In his article Technology and Religious Change: Islam and the Impact of Print, Francis Robinson analyzes the relatively late use of the printing press by Muslims, who only utilized en masse about four hundred years after it had been well established in the Christian world.[1] He rightly asserts that the use of transmission, via person-to-person, has been understood by Muslims to be at the very essence of Islamic knowledge and gave one the necessary authority to transmit and interpret Islamic texts. Printing materials in mass distribution would have jeopardized their authority, and especially the essence of traditional knowledge. However, once the ᶜulama, especially those losing power and influence under Western colonization, feared that the Muslim community might slip into unbelief (kufr) due to the corroding Islamic religious infrastructure (especially the loss the implementation of the shari’ah) and the efforts of Christian missionaries, the ᶜulama decided that making knowledge available through print was now necessary. The impact of the printing press has had both positive and negative effects. Islamic material was now being transmitted in large numbers to the masses, allowing the ᶜulama to publish works they considered critical in their time. Yet, by making material more widely available to the public the ᶜulama jeopardized their own role in the community. That is, if people could seek knowledge from a book, why did they need to turn to a scholar?

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