Facebook = Haram?!!

Imagine swimming and swimming lap after another, searching for a piece of land to rest on, food, water, or anything that could help remind you what it felt like to be human. The swimming tires you, exhausts you, and slowly you begin hallucinating. You see a far away island, one that requires only a few more minutes of moving your restless and weak arms and legs to its direction. You keep moving, and swim even faster to arrive quicker. And it suddenly hits you. Your eyes have betrayed you, and your brain was just teasing. There’s no island. There’s no ending. It’s either the swimming continues with a numb soul, or you give up and let the savage waves take control.

And that’s how I feel every now and then. I love Islam. I feel it’s a beautiful pure religion which always, always, makes sense. It covers everything, and if conducted properly it would make us the happiest people ever. However, (and a big “HOWEVER” this is), Muslims go on and on making their own explanations, creating their own rules, and enforcing their own limited point of views upon it. They either make it ridiculously difficult, because for one reason or another they personally cannot do something allowed in Islam and so they want everyone else to stop doing it. Or, they take it easy – too easy – and try to explain why they personally believe something should be allowed while it clearly isn’t.

And here is where I fit in. I don’t claim to understand every part of this great religion, but I can say that I know the basics. I know how I’m supposed to live, to think, to feel and to “deal” with people/issues according to Islamic teachings. But lately, I feel all I do is defend Islam. Explain why some people did something wrong, and how they linked it to Islam, but it really isn’t Islam – they just misunderstood it. I just wish I could one day stop defending. Stop explaining. I wish Muslims would act as Muslims, rather than act upon their personal beliefs and say those are Islam’s beliefs. I wish there’s an ending to this tiresome battle with the savage waves.

The latest Fatwa is a typical example. According to yesterday’s Muscat Daily, a top Egyptian cleric from Al-Azhar issued a “fatwa forbidding the use of popular social networking site Facebook” !!!!! And why is it forbidden? Because it “encourages spouses to have relations with other people”. Well I guess I’m going to hell then, since I’m very into Facebook and I check it every day!

Aaaarrrggghhhh!!!! Nothing about the Fatwa makes sense! It just makes Muslims look ridiculous. As if all we think of is having relationships with other people. As if we never knew how to do it before until Facebook, hurray, came to existence. As if we are so weak, so stupid, and so naïve, that we would easily fall for any friend request and the next day betray our spouses because our new “friend’s” profile picture was so gorgeous we couldn’t resist it. How sad.

It’s even Haram in Islam to say something is Haram while it isn’t. Any Fatwa has to have some concrete basis. I don’t see any basis, let alone solid basis, for this Fatwa.

But I suppose I cannot lose hope. Hope for change, and hope for a world where both Muslims and non-Muslims understand Islam better. But I need help in this – and dearest readers do help me out. Let’s erase these misunderstandings, let’s think and analyze and understand better, let’s use common sense rather than traditional viewpoints and ancestors’ beliefs. As Lin Yutang says it:

“Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.”