Suara.com – Pakistani clerics from Jamia Uloom-ul-Islamia officially forbid the use of TikTok. There are a number of reasons why these scholars made the fatwa that TikTok is haram.
They consider that TikTok content is permissive because it allows live streaming to women and is considered inappropriate. It is called a sin because it aims for fame and financial gain.
The fatwa also condemned the use of music, singing and dancing on ByteDance’s platform. This Pakistani cleric also criticized content creators for spreading indecency and inappropriate humor in the country.
Not only TikTok, these Pakistani clerics also issued a haram fatwa for the PUBG game. They claimed that the content in the game insulted Islam and considered the players to be violent.
This is not the first time TikTok has had problems in Pakistan. From October 2020 to September 2021, the Pakistani government officially blocked TikTok four times because it was concerned that there was a lot of immoral content.
The ban was later lifted in November 2021 after TikTok convinced Pakistan’s telecom regulator. The Chinese company emphasized that they will control immoral and obscene content.
Former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan has also criticized TikTok in the past. He considers the short video application to be promoting obscene and vulgar content.
But in the end he also gave up on TikTok’s popularity. Even Imran chose to join the platform in July.
Interestingly, in just three days, Imran Khan actually succeeded in gaining five million followers on TikTok, as quoted from The Print, Sunday (24/12/2023).
Since its launch in 2019, TikTok in Pakistan has had around 20 million monthly active users, which is 10 percent of the country’s population.
Even though it is considered haram, creators in Pakistan are actually criticizing the ulama. They think that the fatwa is biased towards issues that are actually more urgent in society.
“Jamia Binoria has time to declare TikTok haram but has no time to issue a fatwa against the perpetrators of raping children in mosques, raping women, and killing them for honor. They are just using religion for their own gain, nothing more,” criticized one account on X aka Twitter.
TikTok itself has been present in Pakistan since 2019. To date, the number of TikTok users in Pakistan has reached 20 million monthly active users, which is 10 percent of the country’s population.
Then as of 2023, TikTok has deleted more than 14 million videos in Pakistan.