ISLAMABAD: World leading social media platform Twitter’s users from the three countries _ India, USA and UK generated 86% of malicious online content from 2017-19, which led to physical attacks on Muslims and mosques.
The Islamic Council of Victoria (ICV) – the apex Muslim organization in the Australian state of Victoria which represents an estimated 270,000 community members conducted a study, spanning 24 months period between 2017 and 2019.
According to the study, Twitter has become a primary source for the proliferation and amplification of anti-Muslim hatred globally.
The ICV also highlighted a vicious cycle of hatred noted in online and offline attacks on the community globally. Indian users alone generated more than half of these hateful and hurtful posts.
Among India-based Twitter users, researchers blame India’s ruling party – Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – for the dissemination and amplification of anti-Muslim hate, saying, “(the) BJP has actively normalised hatred towards Muslims such that 55.12 percent of anti-Muslim hatred tweets now originate in India.”
The study has also discussed the discriminatory laws that deny Muslims citizenship and other civil rights for the rise of anti-Muslim hatred online among Indian Twitter accounts.
Last year, the United Nations strongly urged the international community to “take all necessary measures” to combat discrimination against Muslims and “prohibit any advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to violence” while warning that anti-Muslim hatred has reached “epidemic proportions” but the appeal did not produce the desired results.
The social media company should now focus its attention on user behaviour within three countries in particular, according to a new study, which found the US, the UK, and India contributed a staggering 86 percent of anti-Muslim content on Twitter during a three-year period.
In the United States, the proliferation of anti-Muslim hate on Twitter is almost inseparable from the hateful rhetoric and policies of former president Donald Trump, who ranks as the third most frequently mentioned user in anti-Muslim posts, according to the researchers, with many tweets associated with defending his Muslim immigration ban and anti-Muslim conspiracy theories, including those that posit Democrats as collaborating with “Islamists” to take over the West.
As for the United Kingdom, the study attributed the prevalence of anti-Muslim tweets to various factors, including the global reach of Trump’s anti-Muslim animus, anti-immigration sentiments sparked by the refugee crisis, and the discourse surrounding Brexit, along with the casual racism of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who once compared niqab-wearing Muslim women to “letter boxes”.
