Saudi Arabia: Twitter in Arabic, but for Saudi Arabia’s grand mufti, it is “full of lies”

Riyadh – Twitter announced it is working on adding Arabic to its list of operating languages. However, Saudi Arabia’s grand mufti warned Muslims that the social-networking website is full of lies, a place where people "issue fatwas without any knowledge”.

In a statement last Wednesday, Twitter announced that its experts are working on adding right-to-left languages to its list, starting with Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu.

More than 425,000 volunteers have contributed to the Translation Center, making Twitter available in 22 languages. Now four, right-to-left languages will join the list.

Saudi Arabia’s grand mufti is none too pleased, pan-Arabic newspaper Al Hayat reported. In his Friday sermon in Riyadh, Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh urged Muslims to avoid being a "source or feeding" Twitter.

He said that Twitter is a place "in which people are invited to throw charges between them, and to lie in a manner that brings fame to some."

The sheikh called on those present to warn people about such sites, and tell them about the positive sites that do exist on the Internet concerning science, business and religion.