Tifatul Sembiring, the controversial and conservative minister of Communications and Information Technology, has found himself at the center of a media and Twitter maelstrom for shaking hands with US first lady Michelle Obama after he swore he would not touch a woman to whom he was not related.

Video broadcast from the event and available on YouTube shows him extending his hand and shaking with the first lady in a reception line at the State Palace, but afterward Tifatul tweeted: "I tried to prevent [being touched] with my hands but Mrs. Michelle held her hands too far toward me so we touched."

The response on Twitter, a favorite outlet for some of the minister's more colorful diatribes – including joking about AIDS and blaming Indonesia's natural disasters on a lack of morality – has been withering.

"Why is it so difficult to admit that the handshake was intentional?" wrote one follower after the minister's awkward excuse. "You LIED, as if Michelle Obama was wrong," wrote another. "You keep LYING."

Usually, the minister from the Islamic Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) would clasp his hand in front of his chest during the introduction or greeting of women, a gesture similar to shaking hands but in keeping with the Islamic teaching discouraging men from touching women not related by blood or marriage.

However, footage broadcast nationwide showed an eager Tifatul reaching with both hands to hold the first lady's hands and slightly bowing to greet her.

The minister became an immediate target of public ridicule as the nation's news channels repeated the footage over and over in slow motion on Wednesday, as if to assuage any doubt as to what had exactly happened at the reception.

International media outlets such as The Washington Post, the online Huffington Post and the British Daily Telegraph were quick to pick up reports of the controversial handshake. US blog Gawker characterized Titaful as "apparently a crazy [expletive] who loves two things: Shunning women, and writing terrible things on Twitter."

The minister, a prolific user of Twitter, has some 108,545 followers and is known for his firebrand style of religious conservatism. He once wrote that AIDS was the result of "perverted sex acts."

In another incident, while dealing with an official ministry issue, he shared a passage from the Koran that told of Allah "smiting [homosexuals] with rocks from a burning land."

But his latest message before press time took a softer, conciliatory tone. He pointedly quoted American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, in English: "You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late." Perhaps, for Tifatul, it already is.