ESSAY
The Metaverse Explained for Muslims Is it a source of liberation or a force of captivity? RASHEED RABBI
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apturing the imagination of enjoying an immersive and interactive digital experience, the Metaverse has lately become the buzzword on almost everyone’s lips. The idiom is not new. However, its vision and ongoing development were reoriented on Oct. 29, 2021, when Mark Zuckerberg renamed Facebook as Meta and outlined his futuristic vision with a formalized focus on the Metaverse. Other tech giants and even small companies have confirmed a shared interest and their biggest investments, projecting a potential market value of $15 to $30 trillion, almost 493 times the growth for the total market capitalization of metaverse-related stocks (https://invest.thefinancialstar.com/). Such an enormous enterprise and bulk investments for Metaverse, proclaiming to build the new “base of human life,” won’t disappear in the short term. Rather, we are to get entrapped into its lasting consequences, about which many religious communities have already expressed deep concerns. A realistic approach to address those concerns is not to bluntly dismiss such a laborious and high-budget concept that may cast criticism on faith communities’ reservation in adopting technology. Instead, we need to claim our portion of ownership to set the parameters for it. Instead of sitting back and just inheriting its estranged reality, which lacks the flexibility of adjusting it to our personal space, sharing concerns early on would increase the possibility of shaping a more inclusive Metaverse for everyone. “Metaverse” is a compound word: meta (after or beyond) and universe. It first appeared in Neal Stephenson’s novel “Snow Crush” (1992), in which the author looked for a “universe” with the meta-meanings of things. He imagined a dystopian future in which human beings inhabit a conceptual reality built on the virtual world. Since then, what has been drawing dramatic attention, particularly in cyber technology, is the keywork “meta,” which 54
ISLAMIC HORIZONS MAY/JUNE 2022
leaves a vast leeway for individuals and technology practitioners to adopt the idea, yet adjust and even alter it within their personalized context. Integrating this idea within the contemporary hype of IT industry, however, doesn’t fulfill the original vision. Exploring the background of this catchphrase will give us a deeper understanding of its meaning and origin.
TRACING THE LONGING O METAVERSE BEYOND “SNOW CRASH” FOR THE PLATO’S CAVE
Being tired of his outside world, Stephenson posited an alternative virtual world. Such a longing to find a solace outside of a hectic world is eternal. A similar quest can also be found in Vernor Vinge’s “True Names” (1981) and in a series of William Gibson novels from the 1980s. If we dig deeper, they all owe a debt to Morton Heilig’s 1962 Sensorama machine.We can go even further back, all the way to Plato’s shadows on a cave wall around 375 bce (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/brace-for-impact-it-s-time-to-usher-in-the-metaverse/ ar-AATIvCy). Plato’s “The Republic” presents an allegory of prisoners chained to the wall of a cave with an outlet above it for the light to enter. They watch the shadows projected from behind them by puppeteers passing objects in front of a fire. Having been imprisoned since birth, they consider the shadows to be true reality, even competing to predict which ones will come next. Due to divine intervention and knowledge acquisition, a few of them become “chosen prisoners” who question the competition’s utility and eventually escape the cave. Similarly, virtual users sit in a metaphorical cave, experiencing 2D/3D shadows on the digital walls. Tech giants are working like puppeteers to present more elaborate and precise appearances of
