THE MALAYSIAN SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE SPREAD OF WASATIYYAH: THE REALITY AND THE PERSPECTIVE

Malaysia is one of the countries with a heavy utilization of modern means of communication, due to its relatively thriving economy at the local and global levels. Consequently, social networks play a key role in this rapidly growing society. Since Malaysia is one of the largest Muslim communities in Southeast Asia and because of the interlinked problems, the social networks such as Facebook, YouTube, smart phone applications and others are an effective and dangerous tool at the same time influencing the mindset of the younger generation and shaping their vision and direction within this Muslim community. Social networks are full of different parties of extremist groups and subversive ideologues who want to attract the young generation to their ranks vigorously! Accordingly, this study has adopted an analytical documentary approach to achieve a number of objectives, including: 1) to establish a clear picture of the current reality of social networks in Malaysia, 2) Determine the Islamic position of the reality of social networks in Malaysia. 3) Demonstrate the efforts to spread the Moderate Islamic Ideology through social networks in Malaysia and its contributions. 4) To identify the means to increase the efforts of spreading the moderate ideology through social networks. This study highlighted many examples and statistics confirm the widespread of Malaysian social networks among young university students of both sexes. It showed that those groups targeted the Malaysian Muslim youth to get them out of the Moderate Islamic Ideology and push them to join the path of extremism and terrorism through social media. Some of the solutions for that problems are: to create a number of responsible networks and groups that can challenge these problems and promote moderate awareness among the different activities of youth in schools and universities and in daily life, also to intensify the efforts so that moderation is the daily and continuous practice.