Finally! Fatwa Issued Against Facebook

It's about time. The curse that some know as Facebook suffered a religious edict from a prominent Muslim cleric (let's just call him Yabba Dabba Doo for ease of reading).

A prominent Egyptian cleric has issued a fatwa forbidding Muslims to use Facebook, blaming the popular social networking site for rising marital infidelity and divorce, Daily News Egypt reported on Sunday.

Sheikh Abdel Hamid al-Atrash labelled those using Facebook 'sinners' and said the site 'endangers the Muslim family', the newspaper reported, citing an interview in London-based daily Asharq Alawsat.

"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 as saying.

"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."

Atrash went on to say: "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..."

In what appears to be an unfortunate gaffe, however, Dabba Doo's fatwa was initially posted on Twitter.