Sunday, October 31, 2010

Facebook and Islam

Facebook is one of the popular social network applications in the world nowadays. With the intention to find ex-schoolmates, I started using Facebook after being invited by one of my friends to use it. Ex-schoolmates (Sekolah Rendah Seksyen 24 Shah Alam, Sekolah Rendah Seksyen 18 Shah Alam, Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Seksyen 18 Shah Alam and Malay College Kuala Kangsar Perak), friends at UTHM when I was doing my first degree, MBA's friends and rugby communities; are all groups in my Facebook's friend list. I managed to meet back old friends by using Facebook as I didn't have their contacts before. I owe a lot to Facebook actually.

I tried to invite some friends to use this application. Some of them use it without any question. Some of them refuse to use it because they don't have much time to use it (mostly they said because of work commitment but I didn't buy it, they are just lazy). But, what really attract me when there is a friend that doesn't want to use Facebook just because of the creator and owner of Facebook. As we all know, Mark Zuckerberg is a Jewish and as a Muslim, I do believe that non-Muslims especially Jews are always trying to make Muslims to betray Allah.

From my personal observation, using Facebook does take a lot of time when it is not properly controlled. Always late in performing prayer (Solah) is one common thing that I can see when using Facebook, even from my side also (Astaghfirullah al-Azim). Maybe my friend that doesn't want to use Facebook as I mentioned before was right. Perhaps it is Jewish agenda where by using Facebook may lead to negative aspect such as wasting time as it is prohibited in Islam.

However, we can deeply look into the positive side of using Facebook. Since I use this application, I realize there are many pages that involved in spreading Islamic taughts. One of the examples is the page of "I'm a Muslim and I'm Proud". (http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/IAmMuslimAndProud)

This page actually got more than 3 million readers from around the world as it uses the medium of English. This page always show some citation from Al-Quran and Hadith of Rasulullah s.a.w. And, there is a section where the readers can discuss the matters regarding Islam.

The second example is the page of "Islam Itu Indah".

This page is more focus on Islamic issues in Malaysia as it uses the medium of Malay language. This page always shares the articles from online newspapers as it discusses current issues in our society such as financial management in Islamic way and also the social disease in our society such as adultery.

The third example is the page of "Kumpulan Doa-doa Islam Sehari-hari".

This page shares the collection of prays to Allah that can be practiced everyday. As we all know, we must always ask as much helps from Allah, everyday, every time, prosper time, difficult time, receiving good news, receiving bad news; we must always say our prays to Allah. Bear in mind that Allah loves and remembers the Muslims and Mu'mins that always ask for helps from Allah (Subhanallah).

The fourth example is the page of "Hadith of the Day".
(http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1208604647#!/HadithoftheDay)

This page shares the collection of Hadith from Rasulullah s.a.w. From my observation, the creator of this page is very active by sharing at least one Hadith per day everyday. As we all know, Hadith or Sunnah is the way of Rasulullah in doing all the things in his life and it is actually additional lessons for Muslims after Al-Quran. As Muslims, we must follow all the taughts both from Al-Quran and Hadith.

In the world of technology today, it is very good for us as Muslims if we we can see all these applications in information technology being used in spreading the taught of Islam. Approaching youngsters nowadays is not the same with the way of approach with youngsters 20 - 30 years ago. Youngsters now use most of their time using all these information technologies application. This is actually a very good opportunity to spread the taught of Islam by using Facebook as it is easier to reach and eacy to access. However, there were efforts that have been made by some parties to restrict the Facebook pages that were related to Islam (I couldn't remember the name of the pages that had been blocked or deleted by the Facebook webmasters). Maybe the parties that were responsible for that restriction felt some threats to their agendas because of the existence of this kind of pages and they assumed that the creators of the pages were radical Muslims. But, I do believe that this kind of pages will still be created by the persons that feel the obligation in showing the truth of Islam. As Muslims, we must believe that Allah will always help us in doing Jihad (ALLAHUAKBAR!!!).

Prepared by:

Mohd Azwan Azim bin Rosli

2009898018









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