Around 700 ulama or Islamic religious leaders have issued an edict to limit use of the popular Internet networking site Facebook in Indonesia. However, it seems that many people from the country, which has the world's largest Muslim population, use Facebook often and it is growing in popularity.
This is the case for Abdurrahman ‘Gus Dur’ Wahid, Hidayat Nur Wahid, Din Syamsuddin and Hasyim Muzadi.
Gus Dur, a former president of Indonesia and moderate voice of Islam, has 3,923 ‘virtual friends’, while Hidayat, leader of the largest Islamic party in the country, the Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (PKS) has 5,000.
Din Syamsuddin, leader of Mahamadiyah and Hasyim Muzadi, head of Nahdlatul Ulama – the two largest moderate Muslim organisations in the country with 30 to 40 million members — update their pages often.
Facebook has now become an important work and social tool for some religious leaders. Irrespective of the religious edict, Facebook has become the most visited website in Indonesia.
In 2008 the site registered a 645 percent increase in use, higher than China and India. According to Alexa.com, a site that monitors Internet traffic, there are around 830,000 Indonesians who have a profile on Facebook.
Iran’s official labour news agency ILNA said on Tuesday the country’s hardline authorities had restored access to Facebook’s website after it was blocked on 23 May.
ILNA claimed Facebook was disabled in a bid to prevent moderate presidential candidate and former prime minister Mir-Hossein Moussavi from using it to boost his electoral campaign. He is president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s main rival in the presidential election next month.