India is the world’s most prolific source of anti-Muslim tweets.
According to a recent survey issued by the Islamic Council of Victoria, India, the United States, and the United Kingdom are responsible for the most anti-Muslim hate tweets in the globe.
The investigation found 871,379 Islamophobic tweets from India between August 28, 2019 and August 27, 2021.
The United States was responsible for 289,248 tweets, while the United Kingdom was responsible for 196,376 tweets.
The paper, titled “Islamophobia in the Digital Age,” claims that the governing Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) is to responsible for promoting the anti-Muslim agenda in the nation.
Islamophobia has been a problem in the United States for numerous years. It became worse under former President Donald Trump’s presidency, when he used racist, conspiratorial, and incendiary speech towards Muslims.
In the United Kingdom, numerous factors contributed to anti-Muslim prejudice, including the worldwide projection of Donald Trump’s Islamophobic comments, anti-migrant sentiment in the United Kingdom, and casual racism by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
According to the survey, 3,759,180 Islamophobic messages were sent on Twitter over the time period in question. Only 14.8% of the tweets were erased after a year, whereas 85.2% of all tweets remained.
The three primary topics of anti-Muslim tweets include tying Islam to terrorism, portraying Muslim males as sexual abusers, and instilling fear that Muslims want to impose Sharia law.
Secondary topics include spreading the myth that Muslims want to grow their population, pestering Muslim celebrities, and portraying halal meat as barbaric.
According to the report:
Twitter is failing miserably in its efforts to remove anti-Muslim material. This is expected considering that they do not automatically filter messages for hatred and instead respond only once a report is submitted.
Recommendations
The study by the Islamic Council of Victoria also presented several suggestions to fight worldwide sources of anti-Muslim discourse on social media platforms such as Twitter.
The research suggests penalising platforms that fail to combat Islamophobia and putting pressure on India’s BJP-led government to renounce its anti-Muslim agenda.
It advises that Twitter reconsider its policy of not reviewing tweets and that it automatically detect and remove offensive information directed towards Muslims. The study also suggests that Twitter establish an independent agency to assess the execution of its moderation standards.
