Economic Confidential, June, 2009

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Muslims And The Internet: What Manner Of Messengers?     

By Nurain H. Ibrahim   

The Internet has brought changes of hitherto unimaginable proportions to the way people communicate. Today’s educated Muslims, especially the youth and professionals, have been quick to join the Internet bandwagon as a major medium for finding or sharing information on issues that matter to them and if necessary, mobilising globally to confront common challenges. Among much else, Muslims use the Internet to send and receive emails on Islamic teachings, for discussion of local and international politics (e.g. the war on terror and the Israel-Palestine conflict), to find answers to theological questions (as found on the many Q&A websites and discussion forums), and even for personal issues (such as the Muslim dating websites that single men and women are increasingly resorting to, to find Mr. or Mrs. Right). Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for hopping on this bandwagon, which can be a veritable force for good. However, a worrying trend has been developing over the years, which I felt I should share my thoughts on with Muslim brothers and sisters. I believe that if left unchecked, this trend will turn the Internet from being a force for good, which it could be, to one less so, which it could also be. Three of these trends are discussed below.

Spreading falsehood

The first worrying trend, if looked at purely from an altruistic motive, perhaps derives from a sense of duty in fulfilling the Prophet Muhammad’s (SAW) admonition to Muslims to “balligu anni wa lau ayah”, meaning “convey my message [i.e. of Islam] even if it be one verse”. But do we pause for a second to as ask ourselves the question: what manner of messengers would the Prophet (SAW) want us to be? I don’t think so, because many Muslims automatically click on the send button to forward any email they receive or information they get off the web, which purports to share something of that message. Granted that most of these messages are usually quite useful but many still end up unintentionally or deliberately spreading falsehood. As useful as the lessons inherent in these messages are, as devotees of a religion that abhors falsehood under any guise, we must be careful in attaching value to lessons, stories and pictures spread on the internet unless the sources are verifiable. Some of the most common messages being spread in such a manner are those purporting to be some miracle or really strange happening which Muslims should draw lessons from. These however, often originate from the creative genius of an artist with a vivid imagination and some fancy graphics tools (such as Photoshop) or the religious zeal of a devoted but misguided Muslim who saw the opportunities presented by the Internet and thought to take advantage of them to enjoin good and forbid evil (a fundamental tenet of the Islamic society) even if it means bending the truth. In the first scenario, outright falsehood is spread. An instance of this is an email containing pictures of a giant skeleton purportedly excavated by Saudi Aramco (itself an oil giant), which Muslims were circulating as the remains of the people of ‘Ad and Thamud mentioned in the Qur’an. This turned out to be an artist’s entry in a Photoshop competition that won third place (See http://www.worth1000.com/ contest.asp?contest_id=447& display=photoshop for this and many other amazing but nevertheless, fake pictures). Another example is the picture of an eighteen-year-old boy, who allegedly died and was buried only to be exhumed three hours later at the instance of his father who wanted a proper autopsy 2 done. His face was found to have been disfigured and contorted, which the email claimed has been confirmed by Islamic scholars as consistent with torture in the grave. The father, the email said, admitted that the boy was not in the habit of saying his prayers and committed many sins. I get it, the message being, don’t neglect your prayers! But do Muslims honestly think that we need such pictures to remind us of the importance of prayer and worship?

Besides, from my admittedly limited, but I believe, operationally sufficient understanding of how the Almighty exacts retribution on the sinner, it would be the sinner’s soul alone that would feel the heat, so to speak. His physical body, which would’ve ceased to matter in the scheme of things wouldn’t feel a thing. Even from a material perspective, it would be unlikely that the body could be so contorted after death. This is because rigor mortis sets in from about three hours after death and the body reaches its maximum stiffness after twelve hours (see http://www.deathonline.net/ decomposition/body_changes/ rigor_mortis.htm for more on what happens to the body after death). During this period, the body wouldn’t be physically amenable to such contortion.

Some might argue that we’re not talking about the physical laws of this world and that rigor mortis or not, Allah can do as He wills. They’d be right; partly. All people of faith believe in the supremacy of God and His ability to do whatsoever He wants. But it is inconsistent with Sunnat-Allah i.e. God’s way of doing things, to show us the supernatural. Rather, He appeals to our reason by constantly inviting us to reflect, to ponder, to think about His signs in the physical universe and nature, and in doing so, be able to discern the truth from falsehood. So as a people of faith, I don't think we need any miracles or supernatural occurrences to convince us of the truth of our religion and the consequences of doing right and wrong as taught to us by the Qur'an and Sunnah. Besides, isn’t the Qur’an supposed to be its own miracle? And Allah knows best.

All this might be dismissed as mere conjecture on my part and I’m quick to add that it’s even beside the point, since the picture of our eighteen-year-old is very likely to be a fake for several reasons. I will not be the least surprised if the original source of the photo is discovered in a manner similar to that of the Photoshop contest mentioned above. But I didn’t have to wait for that discovery to convince me of the picture’s dubiety as a few tell-tale signs gave the game away. The first curious thing I noted was that the boy was wearing what looks like a ragged shirt (complete with button holes) and a pant or “diaper” of sorts. I thought wait a minute! Aren’t Muslims supposed to be buried in a simple white shroud, not shirts and pants? Secondly, the whole picture looks like something coming out of a Hollywood movie - the plastic contorted face, the synthetic hair, the paleness of the body suggesting several layers of body paint, all carefully created to achieve the desired effect. Anyone who’s seen the “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy will appreciate what I’m talking about. We’ve all seen how real Hollywood can make things look (unlike our own Nollywood unfortunately). If we’re not gullible enough to fall for film tricks, I don’t see why we should fall for these pictures.

Sadly, it seems, all that is needed for us take leave of our common sense is for someone to find an amazing picture on the Internet, attach a religious connotation to it, post it on a blog or share it with someone and voila! It spreads like wild fire. In the second scenario, these incredible messages are true but only to an extent. Enter the email about the Dajjal (anti-Christ) which has found its way into my mailbox several times in the past couple of months. It contains a picture of an innocent baby who was made out to be the Dajjal because she had one eye in the centre of her forehead. Without going into the religious controversy over the Dajjal and his signs, which is way above my pay grade, the baby who was purported to have been born in Israel (see the significance?), turned out to be, in fact, a baby girl born in Chennai India who died in infancy. It takes no genius to see what the authors of that email were aiming at. According to a Muslim doctor who apparently shares my frustration at such deliberate falsehood and who posted a detailed dismissal of the claim online (seehttp://muslimspeak.wordpress. com/?s=Dajjal), the little girl had a very rare but well documented congenital defect known as “cyclopia, synophthalmia or synophthalmia”, where the child is born with one undivided eye. Need I say more?

Making threats

In other cases, these often fabricated messages resort to even subtle threats and blackmail. They end by saying something like “if you love Allah and His messenger, please forward to all the people in your address book” or “send it to everyone in your contacts list and see the good things that will happen in your life; so and so received it and didn’t forward it and such and such [bad things] happened to them”. One example is that of the thoroughly discredited dream of one Sheikh Ahmad – a purported guard at the Prophet’s mosque in Madina - in which he claims to have seen the Prophet (SAW) who gave him some message and asked him to spread it around. Even without the scholars discrediting it, we only need be critical to realise that what he was saying would amount to a revelation (Wahy) being conveyed to us by the Prophet through him. Again, need I say more? In as much as the intentions are usually noble, as Muslims we know that the end doesn’t justify the means.

As it turns out, this problem seems to date back to the early centuries after the Prophet. An excerpt from Muhammad Hashim Kamali’s Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence (2003, pp.89-90), discussing the fabrication of Hadiths reads: “Another category of fabricated hadith is associated with the religious zeal of individuals whose devotion to Islam led them to the careless ascription of hadith to the Prophet. This is illustrated by the forgeries committed by one Nuh ibn Abi Maryam on the virtues of the various suras of the Qur’an. He is said to have later regretted what he did and explained that he fabricated such hadith because he saw people who were turning away from the Qur’an and occupying themselves with the fiqh of Abu Hanifah and the battle stories of Muhammad ibn Ishaq. Numerous other names occur in the relevant literature, including those of Ghulam Khalil and Ibn Abi‘Ayyash of Baghdad, who were both known as pious individuals, but who invented hadith on the virtues of certain words of praise (adhkar wa-awrad) and other devotional matters” (pp.89-90).

Asking unnecessary questions

The third trend, at the risk of sounding anti-knowledge, is that of asking what I feel are very inane and unnecessary questions on Islamic Q&A forums. Again, I must hurry to admit however, that as in the other trends I mentioned, I’m the least competent person to talk about this from a theological perspective. Nonetheless, I come across them regularly, to the extent that I have all but stopped visiting these websites and I only need to look at the subject heading before promptly deleting all such answers or Fatwas emailed to me. Seeking knowledge about the religion should ordinarily be always a virtue, but the nature of some of the questions asked by Muslims, in my opinion, says more about their level of ignorance of the basic tenets of the faith, than of their quest for any deeper knowledge. The simple-minded questioner then takes the answer provided by the scholar as gospel, hook, line and sinker, and proceeds to spread around on the Internet, until he has another stupid question and runs back to the Sheikh. If the questions asked are silly, the answers provided are even more perplexing, considering that they are coming from so-called learned men. Perhaps eager to maintain the status quo of power relations between them and the laity (which ironically, has been somewhat depleted by the Internet) by ensuring that we always come back to them on every matter, the scholars oblige us by sometimes giving ridiculous answers.

One of many examples I’ve come across over time, was the one which asked a Sheikh what a worshipper should do if someone praying next to him in the mosque suddenly slumps and falls down. For goodness sake, why would someone need a Sheikh to tell him what to do in such a situation? Isn’t it pretty obvious that the person so obviously in distress should be helped by his fellow worshippers? What happened to the basic Islamic principle of kindness and helping thy neighbour, more so when your help could be the difference between life and death? Would Allah, the Most Merciful to His servants, mind that you interrupted His Worship by stooping to help your brother and therefore punish you? I’m no Sheikh, but I dare say that Allah wouldn’t mind at all. If anything, He would reward you for it. In response to such a silly question, the Sheikh went ahead to deliver his ridiculous verdict in return, which reminds me of the phrase “GIGO” used in Computing, which means Garbage In, Garbage Out. Instead of explaining the general principle which should have helped the questioner decide what to do (and perhaps even rebuking him mildly for asking such a question), the Sheikh’s answer, in summary, was that if the life of the person who fell down will be in danger, then the people standing next to him can interrupt their prayer and attend to him. Okay, by now, I’m beginning to seethe inside. What more evidence does one need that this person’s life could be in real danger apart from his falling down in the middle of performing salah, and how on earth can people know better without attending to him first? No further comment.

Navigating safely

There are many more examples, but the article has already gotten long-winded, so I’ll have to stop here. However, so that it doesn’t just stop at being the ranting of an angry man, I’d like to offer some constructive advice on how to safely navigate the minefield that the Internet can easily be. I’ll do that by giving a few tips and citing one or two recent examples. First, how can we tell the genuine from the doubtful or the useful from the potentially harmful content in cyberspace? I know this is easier said than done, but as a rule of thumb, one should never trust anything received by chain emails or text messages until they can be verified independently. Also, if a story sounds too outrageous, or if it omits sources, or vaguely describes people, places, or events, then chances are, it’s not true. This is not an exhaustive guide as there are many other tell-tale signs. But I guess the key is to be critical and always trust one’s instinct. If it tells you something isn’t right, then it probably isn’t.

The campaigns and petitions going around in the name of one Islamic protest or another are cases in point. A recent one surfaced in the middle of the Israeli attacks on Gaza earlier in the year. The text message “authoritatively” stated that LIDL and ALDI (two German supermarket chains spread across most of Europe and other parts of the world), have pledged to give all their profits to the state of Israel, so Muslims should stop buying anything from these supermarkets. What got me angry was not that the message had no iota of truth. It was the fact that an intelligent, educated Muslim would be gullible enough to believe that a company set up for the sole purpose of making profit would simply give it all up for a cause, no matter how noble. Why would ALDI and LIDL, who operate globally and whose customers come from all faiths and backgrounds, want to alienate a large section of their clientele by making such a reckless statement? I decided to investigate by first visiting the two companies’ websites, where I found press releases denying that they ever said what was attributed to them. Another, more detailed search on the Internet, couldn’t trace any TV station that was purported to have aired the statement. I also found that some Muslim groups had commendably put up statements on their websites confirming that the messages were just a hoax. I decided to reply all the people who forwarded me the message and told them that it wasn’t true and asked them to kindly send my message to all the people they sent the original message to. I felt that, rather than serve any cause, all these messages would do is alienate those non-Muslims here in the West (and they are in the majority) who hate injustice and oppression in any guise and would stand up to defend the helpless (Muslim and non-Muslim alike) with their hands, feet and pockets even when some Muslims don’t; those who put pressure on their governments to be sympathetic to the problems Muslims are facing all over the world.

The latest campaign which finds its way to my mail box every few weeks is the one warning Muslims of a plan to burn the Qur’an publicly in Amsterdam “next Saturday”, although the date is never mentioned, so “next Saturday” becomes the tomorrow that never comes. Every time I get this mail, it’s from a different source, no doubt convinced that he or she was defending the Qur’an and doing a great service to Islam. In the end, those who persist in spreading falsehood, even if unwittingly, might be doing a great disservice to Islam, by creating unnecessary friction and hatred among adherents of different religions or world views. Islam is a religion of peace and it need not be mentioned that we should be spreading peace not rancour. Each of us must take responsibility for our actions. It is simply not enough for Muslims to think that we are doing Islam a service by passionately defending it whenever we feel that it is under attack, but we have to critically and carefully examine our actions for their propriety and to see what outcome they would likely lead to. So the next time you get an email or find some content on the Internet and you feel a strong urge to pass on the message to your fellow Muslims (or anyone for that matter), please and pretty please, pause to think before you click ‘Send’.

Nurain H. Ibrahim

Leeds, United Kingdom