"Islam Will Dominate:" A Dialog for the Information Age

This article is about the flow of dangerous information in the information age -- how will we determine what is dangerous and what might we do with it? I don't believe that all people of faith are dangerous. I don't think that all Muslims everywhere are plotting to kill me. I am not a bigot, racist or hater of anyone. This article is not about me, or my personal views regarding Islam.

You can find my daily video show, Mediabytes, on about 26 websites including magnify.net - a site founded and run by my very good friend, Steve Rosenbaum. We found each other on the phone the other day comparing notes on our CES experiences. Not surprisingly, Steve was eager to share statistics about how successful magnify.net has become, with more than 500,000 views daily. During our conversation, he told me that the third most popular channel on magnify was called, "Islam Will Dominate." This caught me off guard, so I immediately visited magnify.net to see for myself. On this particular day Steve was wrong, it was the second most popular video channel on the site. "Really," I said. "Humm ... how do you feel about that?"

Steve's position is that magnify.net is a platform. His company is not responsible for the content anymore than Google or YouTube would be responsible. He told me that magnify.net has a policy that prohibits "hate speech" as defined on their site, but content that does not meet that standard is not censored in any way.

At this point in the conversation, I had not watched any of the videos on the channel, I had just looked at the thumbnails and their metadata. I was disturbed by the title of the channel, "Islam Will Dominate," but I did not have enough personal knowledge of the content to approve or disapprove of any particular piece of content.

I asked Steve if he thought that offering an enabling technology to a group of individuals who were proselytizing a doctrine that incited people to kill people who did not believe in their particular worldview was a good idea? Steve correctly admonished that I had not seen all of the content, admitted that he hadn't either and we watched a few while on the phone together.

We got into a very balanced discussion about religious dogma, extremism, moderates, the true message of Islam and the like. This is not a conversation I wish to have with you. Steve is my friend and we have enough mutual respect to passionately argue ideology without any residual animus. In fact, we talk about religion and politics all the time.

Steve and I both live in New York, close enough to Ground Zero to remember the taste of the charnel smell in our throats. I don't have to hypothesize about whether or not this particular group and their religious beliefs are dangerous to me, my family, my friends and neighbors - I simply have to look out the southern facing windows of my apartment and consider the change in the New York City skyline.

My position is relatively simple. People who are willing to kill you if you do not adopt their worldview are dangerous. Thinking adults should do everything in their power to prevent the proliferation of any dogma that lauds, makes martyrs of, or otherwise deifies people who think it is acceptable to kill other people because they don't wish to pray to a particular god, follow particular traditions or adopt a particular way of life. (This is my worldview. You don't have to agree with it. I am not advocating it, nor am I willing to attack or otherwise harm anyone who happens do disagree with me.)

I truly believe that anyone is entitled to any worldview to which they wish to ascribe. However, if they are publishing the idea that they are ready, willing and able to kill me if I don't agree with them, I simply don't think I need to sit idly by and allow them to do so. Steve argued the other side. His feeling was that magnify.net was a platform and that providing a venue for conversation could only help. After all, conversation fosters understanding.

Although I totally agree with this point, I think it has to come with a caveat - conversation with the purpose of fostering understanding is a great idea, you just have to leave your AK-47's, car bombs and suicide bombers at home and agree not to use them. I asked the question, "Steve, what happens when magnify.net enables this particular group to change minds close to home and a car bomb or suicide bomber kills one of your children with their new understanding of this dogma?"

And so we come to the most important question of our time: How can we protect ourselves in and from the Information Age?

If you search "Islam will dominate" on Google, you will find hundreds of pages of results. Type it into YouTube, same thing. The Internet is ubiquitous - what, if anything, should be done?

Our constitution prohibits our government from preventing anyone from saying almost anything (other than crying out "fire" in a crowded theater) in public spaces. But this idea of freedom of expression does not apply to private spaces, homes, workplaces or the purview of private enterprise.

Should magnify.net give a voice to Islam? Will it dominate? What does that mean? How about evangelical Christians? Don't they have to be stopped as well? What about Mormons or Jews? Should we limit the flow of their messages?

To me the answer is very simple - as long as you don't advocate killing me, you can say anything you like. But, when you are actively recruiting people who will be brainwashed to end my life, you don't get to use my tools to do it.

I'm not advocating the burning of books or the slippery slope of censorship - I'm advocating filtering out and disrupting the most powerful tool that our enemies have - information. Is this censorship? Steve says yes. I say no. I think filtering is a pretty good survival tactic for the information age. Steve does not. What will Chad Hurley or Eric Schmidt say? We should ask them; in fact we should all discuss this at length.

After our call, I watched a bunch of videos on magnify.net's "Islam Will Dominate" channel and couldn't find anything particularly offensive or dangerous sounding. I don't agree with any of it, but I respect their right to believe whatever they wish to believe. Perhaps if the channel was entitled, "Allah is Great" I would not have been inspired to consider the issue. However, I do not wish to be "dominated" by anyone or any thing and their choice of words begged the question: Does a private company in NYC have an obligation to help promulgate a belief system that is antithetical to the existence of NYC?

As the world gets wired, we are going to be faced with the enormity of this ethical question over and over again. We, as a society living in the Information Age, must get a handle on it now. My personal views don't matter. But, our collective view does. The constitution does not contemplate a world where information is available everywhere in an instant. But it is the world we live in today. What shall we do about it? What questions should we ask? What do you think?

Shelly Palmer is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2006, Focal Press). Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy® Awards). He is the Vice-Chairman of the National Academy of Media Arts & Sciences an organization dedicated to education and leadership in the areas of technology, media and entertainment. Palmer also oversees the Advanced Media Technology Emmy® Awards which honors outstanding achievements in the science and technology of advanced media. You can read Shelly's blog here. Shelly can be reached at [e-mail]

Comments

[Azooz]

The word "Dominate" is a wrong translation of sa-yoth-hiraho (He'll raise Islam) in the Quran. It's theological dominance and not about war in any way. Like a pious young Christian or Jew will talk and act much better than a rude one with no nowledge. Knowledge of the theology of Islam is what the viewers of that show would want to learn there, not how to "dominate" - that we must leave to God. The old Christian concept of "Dominance" over "others" is offensive and not part of Islam in any way.

I agree with you on what the English words convey, but many of the translators would not have any knowledge of the Christian connotations of the word "dominate" or the history of how the Church used it in America - to me it simply means I'll become a better person if I gain more knowledge - and a lot nicer to other folks to, same thing for people of other religions.


The word "Islam is now tied in the minds of most Americans to terrorisim, that is a (propaganda) mistake that most other peoples around the world see directly when Americans speek of Islam. As a Muslim, I'm not upset the least about it, for you'll notice that Islam gets talked about a lot more often these days - and millions of people are learning more about Islam to - see how that phrase (Islam will dominate) works?

Islam will never dominate me unless I want it to - it's about submision to the will of God, not about going around harming people of other religons - that is a sure way to hell stated clearly and repeatedly in the Quran itself.

However, Islam's theology will always be better if one studies it and compares - the phrase means that to - but that is not my domain either ;).


Peace

[camilow]

If you censor "Islam will dominate", you're letting the terrorists win. I appreciate that living close to the World Trade Center makes one sensitive to these things. But censorship is not the answer.
Leaving aside the issue of what to censor, when, and how, all of which pose impossible problems -- reacting in this way is letting fear dominate.
There are a zillion other dangerous things on the web. Plans for nukes, for anthrax, for every imaginable weapon of terror -- they are all there. Every hateful point of view, from white supremacists to holocaust deniers, is well represented. They should be censored just as much as "Islam will dominate", I would think.
The true enemy is not Islam. The true enemy is our own fear. The solution is not less speech; the solution is more light.
Look at Martin Luther King, Gandhi, and Jesus. They were murdered for bringing light to the world -- but the world they left behind was better because of them. They did not let fear rule their lives, and look at what they achieved.
Make the world a better place, and that will dominate.

[godlessclif]

The answer is so simple. Abandon Christianity and teach people the truth. You are concerned your people will be converted to a mindless dogma, because you indoctrinate them with a mindless dogma.

I know many atheists and not one who ever converted to religion without being physically beaten or drugged. The ones beaten and/or medicated were mostly children taken from atheist parents and given to good Christian families, who walloped the hell out of them for blasphemy.

Like John McCain in Hanoi they eventually break under pressure and convert.

[HappyRabbit]

Extreme, even hateful opinions, in and of themselves, are not dangerous. They give people of reason an insight into their enemy's psyche. The more we see of Scientology, for instance, the more we know how dangerous it is. The musings of any religious extremist also give us needed insight into the dangers we face, MH

[WorkingClass]

"couldn't find anything particularly offensive or dangerous sounding".

Man, you are really reaching for something to worry about. Microsoft already dominates. How are you dealing with that?

[SamThornton]

Of course, I personally am immune to those gosh-darned Muslims, but what about the children? And all those other people out there who are not as smart as I am and might be corrupted by exposure to ideas I don't agree with?

Censorship as a cure for anything is as dumb as the above statements. Most advocates of censorship believe in it not for their own protection -- they're too smart to be taken in -- but for the "protection" of others whom they believe are more gullible and dumber than themselves. It's a crock, of course, just as censorship itself is a crock.

[HeevenSteven]

Some thoughts.

If you restrict the language they're permitted to use, they'll just code it or use euphemisms, and say what they want anyway.

I do not believe radical Islam would be the movement it is today, were it not for the political oppression in the societies that spawned them. The reason they originated in Mosques is because that is the only place their governments lacked control.

I don't think we should censor the radical Christian right either, but there is a problem with media ownership with too few controlling too much. We have defacto censoring against their opposition, with a very powerful right wing element controlling the airwaves, which leads me to this quote:

"There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies."

-- Walter Lippmann

[Zenobius]

Hi

I propose that we dither. The reasons for this proposal are:

a) short of using nukes, it is very hard to see how the bad guys are going to kill enough of us to frighten us into submission. Nukes are hard to come by, and modern societies have a lot of people and don't scare easily {did either Germany or Japan break due to air bombardment in WWII?}

b) For all I know, Islam _will_ dominate. It is useful to retain the ability to evaluate this for myself.

c) It is better that the obnoxious ideas be promulgated in reasonably plain view, where we can keep an eye on them and their promoters, than to let them simmer in secret.

d) censorship must be done by someone, and will probably be in support of their interests. Would we really be safer if President Bush were empowered to prevent the dissemination of ideas contrary to his interests?

It's a risky world, and we're just going to have to live with that.

[GnitenGoodLk]

Wonderful post. True question of our times.

I wonder if "advocate killing" for the purpose of advancing a religious dogma actually IS yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. It qualifies in my view.

1) It makes people run, in fear, even though there is no "fire" (terrorist) in your living room.

2)The panic it causes destabilizes individuals, and governments. It holds the potential for a violent pre-reaction.

3) It provides a location for those would make a true "fire" a place for instruction & inspiration. This actually goes beyond merely yelling"fire" It's yelling fire, and hoping someone makes it real.

In that respect, I don't think it should be allowed a seat at our information table or the protection of free speech & should be filtered/censored.