Anita Rachman – Parts of a sermon delivered on Friday by Communications and Information Technology Minister Tifatul Sembiring linking the recent string of natural disasters to moral decay in the country has sparked a virulent reaction in cyberspace.

Speaking to some 1,000 people during a sermon celebrating Idul Adha in an open field in front of the governor's office in Padang, West Sumatra, Tifatul said that vice was on the rise – some of it prompted by immoral television programs – and that moral decay was the result.

"Television broadcasts that destroy morals are plentiful in this country and therefore disasters will keep on happening," he said, according to Antara news agency.

Tifatul, the former head of the Islam-based Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), was talking about the string of disasters in West Java and, more recently, the devastating earthquake that levelled parts of Padang.

But his comments caused intense reactions on the Internet, especially on social networking site Twitter, where the minister is active.

One tweeter, Ari Margiono, asked that if moral decadence caused these disasters, "did it mean that [the people] in Padang and Aceh had the worst morals?"

"Sir," Ari concluded, "there's no connection between earthquakes and tsunamis and [declining morals]."

Another poster wanted to know why focus on the public and pornography when there was plenty immoral activity in the government. "The government is much more immoral given they're responsible for illegal logging and corruption," Nana Soedarmadji said.

Tifatul turned up in Twitter to parry the attacks. "To all my colleagues, this was a sermon, not a [government] ruling. Just react in a relaxed manner, without panicking," he said in one of his responses.

He told the Jakarta Globe that he was merely citing a verse from the Koran, which says that "if the people of the towns had but believed and feared Allah, We should indeed have opened out to them [All kinds of] blessings from heaven and earth; but they rejected [the truth], and We brought them to book for their misdeeds"

He said that the advent of disasters was a good time to remind people of the dangers of decadence. "Disasters provide a momentum for repentance. If people are not faced with tests, they will become unrestrained," he said.