Social networking: Fatwas against Facebook? February 26, 2010 By Guest Contributor Leave a Comment No poking, please Like any other social media platform, Facebook hosts a wide range users, some looking for intellectual stimulation, and some others looking to seek companionship. One has to be no less careful with Facebook friends than with next door neighbors, perhaps more so given the 400 million active users that it boasts about. You could waste your time uploading doppelganger pictures onto your profile or fill your status bar with the meaning of your name from urbandictionary. For example, my name, Fahad, means: “Someone who is a math genius.” The irony, however, is that I can’t calculate tip in a restaurant. But there is a lot of math that may not add up on open social platforms like Facebook, especially if one is a practicing Muslim. How should men and women who are not married to each other interact in such electronic venues? Do the rules of live discourse apply? Recently, rumors about a religious ruling against Facebook went viral. A known figure from Al Azhar, Sheikh Abd Al-Hamid Al-Atrash, allegedly gave a fatwa against Facebook, finding it a breeding ground for illicit relationship between men and women, married and unmarried. The Sheikh has since denied issuing any such fatwa but has not officially disagreed with its essential holding. The rumors of the fatwa sparked a debate from all corners. Some felt it ridiculed religious opinion, while others understood the underlined wisdom. The Sheikh may have given the fatwa and retracted it after the outburst, or he may not have said it in the first place. But however absurd a heading “Egyptian cleric bans Facebook” may sound, the rationale and the language that we read between the quotes attributed to the Sheikh are familiar to many of us. Twenty-nine year old Mohamed Altantawy, a doctoral student at Columbia University, said that the alleged fatwa reminded him of the time when satellite channels were first introduced in Egypt and the campaign that followed to prohibit them. A fatwa against Facebook may sound grave and new, but many have heard local imams and conservative Sheikhs labeling it as fitna, because of the underlying temptations that may lead to something haram. Altantawy has been on Facebook for five years and logs on several times a day to stay connected with his circle of friends back home in Cairo, as well as other friends and colleagues. His posts can range from serious political debate to wowing the Egyptian football team on their performance against Algeria. “If anyone is using Facebook for illicit purposes, banning it wouldn’t solve the problem,” he says, “only educating them can bring change, so that they consciously make the right choice.” The alleged fatwa claimed that the divorce rate has risen in Egypt because the site offers a platform for potential lovers. Abdelrahman Ibrahim, 25, who is pursuing a graduate degree at the School of International and Public Affairs, pointed out that a recent census in Egypt indeed proves that one out of every five recent divorces owe the debacle to finding another partner on Facebook. (link to census needed) Sadly, the census doesn’t concern itself whether a divorced couple was happily married or not. Presumably they were not like Hermia, in Midsummer Knight’s Dream, or Othello’s Desdemona or Portia, in the Merchant of Venice, or Juliet, all of who had embraced and committed themselves to their partners.
Posted on: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 12:31:59 +0000
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