The book with two faces

Yes, yet another article on facebook. Yes, yet another article focusing on the atrocities and injustice of this social networking site but also shedding light on the exhibition of extreme imbecile attitude from our side. With too many emails popping up with Facebook in the subject line, yet another article on the same topic seems to be a drag, it's like playing the old, old song everyone has tuned themselves out to. In spite of knowing this, I want to and need to have a say in the matter.



Most of us claim that we cannot imagine life without facebook. You don't have to exercise your imagination cells for this diminutive task as we've all been there done that. There was obviously a time when there was no facebook and I think we all survived that dark age.

We claim that facebook lets us connect with our friends. Well, ever heard of MSN, GTalk. It's not exactly called 'connecting with friends' when you update your status every other second as if the world actually cares about what you do the whole day. It's simply called 'addiction'.



And to connect with who, the friends who lack the sheer decency of calling you up to invite you to their party, instead they prefer to send you an event notification. And the people who can't even remember your birthday and need to be alerted by a system. In order to keep up with such friends we refuse to abandon facebook!

And then, of course, there are our farms to worry about.
"Who would plow my fields if I don't log in after every 14 hours or so?"

And all the photos uploaded by 'friends' without looking at which I am bound to contract a deadly disease. At one hand we keep complaining about the threats to our privacy posed by any social networking site and on the other hand we ignore of all such breaches made by facebook which badly needs to go through quality assurance. I am not going to accentuate the loopholes in their privacy policy nor am I going to highlight the bugs in their system. What I am trying to put forward is a simple statement

"Have we actually become obsessed with a social networking site which has put an end to our social life?"

I though socializing meant meeting a lot of people. Actually meeting, talking face-to-face. But yes, in this busy life of ours we don't find enough time to socialize, yet we find the time to 'relax' in front of the pc and meet people simultaneously. Working in parallel, the need of time.


Why am I against facebook? Why do I advocate quitting facebook. If I don't like it I can quit, why force others to do the same?
I do so because of one simple reason;

"I can't stand being humiliated in front of the whole wide world."

I am not going to quote any Quranic verses or Hadiths because to be honest I don't find myself knowledgeable enough to do so. Yeah, shame on me to talk about something I don't have a clue of. But what I speak here is, to the best of my understanding, pure logic based on a simple enough postulate;

"You defend what you claim to belong to."

We cater to our egos at all the wrong times. Now when there is a need for our so-called ego to come in and play it's part we sing a lullaby of our social needs and put it to sleep. The time when our reputation is at stake we choose to hide behind the veils of internet, because who would know if a Muslim logs in or not. They keep insulting our religion and we keep pretending we didn't hear a thing. From all the books they could have burnt they chose to celebrate a day to burn OUR book. And all we have to say is

"they are not actually burning it they have just put an event."

If all it is is an event then why not "Burn all books day".

We keep fooling ourselves with excuses that sound lame even to ourselves. We try to evade the truth by weaving reasons, such as:

"We are not visiting that page"

Would you keep going to a building where there is only one room where you are treated like dirt, like you are made of stone and nothing hurts you?

"In fact we have joined the community against celebrating such events."

Really!? How's that coming along? Has it brought any betterment yet?

"This is exactly why Muslims have been labeled extremists. Quitting facebook altogether is the intense reaction they are hoping for so they can later make fun of us."

NO. Extremism would be to stop using internet. Who is stopping you from using other social networking sites. There are alternatives for all the facilities they provide.

Socializing	Chatting applications, Email groups (where private conversations are in fact private)
Photo sharing	Picasssa, Flickr etc.

It's not going to put even a dent in their business. They have millions of non-Muslim users.

Its not our intention to make them suffer. It is just our way of saying 'No'.

We keep coming up with ideas of how to participate in the event and defend our religion.

Either come up with an idea strong enough to compel them to quit insulting us or.. quit yourself.

Quitting facebook would be equivalent to shouting out to the world, without even raising our voices one pitch, that

"We are Muslims. And we respect our religion more than anything else."

This of all the places is not where you can apply the theory "Can't fight them, join them." It's a situation where you keep fighting till you win. No one's asking to wage a war against them. Just a request to make them understand that what they are doing is not called freedom, it's just simply wrong. And this post is a request to all Muslims to make them understand that there cannot possibly be any other motive behind these gestures,.. other than the obvious one.

Note:
This goes not just for facebook, though the post has been written in a way that focuses only on Facebook. This goes for all entities which are promoting or participating in such events.