Link: Muslim youths counter Islamic State with #NotInMyName Twitter campaign
Most of you are familiar the unpleasant situation in the Middle East concerning the Islamic State. The whole situation has shed a negative light upon Islam in the public eye. This is particularly true considering that the Islamic State has its own social media campaign that is of high quality and has gained a Western audience which has led to some Westerners to join the Islamic State. This article discusses how Muslim youths around the world are trying to fight back against this stigma using the #NotInMyName. The campaign is attempting to show the world that the Islamic State does not portray Islam as it is supposed to be by sharing actual wisdom from the Islamic faith. Some of the 20,000 tweets that have already been posted are astounding. The following example is one such tweet:
"True Islam teaches that forgiveness is the highest level of strength, and revenge is the highest level of weakness #NotInMyName"— Ahmad Salkida (@ContactSalkida) September 22, 2014
My analysis of this article is really positive. While it is not lengthy or shocking in any sense, I found it to be quite interesting to hear how Muslim youths are reacting to the recent extremist activity. The quotes were a nice touch in the article and really helped to drive home the point that not all Muslims are on the side of the extremists. In my final opinion, the article was well written and brought to light the opinions of different groups of Muslims. This goes against a common stereotype that it is always the West versus Islam when, in fact, the situation is much more complicated.
I find this article very interesting, and, like Andrew, am left with a positive feeling. News can be very negative, especially with the situations in the Middle East which we read about daily. An uplifting article like this not only enforces that young Muslims are concerned about the Islamic State, but it also makes the situation more relatable to younger Americans, who use social media regularly, and who could find the Middle East problems to be far away from their circle of concerns.
ReplyDeleteThis is great. I think that people in the western half of the world often forget that while Islam (like all religions, Christianity included) does have its problems, it's not an inherently violent or evil religion. While I don't know much about Islam, sentiments I've seen expressed by Muslims on the Internet do not point towards a majority of them being blood-thirsty Jihadists. In fact, Islam seems to share many of the ideas that Christianity does about loving one's neighbor and being faithful to God. I'm glad to see Muslims on the Internet making an effort to correct skewed views of their faith.
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