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The Islamic State has visibly attracted young Muslims from all over the world to its violent movement to build a caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
But here’s what’s less visible — the online backlash against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, by young Muslims declaring their opposition to rule by Islamic law, or Shariah, and even proudly avowing their atheism.
Nadia Oweidat, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, who tracks how Arab youths use the Internet, says the phenomenon “is mushrooming — the brutality of the Islamic State is exacerbating the issue and even pushing some young Muslims away from Islam.”
On Nov. 24, BBC.com published a piece on what was trending on Twitter.
It began: “A growing social media conversation in Arabic is calling for the implementation of Shariah, or Islamic law, to be abandoned.
“Discussing religious law is a sensitive topic in many Muslim countries.
“But on Twitter, a hashtag which translates as ‘why we reject implementing Shariah’ has been used 5,000 times in 24 hours.
“The conversation is mainly taking place in Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
“The debate is about whether religious law is suitable for the needs of Arab countries and modern legal systems. Dr. Alyaa Gad, an Egyptian doctor living in Switzerland, started the hashtag.
” ‘I have nothing against religion,’ she tells BBC Trending, but says she is against ‘using it as a political system.’ ”
The BBC added that “many others joined in the conversation, using the hashtag, listing reasons why Arabs and Muslims should abandon Shariah. ‘Because there’s not a single positive example of it bringing justice and equality,’ one man tweeted. … A Saudi woman commented: ‘By adhering to Shariah we are adhering to inhumane laws. Saudi Arabia is saturated with the blood of those executed by Sharia.’ ” Continue reading
- Thomas L. Friedman in The New York Times
Thomas L. Friedman became the The New York Times’ foreign affairs Op-Ed columnist in 1995.
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News category: Analysis and Comment.
