One Reply to “Death Cults: The Chat Site”

1. Yehudit says:

   August 8, 2002 at 3:53 pm

   A bout 2 1/2 yrs ago I was offered a subscription to a Muslim email list in Austin TX.
   
   http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Austin_Muslims/messages
   
   I told them I was a practicing Jew but if they still wanted to subscribe me, fine. They did. All emails are news items on Islam plus occasional moderated “feedback” from subscribers – no unmoderated chat like Clearguidance. Although the tone is much more subdued, the ideological position is similar – lots of blatant anti-Semitism, Palestinian cheerleading, anti-US screeds, “ask-the-imam” advice …. Ocasionally a moderate Muslim would chide the more rabid.

   I posted once in a while and they did publish some of my emails, even those defending Judaism against the more blatant lies. Interestingly, they always refused to publish any news items I sent about Israeli-Palestinian cooperation or peace negotiations…..

   I wondered how they got my name and decided it had to be when I volunteered for several interfaith Habitat for Humanity house-building projects which requested my email address to send notices. There was a Muslim youth group participating and it would have been easy to swipe the email addresses. (I am not blaming HFH at all for this – they are a volunteer org that does a lot of good, and I would not expect a local chapter to have the internet savvy and security that a larger business org might.)

   After 9-11, I toyed with the idea of telling the FBI about the list, but unlike the Clearguidance site, there wasn’t any blatant-jihad mongering that set off my tripwire.

   But it was an interesting window onto “normal” Islam in a medium-size American city, and certainly was a factor in my unsurprise at 9-11.

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