Halal Social Networking? Ikhwanbook and Muslimbook hit the web

Isn't that an awesome homepage? Muslimbook.co.za

NB: The Guardian published a very edited version of the article - below is the full version. (which I think is better :)

The successful launch of an online social network by an Islamist political group in Egypt is an opportunity to visit and test several Muslim social networks, establishing their interest and limitation.

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s Ikhwanbook states that it is "an Islamic social networking website, committed to the principles of our religion".

Finland-based Muxlim consolidates a network of services which include a search engine, a torrents finder, and a Muslim MySpace, and aims to “connect the world's Muslim communities to each other, and to the wider world, through shared online experiences”.

South Africa’s Muslimbook defines its objective as being “to provide a platform for all Muslims to create a quality network and as an alternative to the anti-muslim Facebook”.

And Baku, Azerbaijan-based Muslimsbook, whose interface is a mix of Russian and English, is openly faith-oriented, coupling religious discussion and knowledge with social networking and whose standard tabs including "Koran", "Hadith", and "References" next to the more common "Groups" and "Members" ones.

The emergence of Muslim social-networking websites, including and not limited to the ones mentioned above, is a highly interesting phenomenon, perhaps to be imputed to both a desire to produce a more-conservative forum for monitored discussion with stricter regulations (read: monitoring) as well as, in the case of the Muslim Brotherhood, to create a familiar-looking forum for existing and new sympathizers.

Muxlim CEO Mohamed El Fatatry suggests an explanation, in an email interview, for the reasoning behind those networks: “Some organizations wanted to create alternatives, while others wanted to complement existing services such as Facebook with an added Muslim flavor that would enhance users experience”.


As it stands however, user profiles are, across the board, quite basic compared to those of Facebook users; fewer photos and videos and comparatively less friends. Members seem to be spending more time on fora and messaging boards than on building their own page. Seen in that respect, those websites have become a middle ground between the discussion forums websites on one end, and the socially oriented Facebook model on the other.

It should come as no surprise that networks and websites would emerge to cater to a particular cultural group; after all, even global social networks customize their settings culturally. Timothy Bataillie, of Belgium-based Netlog, explains that "there are some extra challenges in terms of content moderation in the Arab region. We installed a moderation team that monitors traffic coming from the Gulf region. If they check pages from people outside the region, the website will display a warning notification", to warn users that they may be exposed to content potentially deemed offensive for local standards.
Those ‘Muslim’ social networks are simply taking the logic a step further: rather than hoping for the cultural localization and customization of the website, they are establishing new ones.

Ikhwan Book, which belongs to Egypt’s principal political opposition force, the Muslims Brotherhood, is expressly - perhaps too bluntly - politically-oriented, so much that during its first months of operation, a banner on its homepage would take you to a website of the National Association for Change, a political opposition coalition, and asked you to sign the Association’s petition. Technology professional Tarek Shalaby was quick to point out to the weakness of online security on Ikhwanbook: “anyone, upon singing in, can have access to all details of users and group members”. A fatal mistake for a website that would logically be particularly keen on protecting the identities of its members, not only from the Internet malignant users but also from political opponents who are likely to be interested in knowing what discussions are taking place on an Ikhwan website. Discussions that were, throughout and in the immediate aftermath of the revolution, largely political and, interestingly, not necessarily geared around the political participation of the Ikhwan.

But in the mundane has rapidly regained dominance of the members attention.


Ikhwanbook was launched in early July 2010 as a beta version, and its original (and still active) url made no effort to conceal its inspiration: it was www.ikhwanfacebook.com.
Ikhwanbook sees itself more as a complement than a competitor to Facebook - it actually allows signing in via Facebook Connect for Facebook users.


Defining itself as “technology portal with Muslim values”, Muxlim is a tightly-monitored website - where membership may apparently be temporarily suspended if a user says ‘crap’ on a discussion forum - its user profiles are also weakly protected (anyone signing in can access all data on a user’s profile).

The website has also launched a ‘Second Life’ type gaming platform, Muxlim Pal - where users’ avatars are bearded or veiled.

Muslimbook.co.za’s homepage is probably the most amusing of all: a knock-off of Facebook’s, where non-descript avatars located on a world map are connected by dotted lines, Muslimbook’s avatars are, here too, bearded men and veiled women. In fact, most of the website’s interface is reminiscent of Facebook circa 2008, with its smaller fonts and way too many widgets.
> It is also the website with the greatest and most remarkable attention to user privacy issues. The first notification on my dashboard was about picture privacy - and a brief tutorial on how to reduce their visibility and exposure to other users [something that Facebook would arguably never do].

The website’s accusation of Facebook of being anti-Muslim is likely to meet approving nods from some potential users. After all, Facebook has, more than once, been accused of political bias. McGill professor Rex Brynen reported that Facebook didn’t allow the creation of pages with the word “Palestinian” in them. It has shut down a number of political pages and disabled user accounts of their administrators, while allowing anti-Muslim hate speech and incitement to violence to roam free. (In all fairness, Facebook has also inexplicably disabled the accounts of activists across the political spectrum - which doesn’t make its actions any more excusable). It is easy then to see why Facebook can be perceived as being politically involved in the content being shared online - and why some users would like to be involved in a more Muslim-friendly network.

Muslimsbook.com, whose establishment date is unclear but whose archive goes back to November 2008, is overwhelmingly apolitical but seems to be struggling still to find its bearings, torn between offering a (rather limited) set of possible social interactions between users, to providing and sharing lessons in religion, to providing services such as matrimonial personal ads.

Muxlim claims a yearly traffic in the ‘tens of millons’ per year. Ikhwanbook has garnered a decent nucleus of users of about 26,000 users, most in Egypt. The other two networks I tested are less successful - Muslimbook.co.za has 3305 users, and Muslimsbook.com has 51 members - including myself.

Despite their claims and wishes for otherwise, those social networks are both regional and religiously limited in their scope. Ikhwanbook - with its subtitle of 'One world unites us’ - has a primarily Arab membership, with a strong showing from Indonesian users. And despite its assertions that ‘you don’t have to be a Muslim to be a Muxlim’, discussions on Muxlim are overwhelmingly in English, and largely targets Muslims living in Europe and the United States. Muslimbook.co.za finds its members within its local South African market.

Muslim social architects see an evolving model. Says El-Fatatry, “I expect Muslim social sites to evolve from their current form. They will be largely developed on top of existing generic services which provide a comprehensive experience and enable people to connect with both their counterparts in the Muslim community, and society at large. Our new service named Muxlim Pulse organizes information that is already out there on the web, and enables Muslims to have a better utility to identify places, events and people of interest who are near to their geographic location”.

All things being equal, it is doubtful those website are hoping to be the next big thing in social networking; the weak numbers of members make it quite obvious. Besides their lack of innovation, which consists solely of stricter moderation, the demand for ‘clean’ social networking isn’t what the creators of those new websites hope it to be: most users are quite happy to be part of a more open and consequently less monitored social network such as Facebook, even if they are offended by some of the content. After all, it doesn’t seem that the current 1200 members of “i will leave the facebook if they didn't delete [the group titled] f*** islam” have followed up on their ultimatum - the objectionable group is still there.
The only question left for me is whether to keep or delete my new accounts...