Short, Short: "Like"

Source: Hospitality Hedonist, South Africa

“We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us…we become what we behold.”                                                 Marshall McLuhan

“We have met the enemy, and he is us.”  

                                                                Pogo, the cartoon character

Some definitions

A fatwā is a religious edict, “a non-binding legal opinion on a point of Islamic law given by a qualified jurist in response to a question posed by a private individual, judge or government. A jurist issuing fatwas is called a mufti and the act of issuing fatwas is called iftāʾ: (Wikipedia) . In the Shia world, fatwas are often issued by a mujtahid, an expert in Islamic jurisprudence, among other Islamic sciences. 

 A fatwa baaz, as used here, is a pumped-up fanatic, either of the religious or the non-religious variety (like one belonging to some forms of atheism and vulgar Marxism) who issues a fatwa-like condemnation of all those who don’t submit to, or agree with, his or her uninformed, narrow and often bigoted worldview. Irrational, violently sentimental victims of hypocritical, power-hungry, worldly ideologies, these are people who are always unqualified about the subject matter on which they opine and give their fatwas. Theirs is an extremely prejudicial and violence promoting mindset that has caused a lot of suffering for both Muslims and non-Muslims around the world. In a country like Pakistan, this cancer of the mind, this malady of the heart, started showing its symptoms in the late 1970s with the rise of the brutal dictator Zia ul Haq and has now spread wide and deep throughout the country. It's ugliest manifestations can be easily observed on the "walls" and web-pages of many of the digital hells that are euphemistically referred to as "social media". 


The fatwa baaz mindset: #1

A:  Why didn’t you “like” my post?
B:  Eh…I am sorry, but…

A:  But what? It was the sayings of an Islamic sage, a glorious compilation of his aqwaal e zareen. How could you not “like” it?

B:  Yes, I know that. It’s not that I did not “like” it, but I thought it was improper, decorated with objectionable emojis and other trivia, was wittingly or unwittingly taken out of context and was being used instrumentally, for the wrong purpose, or, being quoted irrelevantly and irreverently. I have serious reservations against such abuse of the sacred, especially in these digital spaces where the perverted and the pornographic often sit next to the inspired or the sacred...

A:  How dare you! You are not a Muslim! You are an infidel! You are not one of us! I “unfriend” you!

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The fatwa baaz mindset: #2

A:  You didn’t “like” my post? No ?

B:   Sorry, but I have no comments to make.

A:  What do you mean? Why are you so mean? It’s a good thing, isn’t it?

B:  Yes, of course it is a good thing. Listening to Sura e Yaseen Sharif six times a day is a good, pious thing. I do it myself although not as frequently as you do.

A:  Then why didn’t you say something appreciative, something positive? You could have at least clicked on the “like” button!

B:  Well…You see, I am old school and I have a rather different attitude towards such things…

A:  What do you mean? Are you not a Muslim?
B:  Of course I am, Alhamdu’Lillah, but I’d rather not make such confessions in public all the time. You know, the better---the more subtle and humble---thing to do is that, just like we try hard to hide our weaknesses and faults, we should also have a similar attitude towards our strengths, I mean hide the good we do. This is what I was taught. I have also written about it, you know that very well, don’t you?  
A:  OH! You are such a mean-spirited person, a petty and jealous man.  
B:  I think that’s not fair, it’s too extreme a reaction...  

A:  You are not a Muslim! You are an infidel! You are not one of us! I “unfriend” you!
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A friend of mine, Sardar Kharkaftar of Helsinki, once jokingly said that if social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter replaced the “like” button/icon with an “understand” button, people would leave in droves, the platforms would go bankrupt  and the owners’ billions would evaporate within few days if not few hours! Chris Hedges, the former Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times journalist, has identified a serious problem in this age of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram  etc.---an age where we have moved from a print based culture to an image based one: many people confuse “I like” with “I understand”. They are not the same:  “We confuse how we feel with knowledge…It feels good not to think…” says Chris.  But there is logic to this shift from a print-based (books) to an image based (photos, emojis) culture in the age of late capitalism or of post-modernity, as Susan Sontag once observed: “Needing to have reality confined and experiences enhanced by photographers is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted. Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution.” (from On Photography)

People whose only claim to meaningful existence is that they are present 24/7 on the social media, have thousands of “friends” and followers, and for whom the most important things in life are clicking the “like”, “forward” and “share” buttons on their i-gadgets---those addictive tricknologies of mass deception---have this automatic, by-default, expectation that no matter what they send, share or forward, the other side must “like” it even if they don't share or forward it. Blackmailing, in other words. Anything other than a “like” is considered unacceptable, “impolite”, “disrespectful” and even “insulting” and would result in censorious responses like the ones above, admittedly two extreme examples where the faith of the reacting persons is nothing but an extension of their inflated, crude and undisciplined egos. What people say, do, see, buy, sell, eat and excrete are all photographed these days, instantaneously uploaded on these platforms, which are then promptly “shared” and “forwarded” followed by the instinctual no-thinking-required ritual of “likes”.  Here's Zygmunt Bauman's view: “The difference between a community and a network is that you belong to a community, but a network belongs to you…people use social media not to unite, not to open their horizons wider, but on the contrary, to cut themselves a comfort zone where the only sounds they hear are the echoes of their own voice.”