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#MuslimRage counters anti-Islam media with humourous tweets

Less than a week after North American Muslims called for a civil rights movement, Newsweek is serving it up. Unintentionally. 

Muslims take to Twitter over to mock and subvert Newsweek's #MuslimRage. Image by author.

Less than a week after Muslim community leaders told The Vancouver Observer about the need for a North American Muslim Harlem Renaissance, fueled by the talent, intellect and social contributions of US and Canadian Muslim youth, Newsweek seems to have offered a kind of call to arms.

The magazine prompted its readers Monday to use the hashtag #MuslimRage to Tweet about its cover story on anti-American violence in the Muslim World, penned by renowned neo-conservative Ayaan Hirsti Ali. 

Accordingly, North American Muslims hijacked a hashtag essentially designed to fuel rage and stereotypes against them with artful comments on everything and anything that upsets North American Muslims.

The comments ranged from everyday logistic concerns posed by life in the West to comments on Western society as a whole and the foreign and domestic policy of Western governments.

Of course, this refers to the perilous pink pickled radishes one sometimes finds in a shawarma.

What was impressive was the worldwide push to show that Muslims share the same concerns as non-Muslims.

When I wear a white hijab to a TV interview with a white backdrop. ) September 17, 2012

And of course, my own:

Some Western Muslims have been ready to respond to an article like this for months. Mainstream media often commissions sensationalistic articles by a handful of Western Muslims and people of Muslim origin professing to speak for the entire Muslim World, Muslim women and Muslim democracy movements by virtue of their ethnic and religious background.

The Newsweek article comes months after Foreign Policy published an article by Mona Eltahawy claiming – without any of the journalistic fairness the publication reserves for non-Muslims – that every single Muslim and Arab man is a misogynist.

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