While watching a lecture by Ustaz Mahmud from YAMTV, I just realized something important. He was speaking about Riak and Facebook/Twitter.
Below is excerpt from the talk.
"Riak is a hidden shirk" - Hadith. Hidden in the sense of liking it to a black ant on a black rock.
"Allah SWT will not accept any deed from His servants unless it's done purely for Allah SWT." - Hadith
'Riak' is the greatest disease befallen to the ummah. What is Riak? Show off / Pride. Opposite word of "Riak" is "Ikhlas" which is sincere.
The nature of nafs 'Amarah' is the need to show off our wealth, education, knowledge, children, vacation, gifts and such. The kufar have invented Facebook and Twitter.
My thoughts:-
It's a possible the best device created by shaytan to put many of us into state of Riak without realising it. Shaytan makes us think that we are good muslim but actually we doing riak. Without realising we post up our new gadgets/toys/vacation/handbag and refreshing ridiculous amount of time seeing how many likes we get. That's riak.
Abd Allah ibn Mas'ud said that the Prophet said - "He will not enter the Garden of Paradise who has an atom's worth of pride in his heart".
**Disclaimer - I am putting this out as a reminder especially to myself. I too didn't realize I was doing this. Use social media wisely. Use it for dakwah/for good of mankind but don't fall into shaytan's trap. I am not trying to act like shaykh but this revelation is really disturbing to me that I felt I needed to share.