They are also recommended by at least one of the sites of Shaykh Nazim's Naqshbandi tariqa. Turkish translations of Guénon and other Traditionalist writers are listed in the mainstream on-line bookstore sahaf.com (the Turkish-language Amazon.com) - but then they are also available in ordinary Turkish bookstores, as they are in those of most Western countries, and indeed on Amazon.com itself. Muslims may have an interest in Guénon provoked by the favorable comments on him of Ali Shariati (on-line or off-line, in Farsi or in English), or by references to him in the Turkish on-line magazine Araf; they may encounter him on English-language Muslim web sites such as that of the Iranian Ahlul Bayt World Assembly (a very high-quality site), or that of the reformist Pakistani Tolu-e-Islam Bazm. Those Spanish-speakers who are not put off by the apparent strangeness of the 'Junta Islamica' in Cordoba may find Guénon on the beautifully-produced Verde Islam site - or they or anyone else may encounter him or his ideas when their computers are turned off - reading Aldous Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy, or when they are studying world religions in school in the US, for example, and have been assigned Huston Smith's widely-used The World's Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions. [18] After all, while the Internet may exist in cyberspace, the majority of its users continue to live their lives mostly in regular space, where the likelihood of someone discovering Guénon probably still remains greatest.

Evaluation

In early 1995, a group of London Masons who had spent considerable time conversing on the CompuServe Masonry Forum, decided to meet one evening for a pint after work. Under the leadership of their founder, Nick Alexander, this quick pint quickly led to a lunchtime get together by the same group. They continued to communicate with each other via the CompuServe Masonry Forum while others began to read their messages and interest spread.In November of 1995, Richard Springer of Rhode Island and Vince Tillona of New Jersey, conversing on the same forum, discussed starting a similar venture in the United States. Richard moved first and started the Boston Lunchtimers #2 and Vince continued by forming the Manhattan Lunchtimers #3. The groups have all grown substantially with interest growing throughout the United States and the world. In addition to the original London Lunchtimers (now #1), Boston #2 and Manhattan #3, there is now Paris #4, Kiwi (New Zealand) #5, Bristol #6, Indiana #7, Berkshire #8, Southern California #9,Bay Area (San Francisco) #10, and Pittsburgh #11. Rumors of new Lunchtimer groups continue to surface in many places around the world.

 This instance of blurring of the barriers between Traditionalism and the accepted 'mainstream' is however one of the few which can be observed in cyberspace to date. Most of the sites we have surveyed are clearly what they are - marginal and often eccentric, NRMs - with the important exception of the Fons Vitae on-line bookstore. This US site was created by a group including many of the same people who were responsible for the London Festival of Islam of 1976, and displays many of the same skills: high-quality technical presentation, whether of the site now or the exhibitions 25 years ago, and the placement of Islam in an intellectual and cultural context which is likely to make it appealing to sophisticated Westerners. This point may need some elaboration. Many of the non-Western Muslims who devote much time and money to the preparation and production of materials aimed at Westerners clearly have no conception of the impact that these materials will inevitably have - and though the Muslims in question will receive a reward from God commensurate with their intentions, it is unfortunately the case that their impact is largely negative. To a Westerner accustomed to contemporary Western standards of book production, a poorly-designed or poorly-executed book cover immediately damns the contents, as does the irregularity of the lines of print which so often results from the use of a well-worn press. The first misprint, mis-spelling or error of language is picked up and noted; the accumulation of such defects which is the norm for the variety work in question invariably gives rise to hilarity. And this is before we have even begun to consider the actual contents of the works in question... [20] The books produced by Fons Vitae and the other publishers it presents are without exception beautifully designed and printed, to even higher standards than the current Western norm. The majority of them are also great classic texts which are translated and commented on to the highest scholarly and literary standards, designed to attract rather than repel an educated and sophisticated Westerner. [21] Fons Vitae, then, represents an intentional blurring of the line between superficially high-quality Western cultural production and superficially low-quality Muslim cultural production.

 Fons Vitae also represents another variety of blurring, between mainstream and Traditionalist Islam. The majority of the books found there would be familiar to any 'alim of the last century; among them, however, are the works of Traditionalists such as Lings, Nasr, and Schuon, and these works are announced not as Traditionalist works but as works on Islam. Similarly, the site is announced as that of a publisher-bookseller, not that of the Foundation for Traditional Studies which evidently lies behind it; in the same way, there are no links to the variety of less impressive site we have been surveying above. This blurring is, however, not new: most readers of these Traditionalist authors over the last century have no doubt been unaware of the intellectual pedigree of some of the ideas and emphases they encounter.

 Perhaps the main reasons why there has so far been little web-induced blurring are technical. The web is still in its infancy, and has not yet become established as a proper forum for the variety of activities in which leading Traditionalists have previously participated. The vast majority of web journals, for example, are still on-line versions of established print journals, and though newspapers have become well-established, the web is still marginal to Western intellectual and academic discourse (outside the natural sciences, at least). Coupled with this is the continuing problem of actually finding anything on the web. It is hardly uncontroversial that, unless one knows what exactly what site one wants to access, it is hard to find it. Even someone who searches the web with a term as precise as 'Guénon' will find themselves inundated with results, some of them multiple references to the same site, and some of them to sites dealing with the guenon monkey. For someone who starts off with as general a query as 'Islam' the situation is even worse. This researcher contemplated attempting experimentally to reach a Traditionalist site starting with this term, but soon gave up in dismay at the magnitude of the task. And then there is the familiar problem of broken links... Given all this, it seems reasonable that the more sophisticated Traditionalists are for the time being staying away from the web, while only the more foolhardy or the more self-opinionated are venturing in.

 The web, however, is unlikely to stop maturing, and various solutions to the technical problems noted above are already mooted. As these obstacles are removed, then, we may well expect a larger and more influential Traditionalist presence on the web, with more potential for blurring of the sort noted in the case of Fons Vitae.

 Before we consider what the future may hold for a community of Muslim Traditionalists, we need to reconsider briefly the two terms we have used so often: 'Muslim' and 'Traditionalist.' 'Traditionalist' has been used as the adjective describing the people and the ideas, and 'Muslim' has been used as the adverb modifying the adjective 'Traditionalist.' This in some ways runs contrary both to reality and to Traditionalist theory. In reality, many people read Guénon and then become Muslim: Traditionalism is a route to Islam, and the community which the Traditionalist joins is that of Muslims. As far as theory is concerned, Guénon's Traditionalism talks of the need to follow an orthodox religion, in practice Islam - it calls to Islam, not Traditionalism. For a real Muslim Traditionalist, then, the crucial adjective should be 'Muslim,' not 'Traditionalist.' As has been said, detailed consideration of the impact of the Internet on the community of Muslims (including Traditionalists) is the subject of forthcoming studies. There are, however, sections within communities, in cyberspace as elsewhere, and in the future one or more Traditionalist Muslim web sites may bring together Traditionalist Muslims at present scattered amongst the wider Muslim community in exactly the same way that the web has already brought together Muslims scattered across the West.

 So far, then, the impact of the web on Traditionalist Muslims has been relatively small, and the impact of Traditionalist Islam on mainstream Islam has been little altered by the advent of the web. This may well be the case for other varieties of non-mainstream Muslim. This situation is, however, unlikely to persist. As the web matures, it will become more attractive to those more sophisticated Muslim Traditionalists who have until now held back, preferring to continue to concentrate on publishing, on the classroom and conference hall, or on television. Ultimately, in the same way that the web has made Muslims less of a minority in the West and increased their influence there, it is likely that the web will make Muslims such as the Traditionalists less of a minority within Islam, and increase their influence, too. 

Appendix:

Political Traditionalists

1. Italians
1. Azione Giovani
1. Official: www.azionegiovani.org
2. Verona: www.anverona.sis.it/ag
3. Rome: www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/6445
4. Europe: www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/5630
2. Alleanza Nazionali: www.alleanza-nazionale.it
2. Russians
1. Alexander Dugin
1. www.redline.ru/~arctogai
2. gelios.hypermart.net/index2.htm
3. www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/5983
4. www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/6824
5. www.internet-club.com/Russia/Kukushka
6. gelios.hypermart.net/finis1.htm
7. See also www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1404 and
8. www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1406
2. National-Bolshevist Party: www.limonka.com
3. Literary Review: www.rema.ru/KOMMENT/litoboz
4. Elementy: www.redline.ru/~elements

Mainstream Traditionalists

1. Alain Daniélou: wwwusers.imaginet.fr/~jcloarec/danielou
2. Californian Orthodox Churches
1. Church of the Theotokos: www.strannik.com/cafe/your_table/index.html
2. Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox Diocese of Berkeley ( provisional classification): www.atlantis-bbs.com/uaoc
3. Italian academic site: www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/5485
4. La règle d'Abraham: www.hexanet.fr/~php
5. Agorati P.: digiserve.com/mol/cultura/tradizio

European cyberspace community

1. French
1. Cercle d'Etudes et de Recherches Traditionelles:
1. home.worldnet.fr/cret
2. www.geocities/Athens/7524
3. www.mygale.org/~cret/cret01.htm
2. Place Royale
1. www.worldnet.net/luz/lpr/catlpr.html
2. services.worldnet.net/luzf
3. www.ilink.fr/luz/placeroyale
3. Denis Constales
1. cage.rug.ac.be/~dc/IT/itbib.html
2. www.geocities.com/Athens/7254
See also cage.rug.ac.be/~ci/oton.htm
2. Symbolos: www.geocities.com/~symbolos and/or

www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/3380
Federico González: www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/8612
3. Outlying members
1. Lumen: www.lumen.org
2. Grupo de Estudios Tradicionales de Valencia: www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/7695
3. Centro Ernesto Soares de Iconografia e Simbólica: portugal.hpv.pt/icone

Sites dedicated principally to matters other than Traditionalism

1. Non-religious
1. @rchipress: archipress.org
2. Archivio Attivo Arte Contemporanea: www.caldarelli.it/uomopia.htm
2. Esoteric bookstores
1. Bibliotheek FHIW (Leuven): cc2.kuleuven.ac.be/libis/kuleuven
2. France
1. Livre-rare-books: www.livre-rare-book.com/Matieres
2. Chez.com: www.chez.com/freecyb
3. La Libreria Ar (Salerno): www.xcom.it/ar/vetrina
4. Ediciones Obelisco (Barcelona): www.website.es/obelisco
5. Abanico (Santiago de Chile): macrovista.com/abanico
3. Recommended reading lists
1. French sites
1. (Swiss) Union des Bouddhistes de Langue Française: www.bouddha.ch
2. S. Desrosiers & Christine G.: www.i3d.qc.ca/i3dpro
3. Source Glane (Centre de Recherches Interdisciplinaires pour le Renouvellement des Etudes Celtiques): www.alpha-c.net/~scherrer/rubrik/sg.html
2. Italian sites
1. Associazione Rebirthing ad Approccio Transpersonale: www.ios.it/arat
2. Il Centre Eleven: www.multiwire.net/ass/eleven/biblio_i.htm
3. Polish followers of Archbishop Lefebvre: www.piusx.pol.pl
4. Mainstream English Freemasons: sykuta.business.pitt.edu
5. Mainstream Swiss Freemasons: www.club.ch/masonic
6. Brasilian on-line journal, Mirandum - Estudos E Seminários:

www.hottopos.com/mirand4/orientee.htm
www.hottopos.com/mirand5/mario.htm
7. Ken Wilber Forum.: www.shambhala.com/forums/wilber

Other New Age / NRMs (partial listing)

1. Italian
1. Enciclopedia Del Mistero: www.bvzm.com
2. Stefano Rex: www.nextitalia.it/zeptepi/rifle.html
2. French
1. Rota Solis: www.kyberco.com/Rotasolis
2. Aumism - Universal Religion: www.aumisme.org
3. Centro Cultural Rosacruz AMORC, Buenos Aires:

www.servisur.com/cultural/tradicional
4. Astra (Brasil): www.emprel.gov.br/~castro
5. English
1. Alchemy Academic Forum: www.levity.com/alchemy
2. Elektra: www.zynet.co.uk/elektra/academy
3. Gary Smith (South Africa): danae.marques.co.za
4. Journal of Science and Spirit: www.parascience.org
5. Kronia: www.kronia.com
6. Larson /Paul Brunton: www.lightlink.com/larson/ohio.htm
7. Picard UFO Research International: www.pufori.org
8. Schizophrenia & Shamanism: www.tightrope.demon.co.uk/skzconsc.htm
9. Vedic insights into technology: www.spacebetween.com/bgrosso6.html

Muslim sites

1. Bookstores
1. Islamic Book Club: www.islamicbookclub.com
2. USA
1. Sufi Books: www.sufibooks.com
2. Pak Books: www.j51.com/~alicamp
3. Fons Vitae: www.fonsvitae.com
3. Other countries
1. Sahaf.com: www.sahaf.com
2. Librairie Arabe (Switzerland): arabooks.ch
2. Others
1. Naqshbandiyya: www.iper.net/sufism
2. Araf: araf.tierranet.com
3. Ali Shariati: www.shariati.com
4. DILP, Ahlul Bayt Digital Islamic Library Project: www.al-islam.org/al-serat/reflect-nasr.htm
5. Tolu-e-Islam Bazm: www.toluislam.com
6. Junta Islamica: www.webislam.com
7. Verde Islam: www.verdeislam.com

Notes

 2. Ed. Munawar A Anees (London: ASEAN Press). [*]

 3. Bukhara managed to delay the introduction of printing until 1917. See Adeeb Khalid, 'Printing, Publishing and Reform in Tsarist Central Asia' (International Journal of Middle East Studies 26, 1994: 187- 200): 189. [*]

 4. There is at present almost no published work on the direct origins of Traditionalism, though there is much work published by Traditionalists on the traditional sources of Traditionalism. The general pattern of turning to the East is, however, well established - see, for example, Andrew Rawlinson, 'A History of Western Sufism.' (Diskus 1.1, 1993: 45-83). My conclusions on the applicability of this pattern to Traditionalism are based on a research project currently under way, of which only a little has so far been published. Where no source is given below for general observations about Traditionalists or Traditionalism, they derive from my synthesis of various sources used in this research. [*]

 5. Two of Guénon's earliest and most important works were his Introduction générale à l'étude des doctrines hindoues (Paris, 1921) and his L'homme et son devenir selon le Védânta (Paris, 1925). Like almost all Guénon's works, these books have been very frequently reprinted and translated into a variety of languages. [*]

 6. For this, see especially his later but central La règne de la quantité et les signes des temps (Paris, 1945). [*]

 7. For Schuon, see Leif Stenberg, The Islamization of Science: Four Muslim Positions Developing an Islamic Modernity ( Lund: Religionshistoriska avdelningen, Lunds universitet, 1996) and my 'How Traditional are the Traditionalists? The Case of the Guénonian Sufis' (forthcoming in Mikael Rothstein and Reender Kranenborg, ed.s, Proceedings of the 11^th International Congress of CESNUR Århus: Århus University Press: [1999]. [*]

 8. For the Imperial Iranian Academy, see Stenberg Islamization of Science, 106-07. Some of the AAR papers are published in ARIES 11 (1990). [*]

 9. 'Moslems: East Comes West' (The Economist 3 April 1976: 30). [*]

 10. See, for example, the special issue of the Times Literary Supplement of April 30, 1976. [*]

 11. One of the few exceptions was Doris Lessing ('The Ones Who Know' [Review Article], Times Literary Supplement 30 April 1976: 514-15). [*]

 12. See my 'How Traditional?' for a more detailed discussion. [*]

 13. The survey was performed in July 1998, taking as a basis the examination of every site returned by an Alatavista search using the term 'Guenon,' and then of every site given on the links pages of the sites found in the first round. This survey did not fail to reveal any site or organization operating a site of which I was aware from other sources, which suggests that its scope was reasonably complete. [*]

 14. See, however, Richard Drake, 'Julius Evola and the Ideological Origins of the Radical Right in Contemporary Italy' (Political Violence and Terror: Motifs and Motivations. Ed. Peter H Merkl. Berkeley: U of California P, 1986: 61-89) and Franco Ferraresi, 'Julius Evola: Tradition, Reaction and the Radical Right' (Archives européennes de sociologie 28, 1987: 107-51). [*]

 15. The Literary Review is almost a mainstream publication, established in Soviet times; Elementy had a print run of 50,000 in the early 1990s (Denis Paillard, 'Encouragée par des activistes occidentaux: L'inquiétante renaissance de l'extrème droite' (Le Monde diplomatique, Jan 1993). [*]

 16. L'erreur spirite (Paris, 1923) started where Le Théosophisme: histoire d'une pseudo-religion (Paris, 1921) had left off; the two constitute an attack - by many accounts, a devastating one - on almost all the NRMs of Guénon's own time. [*]

 17. Lings, interview September 1996, and 'René Guénon' (Sophia 1, 1995): 24 & 29. [*]

 18. First published 1958. 'Over 1,500,000 copies sold,' proclaims the cover of the current US (Harper) paperback edition. Harper also sell an illustrated edition, and a companion 'reading and writing workbook' for use in schools. [*]

 19. Paul Chacornac, La vie simple de René Guénon (1958. Paris: Ed. traditionelles, 1986): 10. [*]

 20. These comments are based, especially, on my experience of running a small seminar in on Islam for Europeans living in Cairo, for practical reasons mostly using locally-available texts. [*]

 21. The Islamic Texts Society in Cambridge, England, is one of the best of the publishers producing such texts. [*]