Daring Saudi tweets fuel political debate Every Saudi user of social media has heard of Mujtahidd. No one knows who he is, what he looks like or where he lives, but many Saudis are desperate to find out. This outrageously daring Twitter user has been captivating Saudis since the end of last year with scandalous allegations of high-level corruption and royal excesses. Although there is no way to separate truth from fiction in his claims, many observers are convinced that he is an estranged member of the royal family and are engaged in a guessing game over his possible identity. Mujtahidd himself claims that the interior ministry has made tracking him down a top priority. "My aim is to expose the corruption in its reality, which I believe nobody has done yet," says Mujtahidd in an email response to the Financial Times. It is better for the very aim of Mujtahidd project for me to stay anonymous. "Mujtahidd is the Saudi version of WikiLeaks," says Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, professor at Emirates University in Dubai, and one of the more than 250,000 followers of Mujtahidd. The Mujtahidd phenomenon is the most controversial manifestation of a growing political debate on Twitter, where prince and religious scholar, government official and political dissident, all now tweet their 140-character messages triggering a war of words between opponents. Reactions to Mujtahidd on Twitter have ranged from "he totally rocks" to "he is telling lies and fabrications." Some observers view the growing use of Twitter as a consequence of the wider political turmoil in the Arab world, which has bolstered the power of social media and encouraged Saudis to break taboos. Issues that Saudis usually only whisper about are discussed in the open in a cyberworld where they can escape censure and retribution. When female students at a university in the southern city of Abha held a rare protest against deteriorating services this month, prompting their male colleagues to join in and demand the removal of the university president, the incident played out online rather than in the traditional media. The students posted videos of the demonstrations on YouTube and files and updates on conversations with the authorities on Twitter, where Arabic hashtags related to the case attracted hundreds of contributors. It is difficult to gauge how many Saudis use the microblogging service. The Arab Social Media Report issued by the Dubai school of government in May last year estimated active Saudi users at no more than 114,000 (out of a local and expatriate population of 27m). But a Saudi newspaper said earlier this year that the number of users was up by 240 per cent compared with last year. Some Saudi religious scholars count more than 600,000 followers. Waleed bin Talal, the Saudi financier and also a royal family member (whose wife and father are on Twitter) invested $300m in Twitter in December, in what his company said was recognition that social networking would change the fundamentals of the media industry. The Saudi interest in Twitter has expanded enough to provoke the ire of the official religious establishment. In a recent sermon, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdelaziz al Sheikh, lashed out against Twitter, charging that it "has become a platform trading accusations and for promoting lies used by some just for the sake of fame." This "very dangerous practice," he added, according to a report in the Saudi-backed al-Hayat newspaper, "must be avoided by Muslims." One of the hot topics on Twitter among Saudis is the undeveloped plots of land scattered across major cities which are allegedly owned by senior princes. The hoarding of land is blamed for pushing up prices and depriving ordinary Saudis of affordable housing. The housing shortage in the oil-rich kingdom has risen to the top of the agenda, with King Abdullah last year pledging 500,000 new homes would be built as part of a massive social investment package. In one tweet last month, Prince Abdulaziz bin Fahd, favourite son of the late King Fahd, tweeted that had he been a housing official, he would have lived in a mud home until each Saudi owned a house. The comment unleashed a stream of cynical reactions from Twitter users. A harsh response came from Mujtahidd: "When you were in power, you had vast authority that surpassed all ministers. Yet, you have done nothing about the housing issue. Mujtahidd made his debut on Twitter in December after Prince Abdulaziz started tweeting. He says the sources that provide him with information were frustrated by the prince's tweets, and gave him the go ahead to respond by listing, for example, the alleged value of palaces owned by the prince. Mujtahidd could prove to be little more than a passing phenomenon, only briefly occupying the chattering classes before fading away. But the debate on corruption that he has unleashed reflects the concerns of Saudi society. His resort to Twitter to spread his message is also likely to reinforce the popularity of social media. In the case of the student protests, the government responded quickly, inviting the youth for meetings. According to the students" tweets, they were also asked to keep their complaints offline and follow the more traditional way of sending petitions. "Asking the youth to use petitions instead of social media is like asking them to use carrier pigeons instead of mobile phones," was the reaction of one famous blogger to the request.