Posting pics on Twitter, FB is un-Islamic: Clerics

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New Delhi: India’s two prominent Islamic helplines are discouraging young callers, especially women, from creating profiles and posting pictures on popular social networking websites Facebook and Twitter on the ground that it is un-Islamic.
The heads of the two popular Lucknow-based helplines, run for Shia and Sunni Muslims, have been flooded with phone calls asking if virtual profiles are Islamic.
“You can’t see someone’s face on Facebook and decide you want to be friends. Look for pyar aur mohabbat (love) in real life. Virtual relationships are not faydaymand (profitable),” Sunni mufti Abul Irfan Naimul Halim Firagni Mahli said. Of the over 1,000 calls that the mufti fields in a month on his popular helpline, more than 50 per cent questions are about Internet usage. “If one is on Facebook for business purposes or for constructive purposes, then the account is justifiable,” he said.
However, the mufti is not pleased about women being on Facebook and is definitely against them uploading photos on the site. “Women should not post pictures on Facebook or anywhere on the Internet. This is un-Islamic,” he said.
A maulana from the Shia sect too endorsed the mufti’s views. “Women are not allowed to show their faces to anyone apart from their mehram (male kin like father and brothers). So posting pictures on Facebook is haraam (banned),” Maulana Saif Abbas Naqvi said. “We are liberal. We are not Taliban-minded. When youths ask us if they can have a Facebook profile, we allow that. But the Shariah disallows women to post photos,” he said.