Fatwa Against … Buying Facebook "Likes"

From Egypt's top mufti.

AP reports:

Egypt's top mufti has issued a fatwa, or a religious decree, saying that buying Facebook "likes" is prohibited under Islam because it's a form of fraud and deception.

Grand Mufti Shawki Allam regularly issues all sorts of fatwas, usually in response to questions by Muslims seeking religious guidance ….

Comments

[Eidde]

And the good Caliph Omar did sayeth, "lo, WTF is the problem with Facebook? For, behold, for a mere handful of coin you can get strangers to claim to be your friends. This is strictly haram. I say to thee, do not buy friends from the Facebook crowd, but instead win their friendship by sending them nice emojis. Then thou mayest requesteth their friendship, but on an uncompensated basis. Thus let it be written, thus let it be done."

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Are Muslims trying to develop as many inexplicable rules as the Christians, Scientologists, and Jews have?

To its credit, this one appears to have the distinguishing characteristic of some moral foundation.

[bernard11]

I'm not getting the joke here.

[Ed Grinberg]

"There are no jokes in Islam." (Ayatollah Khomeini)

[BigHands]

Now if only the Grand Mufti would issue a fatwa on ISPs and tech companies spying on private communications - including, amongst other things, scanning the content of user e-mails (lookin' at you Oath) - to generate ad revenue... oops, make that to enhance the user experience across multiple devices, apps and websites.

[Eugene Volokh]

I'll bet you it's good on spam, too.

[Chem_Geek]

I see what you did there. I bet the rabbis are correct on spam, too. 😉