In the last few days I have been mercilessly trolled on Twitter by racists, Islamophobes and Western supremacists, writes Roshan Muhammed Salih. As has my colleague Dilly Hussain.
This seems to be a co-ordinated attack by people who seem to work together while pretending not to, and is apparently due to the work we’ve been doing exposing Western/Israeli foreign policy as well as Islamophobia at home.
Our stalkers have several things in common, among them being incredibly ignorant about Islam, Muslims and the Islamic world while at the same time thinking they have a divine right to express an opinion nonetheless.
As well as usually being really thick, they get personal and play the man not the ball. In short, they are the human equivalent of excrement.
Now I’m not expecting anyone to feel sorry for me as I know full well that if you express an opinion you will get attacked and will be forced to defend it. And that’s fine.
It’s also gratifying to know that our work is getting out there and is ruffling a few feathers. In fact, the trolling gives us both the conviction that we’re doing something right (because our enemies are attacking us) and spurs us on to keep doing more of the same.
Nevertheless, it has also revealed how Islamophobes, racists and Western supremacists work in tandem to try and intimidate and bully Muslim activists in an attempt to shut down any opinion which contradicts their’s.
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So I’d like to send a clear message out to these intellectual and emotional dwarfs who spend their sad lives on Twitter – your opinion is worth diddly squat and I look forward to giving you the “verbal finger” at every given opportunity.
James Foley article
My trolling was provoked by an admittedly controversial article I wrote suggesting that the James Foley beheading could have been the work of Western intelligence. My contention that it was staged was welcomed by most but opposed by a vocal minority who said I was descending into conspiracy theory.
I made this argument because of discrepancies I spotted in the video itself, and because of the many suspicions Muslims have about the sudden rise of ISIS and the infiltration techniques of Western intelligence agencies.
Anybody who’s ever lived in the Middle East will know that conspiracy theories are widely believed for the simple reason that many real conspiracies against the region have been hatched. So as soon as the James Foley video was released many refused to take it at face value.
And it was in response to this widespread scepticism among Muslims that I wrote the article.
I must also emphasize that 5Pillarz is a website by Muslims for Muslims. We are in the driving seat and it is us who make the decisions and determine the agenda. Although non-Muslims are free to read and even contribute to the site, they are not our audience and what they say and think is not our primary concern.
Anyway, my non-Muslim stalkers didn’t bother to explain why my arguments in the article were flawed. Instead they resorted to abuse, ridicule and sometimes racist and Islamophobic attacks.
I tend to just block the blatant racists and Islamophobes because they are immune to reasoned argumentation and probably belong in some sort of mental asylum.
But the Western supremacists are more interesting and ultimately more dangerous because they are mainstream. These people are convinced of Western civilisation’s superiority in every single way – politically, economically and culturally – and often argue for the West’s worldview to be imposed on everyone else by military force.
David Aaronovitch
A good example of this type of supremacist is David Aaronovitch, the right-wing Times journalist who was among my many detractors.
Aaronovitch is the kind of guy who is regularly given a platform by the mainstream media to pontificate about matters he knows nothing substantial about.
He’s typical of the non-Muslim commentariat in the British media with no expertise on Islam, Muslims or the MENA region yet who often make arguments about why the region should be bombed for its own good.
But the truth is that the David Aaronovitchs, the Nick Cohens and the Douglas Murrays of this world just have no right to talk about the MENA region in the first place just like non-medical professionals have no right to talk about surgery.
So to repeat, the kind of people who harass Muslim activists on Twitter have a few things in common:
1. A hatred of Islam – sometimes overt, sometimes covert.
2. A dislike of “uppity natives” who give them back some lip.
3. A superficial understanding of the issues.
As for their Western supremacy, the main reason why the West is so dominant today is not because of the inherent superiority of its culture but because it has historically been more proficient in exercising mass violence than anyone else. And then of course there’s all that rape and pillaging it did of countries around the world.
In short, the West’s success has been achieved at the expense of others. A bit like Don Corleone achieved his success. So well done.
Inferiority complex
To conclude I believe Muslims need to lose their inferiority complex when faced with these people. For example, I liked the way Asim Qureshi called out Matt Frei on his latent Islamophobia on a recent edition of Channel 4 News.
The simple fact is that we have serious advantages over the Western supremacists.
Firstly, we know their culture and languages far better than they know our’s. That means we know the way they think while they only have a vague idea about how we think. And secondly, we know far more about the issues relating to Islam, Muslims and the Muslim world than they do.
Yet despite all this they still somehow get away with pontificating from a position of ignorance and we let them get away with it!
But I say let’s take these guys on. Let’s expose them for the charlatans that they are. And let’s do it armed with the intellectual and emotional superiority we have over them.
@RMSalih
