Cleric asks users to shun Facebook

An Egyptian cleric is forbidding Muslims from using social networking website Facebook, blaming the phenomenon for contributing to rising marital infidelity and divorce.

This was conveyed in a fatwa from cleric Sheikh Abdel Hamid Al Atrash in an interview with London-based daily Asharq Alawsat.

The fatwa labelled those using Facebook "sinners" and said the site "endangers the Muslim family". The news was carried in Egypt's Daily News, quoting the interview from the London-based publication.

"It's an instrument that destroys the family because it encourages spouses to have relations with other people, which breaks Islamic sharia law," Atrash, former head of the fatwa commission at Cairo's Al Azhar University, was quoted in the interview. "While one or other of the spouses is at work, the other is chatting online with someone else, wasting their time and flouting the sharia," he said.

"While they [social networking sites] permit the spread of Islam, they allow people forbidden love and relations. That is why whoever uses such websites must be considered a sinner," said Atrash.

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