Indonesians to Muslim Cleric: We'll Take Selfies If We Want to!

You might think selfies are annoying, but at least no one is saying your duck face is a sin. In Indonesia, a Muslim cleric named Felix Siauw recently declared selfies prideful and arrogant, kicking off a national backlash in the form of Instagram flexing.

From the Huffington Post:

“If we take a selfie, sift through and choose our best pose, and then we’re awed and impressed by our selves – worryingly, that’s called PRIDE,” Siauw wrote during a Twitter rant, according to a translation provided by Coconuts Jakarta.

“If we take a selfie and we feel cooler and better than others – we’ve fallen into the worst sin of all, ARROGANCE,” he continued.

Then he wondered aloud where the purity had gone (?!) in all of these face-photographing Muslim women.

Like Siauw, a Jeddah scholar also decided selfies were bad recently—he went on a pilgrimage to Mecca and saw fellow attendees snapping shots of themselves, as in the image below—and then aimed to foist that personal realization upon the masses.

But the takedowns aren’t working the way either man expected and now—if Siauw has Instagram or Twitter—his timelines is flooded with Indonesians duck-facing in the name of selfie freedom with the hashtag #Selfie4Siauw.