Every day during this Ramadan, David Wood has been posting episodes of the video series he has produced in collaboration with Vocab Malone and Jon McCray, “Islamicize Me.” The idea is that three young men decide to live exactly as Muhammad directed for a month. It’s a biting satire based on the genuinely strange, dangerous, inexplicable, and violent things Muhammad is depicted as saying and doing in Hadith collections that Muslims accept as reliable.
I’ve posted the first 22 episodes here at Jihad Watch, but just now I went to get the 23rd and set it up for posting, and found the notice: “This video has been removed for violating YouTube’s policy on hate speech.”
Now, I haven’t seen episode 23, but I do know that it is entitled “Dawah to Jews,” and so I can imagine that it might depict the boys quoting some of the hateful material directed toward Jews in the Qur’an and Hadith. The Qur’an depicts the Jews as inveterately evil and bent on destroying the well-being of the Muslims. They are the strongest of all people in enmity toward the Muslims (5:82); they fabricate things and falsely ascribe them to Allah (2:79; 3:75, 3:181); they claim that Allah’s power is limited (5:64); they love to listen to lies (5:41); they disobey Allah and never observe his commands (5:13). They are disputing and quarreling (2:247); hiding the truth and misleading people (3:78); staging rebellion against the prophets and rejecting their guidance (2:55); being hypocritical (2:14, 2:44); giving preference to their own interests over the teachings of Muhammad (2:87); wishing evil for people and trying to mislead them (2:109); feeling pain when others are happy or fortunate (3:120); being arrogant about their being Allah’s beloved people (5:18); devouring people’s wealth by subterfuge (4:161); slandering the true religion and being cursed by Allah (4:46); killing the prophets (2:61); being merciless and heartless (2:74); never keeping their promises or fulfilling their words (2:100); being unrestrained in committing sins (5:79); being cowardly (59:13-14); being miserly (4:53); being transformed into apes and pigs for breaking the Sabbath (2:63-65; 5:59-60; 7:166); and more. They are under Allah’s curse (9:30), and Muslims should wage war against them and subjugate them under Islamic hegemony (9:29).
The Hadith are even worse, and much more voluminous, with a great abundance of material depicting Jews as evilly scheming against Muhammad and the Muslims. His poisoning is blamed on them. His death is blamed on them. They’re depicted collectively as greedy, untrustworthy liars.
The idea of “Islamicize Me” is to call attention to material of this kind in the Islamic sources, as well as material that is frankly absurd, such as the idea of drinking camel urine as a cure of what ails you. It’s a broadly comic series, but its intent is deadly serious, and it is scrupulously based on material that is actually within the canonical Islamic sources.
So by banning episode 23, YouTube is essentially saying that the Qur’an and Hadith contain hate speech. Is that really a position they want to take? Or are they being Sharia-compliant again, and banning this material because some Muslims found it offensive (while material offensive to adherents of other religions abounds on YouTube).
YouTube needs to be called to account, and to answer, for its tyrannical behavior acting as judge, jury and executioner, and offering no recourse or appeal, in banning videos. And as it is essentially a monopoly, it needs to be broken up, along with the other social media giants, under anti-trust laws.
Meanwhile, here’s hoping that David Wood will be able to make “Islamicize Me” episode 23 available somewhere forthwith.