Alice in Wonderland and Muslimah in Cyber Land !

 Those who  have read Alice in wonderland, let me  remind you in brief that it is about a girl's day dream who sees unusual people and impractical things happening around her dream. That is precisely what is happening to many Muslimah i.e. Young Muslim Girls, wandering in cyber land from sites to sites, through cyber messengers,  profile shopping  for that dream man she has read in novels, seen in TV serials, coming out of pen of writers who fantasize imaginary men and women in a superior mode not available in real life.  .

   A young girl from Lahore ,  forgot to sign out from her face book and left for her college. Her mother got a chance to take a tour of her messages and pages. She was aghast to discover that her niqabi daughter's friend list and messages had   the presence of large number of  men!  Roaming in cyber lanes  is one the new dangerous hobbies of many young Muslim girls.  Many hard core Non Muslims pretending to be interested in Islam ask innocent  questions to these girls. Later they cut paste vulgar questions on  the personal life of the Prophet (pbuh) and demand answers from the girls. The desperate Muslim girl out to defend her religion goes into deep discussion which later develop into a friendly relation.

Some girls begin carefully, and prefer only daw'ah as their sole activity , then they get into the excitement of debates and don't realize when they started doing daw'ah to  non Mahrams and very soon they find themselves involved in convincing a non Muslim and the debate is stretched bypassing their da’wah concern and entering into forbidden zone resulting into a  trauma that shatters their emotion into pieces. Just like a child wading in shallow water and reaching the depth unknowingly.

 A concerned father once approached me and his trauma was that his daughter was in love with a Christian missionary and desperate to marry him. "It all happened on internet" He said sadly. "Can you stop my daughter from marrying him or can you convert that man to Islam?"

   Some Muslimah who are away from Islamic way of life are more open to threat. They are like secularists who have nothing to do with religion but enjoy company of people. These girls, study almost every profile minutely to find out 'Mr. Right' not knowing that her ' Mr Seeming to be Right' has already left many girls after cyber flirting.If  finding Mr. Right was as easy as  profile watching then there would have been no  Matrimonial services centers in various cities.

   Most of the girls who are on Face book and want to avoid boys form bothering them  have  to a lot of fly swatting on their walls. Boys visit and comments on their status and send rosy feelers with Islamic Greetings and congratulations and supplications to in order to break ice with the girls.

  You will find warm comments on the walls of many Muslim girls when they sticks their pictures on their wall for comments. There are guys who pretend to be knowing too much of Islam and have a list of selective girls  as their students giving personal lessons to them.  These are the variety of characters you will not find even in Alice in Wonderland where the little girl Alice  gets lost in the wood. But cyber wood is more dangerous than Holly wood, Bolly wood, Lolly wood (Lahore Film Industry) because no one knows what  you are doing in seclusion and who is filming whom...

    Cyber land is more Wonderful than Alice's Wonderland. Cyber land is more slippery than Alice's Wonderland. There are multiple affairs, deceptions, cheating, crush, infatuation and finally a Big earthquake size tremor when the affair breaks down. The only difference between Cyber land and Wonder land is that the former shows you a day dream and the later is a dream. One ends with waking up to reality and the other ends with waking up with more dreams... After all dreams are not like trophies..

Author : Nisaar Yusuf  be reached at nisaar_yusuf@yahoo.com