by Meira Svirsky
The educational video about Islamic extremism presented in the three-minute video does much to explain the facts and little to offend.
In
implementing its new “hate speech” policy, YouTube has removed a video
posted by an anti-extremist organization for “violation” of this very
policy. The video in question, posted by CounterJihad.com, points to the Islamist ideology behind terrorism – specifically the implementation of sharia governance (Islamic law) and the goal of building a worldwide caliphate ruled by sharia.
See below for a complete transcript of the video. Watch the video here.
It goes on to detail two different kinds of jihad – violent jihad and civilization jihad, quoting the infamous “Explanatory Memorandum” where the Muslim Brotherhood’s strategic plans for civilizational jihad in America were laid out.
The
memorandum is an official document from a 1991 meeting of Brotherhood
supporters which federal investigators found the document in the home of
Ismael Elbarasse, a founder of the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque in Falls
Church, Virginia, during a 2004 search. Elbarasse was a member of the
Palestine Committee, which the Muslim Brotherhood had created to support
Hamas in the United States. It was entered as evidence in the 2008 Holyland Terror Funding Trial, the largest terrorism financing trial in American history.
YouTube’s hate policy states
that while they encourage free speech and try to defend your right to
express unpopular points of view,” they don’t permit speech that
“promotes violence or hatred against individuals or groups based on
certain attributes, such as race or ethnic origin” among other factors.
Besides
lacking certain nuances (a common problem of the YouTube short video
format), the case presented in the three-minute video does much to
explain the facts and little to offend. Listeners might not agree with a
particular example the video chooses to illustrate civilizational
jihad, however, to state that pointing out these issues promotes hate is
certainly a stretch.
One
of the reasons YouTube developed this policy was to use this powerful
social media tool as a way to fight media savvy extremist groups such as
the Islamic State, who use such platforms to recruit new fighters and
promote their cause.
CounterJihad quotes
Jim Hanson, executive vice president of the Center for Security Policy,
who oversaw productions of the video as saying, “I am stunned that the
policy that YouTube developed for the express purpose of fighting
Islamic State propaganda is now being used to silence critics of radical
jihad.
“Instead
of counteracting radical propaganda online, these policies are now
being used to silence the very speech that YouTube said it wanted —
speech that challenges ISIS.”
In fact, content to counter Islamist propaganda was specifically solicited by YouTube. One partner of CounterJihad and the co-moderator of Clarion Project’s dialogue group “Let’s Talk Islamism,”
Muslim human rights activist and reformist Shireen Qudosi is also
quoted as saying, “YouTube’s removal of CounterJihad’s factual analysis
of the threat of ISIS and radical Islam is a devastating blow
against credible counter-terrorism efforts.
“No
company or individual can legitimately say they support free speech and
at the same time set up blockades against the very people doing the
work necessary to counter the ideology. There is no other way to look at
this.”
YouTube
appears to have fallen into the trap of other Western media outlets and
governments that have all too often censored themselves to avoid
offending Muslim extremists – either for fear of retribution or out of a
convoluted notion of political correctness that twists the right of
legitimate criticism into accusations of racism and bigotry.
One
of the primary purposes of free speech is so that we not devolve into a
society where ideas are subject to totalitarian bullying. Yet the
slippery slope, whose endpoint is just that, comes in many stages – and
they aren’t necessarily comfortable or pretty.
One
of the ironies of such a shutting down criticism of Islamic extremism
and its promotion of sharia governance is that, without discourse,
non-discerning members of the public are much more likely to stereotype
all Muslims as extremists. This, in turn, sets fertile ground for
bigotry and even violence.
You
do not have to agree with a video to oppose censorship of it. Let’s be
able to have an honest discussion of what Islamic extremists are
planning for us.
The following is the full text of the video, which can be view by clicking here:
Terrorism
seems to be everywhere, and it’s getting worse. The bad guys have lots
of names—ISIS, al Qaeda, Boko Haram—but they have one thing in common.
They are all killing for a cause: Islamic Law known as Sharia.
Sharia is a return to medieval Islam. Sharia demands a Holy War called Jihad. The most widely available book of Islamic Law in English says: “Jihad means to war against non-Muslims.”
There
are two kinds of Jihad. Violent Jihad is horribly simple, slaughtering
innocents and forcing submission. Violent Jihadists want to conquer land
for their Caliphate – essentially an Islamic State where Sharia Law is
supreme.
But there is another kind of Jihad. In their Explanatory Memorandum, the Muslim Brotherhood, calls this, “civilization jihad,”
saying, “The [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in
America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the
Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by
their hands and the hands of the believers…”
Civilization
Jihad has the same goal as the Violent Jihad—to conquer land for their
Caliphate—but instead of waging war or staging terror attacks like their
brothers in the violent jihad, these Civilization Jihadists wear suits
and ties, and their work is much more subtle.
So
what do they do? They file lawsuits for Muslim truck drivers who don’t
want to drive beer. They convince schools to hold Muslim Day, where the
girls wear head scarves and the kids say Muslim prayers. They complain
when our government watches to see if their violent buddies are hanging
out with them.
They
call anyone critical of Islamic Law an “Islamophobe,” a term they
invented to make people scared to speak out—like the neighbors of the
terrorists in San Bernardino who knew something was wrong, but didn’t
want to say anything because they’d be accused of profiling.
These
bad guys have lots of names, too: the Council on American-Islamic
Relations (CAIR); the Muslim Student Association (MSA); Islamic Society
of North America (ISNA). The Justice Departmentfound that these groups were, in fact, started by the Muslim Brotherhood.
These groups like to say that terrorism has no religion, but only Islam has Sharia and Jihad.
Not all Muslims practice Sharia or support it, but an awful lot do. They believe that anyone who insults Islam can be killed; they believe that women are property; that gaysshould
be killed; and that little girls should be mutilated and forced to
marry old men they’ve never men. These things are simply not allowed in
our free society and are against the Constitution.
There
are plenty of Modern Muslims who want to “live and let live,” but
unfortunately the groups that speak most often for the Muslim community
follow the medieval version based on Sharia.
They are working to make the U.S. more like the Caliphate. They have to go.
Meira Svirsky is the editor of ClarionProject.org
Source: http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/youtube-shuts-down-counter-jihad-video-using-anti-isis-policy
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Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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