As a Bangladeshi, most of my Facebook friends are Bangladeshi, and therefore Muslim. Often, I see many of them “liking X”, where X is a cause/group that is against Y, where Y is something negative about Islam in one way or the other. This is something that vexes me. I think this is not the smartest thing to do for the following reasons:
- Publicity: Usually, before a friend of mine gives like to “X”, I have no idea that a page called “Y” exists. I am sure it will be true for many people. So this gives the page a free publicity, something the mollas in our country successfully did by elevating a fringe writer like Taslima Nasreen to a global celebrity. Why on the world would we want to publicize a page that spawns hatred?
- Futility: Usually, liking the cause X serves little purpose in removing the page Y. Unfortunately, if it does get removed, it would be even worse. Why? Because killing one such page will encourage at least 10 similar pages to emerge. This is simple human nature.Let me give you a recent example. When Muslims made a big deal about the Danish cartoons, there were lot of people in the USA (including my university), who started to arrange/take part in similar kind of events (like "draw the prophet). Now, most of these people said that they had nothing against Islam and many of them were simply atheists who didn't care about any religion in particular. But since the death threats and everything seemed to infringe on their freedom of speech, they also joined the cause. They wanted to show the Muslims they don't give a damn about those protests and they CAN do it if they want to.
So similarly, if we succeed in bringing down that page, many more will spring up as an act of defiance. So the net effect is negative. - Shifting the focus from what is important: There are lots of Muslims who feel they need to do something for their religion. Joining these stupid worthless causes like X gives a "feel-good" feeling to some of these people. By joining these causes and doing some "galagali"(calling names) about how evil the US/Western people are, they feel that they have done their part. But we all should know how easy it is to publish such defamatory content on the web. Anyone can make a webpage or a blog and start bashing Allah or our prophet (PBUH). How many will we shut down? Is it even worth it?
I personally feel hat the way to combat things like Y is to spread good things about Islam. Why not create pages like "Muslims should never take bribe", "Muslims should never slack in their jobs because then the salary becomes haram for them", "Muslims should never backbite or use vulgar words"...? Why not focus on ourselves first? The reason is that it is easier to be a keyboard jihadist and work against these "enemies of Islam" then enforcing the basic rules on our own selves. No wonder our Prophet (PBUH), after returning from a fight, said we are returning to big jihad (which is against our base self) from a small jihad. That is where our focus should be. One might say that joining these causes doesn't prevent one from joining those other causes. I would disagree. In a way, they do at times. Sine people have a kind of "indirect" quota of things he needs to do to feel good about him. Joining these causes like X helps in filling up that quota, leaving out little room for "jihad-against-self" kind of causes. - Spreading Hatred: Finally, this helps indirectly spread hatred. There are surely people on our friend list who will see this feed and say to themselves..."I knew that western people are enemies of Islam. This page Y only confirms this!” Instead, we should create pages to denounce terrorism and all kinds of extremism in the name of Islam and start giving “like” to those pages.
