Being a Muslim on social networking sites

The recent events in Boston have shed a very perilous light on the status of Muslims on social websites like Twitter and Facebook. In the event of a so called terrorist attack, if you, as a Muslim, are in the vicinity of the attack, you better make sure you delete all your tweets that have any relation to Islam or Muslim. I say this with tongue firmly in cheek. Looking at the reaction of journalists at CNN to the Bombers retweets, this could get you into a whole lot of pointless debate with fellow tweeters and journalists. The Boston Bomber retweeted JayZ, but we don’t see any reaction to that. Even more scary, a recent murder case in South Africa, has the suspects blaming JayZ for influencing them to murder their friend through his lyrics, but still no outcry from anyone regarding this influence on our youth.

I currently follow Mufti Menk (@muftimenk), the Islamic scholar, bizarrely implicated in the Boston Bombing. I am extremely worried that his tweet “Giving preference to others over ourselves when it comes to goodness is a quality that displays true closeness to God” may implicate me in a terror watch list. This advocate for peace is still wondering how ignorant CNN and certain tweeters can be?

Or how about, a Jewish scholar Lee Weissman (@JihadiJew), that I follow. The handle Jihadi will certainly get me into trouble. Let’s look at one of his tweets “#MyJihad is to cultivate and teach heroism, the ability to do good even from within less than good systems, to rise above our environments”

Even though I am making fun of the intellect of certain CNN journalists, I am trying to make a point about the persecution of Muslims.

... Me