Strategies for Religious Training in Cyberspace with an Emphasis on the Quranic Teachings and Imam Reza's Traditions

Environment, as an influential aspect of training, has always directly had an influence on the process of training and education. The constructive and destructive roles of the educational environment and methods to improve and enhance its effectiveness should always be considered by the educators and parents so as to achieve positive results in training. This issue has been at the center of attention in Islamic culture. Nowadays, with the rapid development of virtual networks, such as the Internet, mobile phones, and social networks, a new educational environment, known as cyberspace, has appeared which has significantly affected different individuals, especially children and adolescents.
It will affect the training of the audience both directly and indirectly, as well. By analyzing the educational challenges in the cyberspace, the current study firstly recounts the challenging features of the cyberspace and secondly presents effective strategies in addressing the educational challenges in the cyberspace by focusing on Quranic verses and investigating the content of Imam Reza’s (P.B.U.H.) tradition. Some of the challenging features of the education in the cyberspace are as follows: Its western origin, its endlessness and uncontrollability, conflicts of cultures in the cyberspace, privacy of users being invaded, anonymity of identities, crimes against chastity and public grace and
ethics, enemy’s investment in virtual networks and soft war, and the negative effects on the users’ morals. On the other hand, there are some strategies which Quranic verses and Imam Reza (P.B.U.H.) recommend to us. They are as follows: Acculturalization of optimal and accurate use of the cyberspace, training the educators and parents on the potential dangers of cyberspace, producing and developing the cultural products in cyberspace according to the Islamic religion, supervision over and accompaniment with children in their use of cyberspace, the replacement of foreign culture with the insider culture, reinforcing the beliefs, giving insight and awareness to the users.