Investigating how the sources of online audio Qur´an empower listeners

Fundamental Islamic principles require that the Qur´an, in whatever format, should remain intact. The Internet is a huge source of different formats of the Qur´an. Unfortunately some people are skeptical about the content of any Islamic resource on the Internet, because of the deception or misleading representation of Islam/Muslims found on many Web sites. However, Islamic resources on the Internet still impact many people in many ways, especially young people. This paper investigates how online audio Qur´an empowers listeners. The online audio Qur´an file can be downloaded and installed on either a mobile device or a PC, or listened to on different websites. The research was carried out through a quantitative survey of 123 respondents; both descriptive and inferential statistic analyses were used to develop and validate a new scale that measures the empowerment through Internet sources of audio Qur´an. The items on the scale measured the key variables that impact people in their use of online audio Qur´an. The result shows that the key attribute empowering listeners is competence.