YouTube: Keeping Americans in the Dark on Islam - Raymond Ibrahim

by Raymond Ibrahim

A look at the more subtle side of the two-pronged war on the West.

In certain respects, the real struggle between Islam and the West has less to do with an inherently weak Islam and more to do with subversive Western elements that cover up for and thus empower Islam.  

Out-and-out censorship is one of these tactics.  In a January 10 email titled, “We’re Suing Google – Here’s Why,” Prager University, which produces short videos on subjects “important to understanding American values,” explained that “YouTube has chosen repeatedly to restrict some of our videos for violating their ‘Community Guidelines.’  Those guidelines are meant to protect users against viewing sexual content, violent or graphic content, and hate speech,”  even though “our videos contain nothing even remotely close to any of these categories.”  

Prager U had “filed a complaint with YouTube, hoping that there was some kind of innocent mistake.  That’s when we were told by YouTube that after reviewing our videos, they determined that they were, indeed, ‘not appropriate for a younger audience.’” Accordingly, several Prager U videos do not appear on YouTube accounts that block sexual or graphic content.  (For more on this matter and/or to sign Prager U’s petition against YouTube’s decision, click here.)

To appreciate just how much YouTube’s decision is based on preventing Americans (especially its youth, its future) from understanding the threats Islam poses—and thereby empowering Islam vis-à-vis America—consider the videos I made for Prager U, which are among those currently being restricted by YouTube.  

The first is called “Radical Islam: The Most Dangerous Ideology.”  Although in it I distinguished between “radical” Muslims and those many Muslims in name only; although I (very conservatively) suggested that perhaps ten percent of the world’s Muslims are “Islamists,” and of those, only two percent are willing to take violent action to enforce their supremacist worldview; and although I said things like “Islamists have killed far more Muslims than members of any other group”—YouTube still deemed that video “inappropriate” for younger audiences.

My other Prager U video is even more telling.  Titled, “The World's Most Persecuted Minority: Christians,” it is dedicated to shedding light on the plight of Christians, specifically in Muslim lands, where the majority of persecution takes place.  This too is censored.  In other words, shedding light on what many Western authorities have referred to as a “genocide” of Christians, is, for YouTube, as “inappropriate” for youth as sexual, graphic, or hate filled videos.  Needless to say, not only are there no real images in the video (sexual, graphic or otherwise), but I attribute the violence against Christians to “fundamentalists” and “fundamentalist interpretations” of the Koran, meaning there’s certainly no “hate” either.  

Meanwhile, “other videos on similar topics — but from a liberal perspective — are not” restricted by YouTube.  Videos dealing with the alleged or real mistreatment of Muslims at the hands of non-Muslims—which fits the narrative well—are not restricted. 

When both my Prager U videos came out, they each quickly reached over one million views.  Once YouTube restricted them, their views dropped accordingly—meaning mission (keeping America’s youth in the dark about Islam) achieved. 

This, of course, is one of many personal and impersonal examples of YouTube’s cover up efforts.  Back on April 22, 2015, I came across a short Islamic State video that was only available on Arabic websites at the time.  In it, IS members were videotaped destroying crosses inside and atop churches, while Koran verses against “polytheism” were recited in the background.  I decided to upload and post it on YouTube—to show the people of the West what the people of the Muslim world were privy to.  YouTube took the video down and sent me a “warning” email.

By this perverse logic, it is not the Islamic State that is engaging in hate by destroying crucifixes, but rather me—for simply exposing it.  This episode recently came to mind when President Trump retweeted (from an account since suspended) an image of an IS member holding a Virgin Mary statue (which he later smashed).  If that rather innocuous image went viral, consider if Trump and/or others had seen and drawn attention to the much more graphic video and images of IS members destroying numerous crosses and desecrating churches?  Thanks to YouTube censorship, this possibility was not allowed.

The people of the West need to wake up to the fact that they are involved in a war on two fronts: one with a people that wishes to subjugate them and another with smiley-faced, homegrown elements that go to great lengths to keep these ugly truths hid.


Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a Judith Friedman Rosen Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum and a CBN News contributor. He is the author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (2013) and The Al Qaeda Reader (2007).

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/269112/youtube-keeping-americans-dark-islam-raymond-ibrahim

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