The countries getting nervous and thinking of tightening screws on social media users include Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, according to several regional news websites and newspapers. Bahrain, which is facing an uprising, the UAE and Kuwait have even arrested and jailed several tweeters — some for as long as 10 years.

Kuwait-based newspaper
Al Rai
(which means opinion in Arabic) reported that the government recently decided to award a $250m contract to a foreign firm to closely monitor tweeters in the country. The government in Kuwait is concerned that it might go the Bahrain way since the country has a fairly large Shia population, a regional news website, gulfissues.net, reported.

It is not uncommon in Kuwait for some social media users to target the royal family for criticism — something that was unimaginable before the Arab Spring.

Many social media users in the country have been taken into custody and interrogated, and charges have been filed against some for insulting the ruler and “sisterly” neighbouring countries like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

Some have even been sentenced to jail for up to 10 years. Bahrain, after the uprising, has begun to control social media, arresting a number of tweeters and accusing them of threatening the country’s security by attacking the ruler, even as Article 26 of the country’s constitution guarantees freedom of expression. Some tweeters are in jail in Bahrain accused of mounting resistance against the government, guiding their followers and organising protests.

Khalid bin Rasheed tweeted that in Bahrain what is essentially a political conflict has taken the shape of a sectarian rift.

Another tweeter, Dr Ayed Al Manna, said sectarian violence in Iraq will not solve the country’s problems. Those fuelling the conflict — a veiled reference to the GCC states and Iran — should not think that they would be safe, he said. Many GCC countries have become concerned about political activism by their citizens using social media, especially after the fall of the Hosni Mubarak regime in Egypt.

The UAE, in particular, has been tracking social media to identify voices of dissent in the aftermath of the Egyptian revolution.

There is growing concern in Saudi Arabia as well about the widespread use of Twitter and other social media forums by its citizens. According to Al Bawad Alarabia, a news website, there are 13 million Internet users in the kingdom and 50 million tweets are generated in a month.

The authorities are using members of the Islamic clergy to convince people that using social media is against Islam.

The head of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtues and Prevention of Vice, also known as Religious Police in the kingdom, Dr Abdullatif Al Sheikh, who enjoys ministerial status conferred by the king, is trying to discourage the use of social media by fellow Saudis and has said those using the forums “would lose both this world as well as the world hereafter”.

“Anyone can write anything on social media. Some users are trying to mislead the people,” Al Sheikh was quoted as saying.

It has surprised many people in the GCC region that a campaign against social media should be waged by the head of Saudi Arabia’s religious authority.

Some 12 percent of the Saudi population uses Twitter, and 55 percent of them are men, said middleeastonline.com.

Ilham Mohamed Ali wrote on Saudi-based moheet.com that Saudi youth were using social media as Cairo’s Tahrir Square to express their opinions on the need for freedom and social justice.

“This has left the Saudi authorities worried and they want to control the social media,” she said.

A trend has set in in Saudi Arabia after the Arab Spring whereby an increasing number of Muslim clerics are using social media, particularly Twitter, to issue edicts on issues that are “silly”, in order to create controversy and gain publicity.

The clerics seem to be encouraged by the widespread use of social media in Arab revolutions and are increasingly using them, analysts say.

An idea of the issues being raised by some Islamic scholars can be had from the fact that a cleric, Ali Rubei, said that women should not venture into the sea for swimming.

The same cleric issued another fatwa saying that it was not right for a husband to see his wife taking a shower without her permission.

Ali Rubei said in another edict that people using languages other than Arabic on their Twitter accounts were satanic. All tweeters must know Arabic, he said.

This despite the fact that only 1.2 percent of tweeters in the world use Arabic.

There are 300 million Twitter users in the world and 250 million messages are tweeted a day.

In the Muslim world, Saudi Arabia tops as far as use of Twitter is concerned, as it accounts for 38 percent of the total, followed by Egypt (30 percent).

In Saudi Arabia, Twitter is also being used to criticise the clerics as people say that everything that is new is declared by the Islamic scholars as forbidden (haram).

They cite the example of television and say that when TV was introduced, Islamic scholars issued edicts saying that watching it was against Islam.

Arabic.rabianbusiness.com reported that the Saudi authorities may ask Twitter users to use their national identity numbers on their accounts. But this would need the cooperation of Twitter and Saudi telecoms authorities.

Saudi billionaire Prince Walid bin Talal was quoted as saying by almesryoon.com that restricting social media was a lost war. Social media are being used by the people to make their voices heard by the leadership, he said.

© The Peninsula 2013

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