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Deja Vu! Saudi Arabia’s top cleric, Abdul Aziz Al Shaikh, says that Twitter is a platform for “promoting lies.” Two years ago, Al-Azhar’s Abd Al-Hamid Al-Atrash said that Facebook “breaks up families.”
Social media doesn’t lure a person to flirt with someone, spread a lie about someone, or harness envy, jealousy and hate (read my article The accessibility of envy on social media).
Though it is a grandiose statement, it is fair to say that we, human beings have been lying since time immemorial. Infidelity is nothing new either.
Perhaps it is easier to issue a fatwa (religious edict) against inanimate websites than to tell people to their faces “you’re promoting lies,” or “you’re enviously staring at pictures of people in your network.”
The Egyptian cleric, who later denied having issued a fatwa against Facebook, had allegedly blamed the site for the increasing divorce rate. I spoke to my Egyptian friends about the rumors of such a fatwa for an article (which you can read here) and I remember one of them saying that “they [clerics] would have to ban the Internet, cell phones, e-mail and landline phones.”
The crux of the matter is that people who have the urge to lie or gossip will find a way to do it.
I am not saying that people will do what they want to do, right or wrong, and hence we should give up on them. I am merely suggesting that we strive to find the most effective solution rather than searching for the most convenient target. This is what needs to be done: a) identify the root of the problem, and b) act wisely when you’re counseling others. Grandiose statements against this or that website or technology are counterproductive when they merely address a symptom of a problem and not its cause.
The old man within me agrees that you will find little of substance in social media. Perhaps I am only saying that because Noam Chomsky has made similar statements. He said in an interview: “[I] think it erodes normal human relations. It makes them more superficial, shallow, evanescent.”
Just for the record, there is a kid in me as well who spends way too much time, more than I am ready to confess in writing, on Facebook and Twitter, but I do agree with Professor Chomsky.
Coming back to the point, the clerics probably mean well, but the strategy that they have adopted will never bear the intended fruits. There seems to be a gulf between the clerics and their audience; the one factor that I feel is constantly missing is goodwill between the two.
As a teacher, I’m only successful in guiding my students when they know that I want them to be better human beings and that I wish for them to excel in life. And it takes time to build that trust and rapport.
The reasons for accusing social networking sites epitomises deep ethical and moral flaws that cannot be easily amended through a fatwa or a Friday sermon.
Fahad Faruqui is a journalist, writer and educator. Alumni Columbia University. You can email him at fahad@caa.columbia.edu
The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.
Sir Syed Ahmed was labelled…you know what.. for just proposing people to get an Education a scintific Education, now they send their sons and daughters to Aligarh with pride some of them still don't.. These people have to be dragged int0 newer times. All the arguments given against Facebook can easily apply against the Internet. Internet should be banned. E-mail is another evil, how many examples you need.
Television is another evil. Cinema,Music,Books. There is a long list.
This is the most confusing article i've ever read. If Chomsky says that fb erodes relations you agree because CHOMSKY said it. But when some cleric says that fb is detrimental to relationships, you term the opinion as a deep moral crisis. As long as the clerics are not calling for a ban of fb, don't have a point that fb may have some negatives?
facebook is becoming a social dilemma and it's use has been causing quite a mess, in my view it's use needs to be restricted, I am totally anti-facebook because I see no practical use of this, you can stay in contact thru emails and messengers, you can share your stuff thru msn skydrive, which is atleast more private. there are so many alternatives that you can use and still have more privacy than facebook. in my recent memory facebook has been linked to,
1. suicide by teens – due to being bullied on facebook
2. insulted and humiliated – because someone confessed that she was raped while a child and was looking to comfort herself
3. a couple has been killed in US by someone who they had "de-friend" on facebook
4. only yesterday a father made a video where he talked about his daughter rants about her parents, after explaining what she said and his replies, he shoots her laptop 9 times in video.
one can already see the social implications of facebook, I do not have facebook, I will never have facebook nor I will let my kids anywhere near it. I see nothing positive about it, I see no gain from it, and on top of that, OUR lost has created a gain for the owners and made them billionaires, and at what cost? Our Privacy !!! and btw, facebook owns everything you put on there. is it worth it? I don't think so.
Bilal thats the way to go–you just literally blew the argument in the article to nothingness…there is no room to defend facebook any more.
This is a reply to Mr Bilal,
Respected Sir, I don't mean to put a deny on your proposition as they're meaningful and quite right to be honest. But blaming facebook for such shameful acts is a quite lame excuse. Social media is a massive source of communication in the 21st century. Facebook or twitter never mean to spread hatred nor they will. It's human nature which causes misuse of things which are meant for our use. If wrong use of objects means that we should ban them then we should ban knives first of all because they hurt people and hammers because they cause injuries or why don't we ban TV or computers because they cause electric shocks and time wastage! It's the need of the hour that we should change ourself instead of changing things around us.
Fb, Internet, Twitter and other products of technology are tools. A hammer can be used to help drive nails into a dry wall and it can be used to kill someone by hitting him with a hammer. Would you ban a hammer?
Do the Islamic clerics know that if Allah did not want to create evil acts, He could have done so and created human beings like Angels free of sins? But in His wisdom to test mankind He created Devil (Shaitaan) and evil acts. Allah gave full freedom to mankind to choose between evil acts and good acts. Will the Islamic clerics ban the use of computers that is being used to learn evil acts as well as good acts?