Social Networking

Social Networking has become a trend in the 21st century. (Gaya nak buat karangan sekolah punya ayat...). People who didn't use social network  are rare nowadays. Yea, it's too common that even pre-school and elementary school children possess their own social network account, especially Facebook.

The first time i heard of Facebook is when i was in Labuan Matriculation College. I was introduced to it from the negative perspective, in which, social networking makes people become negligent and waste their time for the not beneficial things, forget about their responsibility in life, their role as Muslim. In simple words, it is the main cause of hedonism. I was quite agree with it, and i still do. Well, it's an undeniable fact. Through such medium, Korean wave or american wave or whatever wave there are, easily entered our country, and now, our country spend more and more for entertainment.

I signed up in Facebook for the 1st time when my friend went to further his study to France, and my best friends kept on asking me to create an account so that we can keep in touch. That was in 2009. When I found myself to be addicted to FB and can't really focus studying because of FB, I deactivated the account. I believe many people have experienced the same thing. For example, when we go to the library, the 1st thing we do is browsing our facebook. When there is notification or  someone starts their chat with us, we're distracted and in the end, 70%-80% of our time in library is used to facebook-ing instead of studying and our purpose to go to library is no more for looking for study material, but for its internet access. Sometimes, when we got back from ablution, before solat, when we notice new notification, we'll check it out first before performing our solat. When i realized that, I was quite afraid, and i said to myself, 'this kind of thing can be scary..'. We started to lost our priority in our lives' routine. After about a year without Facebook, I create a new account because it was necessary for co-curicular activity's news. But alhamdulillah, lesson learned, and facebook has become less interesting somehow. 

Facebook has become the center of people's life story. People meeting through facebook and people get divorce because of facebook started to become common. 'Bertemu di mukabuku, ku jatuh hati padamu..', i just don't understand how. People become friends through facebook, and people becomes enemy through the same medium. Love and hatred tangled with each other. Besides, facebook even become the medium of argument, defamation, slander between political parties in Malaysia. While in other way, Facebook can be a medium of knowledge sharing, advices, da'wah, and that's the best ways of using such interactive and sophisticated social network, don't you think? Everyday, when we go through our news feed and read all good posts there, we'll find our day to be cool. Good words give out positivity, right? Then, we can start our days with a positive thinking, and those words become our strength and reminder for the whole day. To use social network in a good way, for good deeds, or in a bad way for meaningless and useless things, we choose.  

Padahal, jika semua orang bijak dalam menggunakan Facebook, ia malah bisa mencipta keharmonian dan kesatuan yang utuh dalam masyarakat. Ya..,dengan menyebarkan cinta bukan benci, sebarkan kebaikan, bukan cacian. Mencipta silaturrahim, bukan seteru. Tapi ini semua agak mustahil, kan? Kerana hati manusia ni tidak akan berubah hanya dengan kata-kata atau tulisan seperti ini.  

Dari perspektif perjuangan islamnya, facebook atau laman sosial yang lainnya bukanlah satu perkara yang membawa kepada kesia-siaan semata-mata. Siapa jangka suatu masa nanti ia menjadi satu medium penting dalam perjuangan mempertahankan kadaulatan islam, seperti yang saya kata tadi, laman sosial ni, terutamanya facebook sudah mulai menjadi 'centre of people's lives'. Bukankah  kekuatan islam yang mampu menguasai 2/3 dunia suatu ketika dulu bukan terletak pada kekuatan tenteranya atau ketajaman mata pedangnya, tetapi pada iman. Ya, cinta dan taqwanya kepada Allah, kasihnya kepada Rasulullah, dan sayangnya kepada agama islam itu sendiri., diadun  menjadi makna hidup kita. Kata King Louis IX, umat islam tidak dapat dijatuhkan dengan material semata-mata, tetapi dengan menjauhkan mereka dari islam itu sendiri. Dan ya, seperti yang terbukti dengan fenomena hari ini, hedonism atau hiburan adalah sata cara yang begitu efektif, bukan?
Tanpa sedar, kita terpedaya..diperdaya...

Banyak yang boleh kita sampaikan dan dapat di facebook selain hiburan. Tak mustahil ia boleh dijadikan medium untuk sekurang-kurangnya mengingatkan diri dan saudara-saudara kita tentang tujuan hidup dan maknanya kita sebagai seorang muslim.

#memang kena ke batang hidung sendiri...