London Pride Signs and Twitter Storms

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Yesterday I was in attendance at London Pride to report on the planned march by the Exmuslim Council Of Britain. It was incredible. I was particulaly touched to see the wonderul reception from the crowds to the ex-Muslim message.

I posted images on my Twitter feed of some of the placcards from the march, such as the one below:

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Members of the march can be seen holding signs saying “Allah is Gay”.

I then woke up to a storm of abuse and threats from adherents of the religion of peace. And a concerted effort to get my Twitter account banned. As I type this my entire twitter feed is consumed with outrage that doesn’t show any signs of letting up soon. For want of a better expression, this seems to be really blowing up.

After much deliberation, I made the pre-emptive decision to delete the images from my Twitter timeline. Which is annoying.

Please don’t misunderstand this decision. I support this message from the CEMB and I will not apologise for posting the tweets. That’s why they will remain on this blog (where I can’t be banned). And if online threats and abuse fazed me, I would have deleted my Twitter account a long time ago.

And that’s why I’ll also be releasing video coverage of the event at some point in the future (containing the exact same imagery) to further promote the ex-Muslim message. And I’ll be using my Twitter account to encourage you to share this footage far and wide. I want these things to be seen. But if I lose my 56k strong Twitter following, this will really limit my ability to get the maximum number of ears and eyes on my content/reports. Given the current social media climate and my previous bans, I now unfortunately need to be tactical with my Twitter output.

That’s where we are now with social media and bans. I am someone who has been repeatedly suspended from Twitter for bogus reasons as you can read here. I’m very much on my last life. I simply don’t trust Twitter to do the right thing on this point. I suppose from a social media perspective, I am not immune from the chilling effect on freedom of expression which has been nurtured by the endless Twitter bans and suspensions for seemingly spurious reasons, some of which have been directly related to criticim of Islam.

I have to decide whether to risk losing my sizeable twitter reach over this, or keep my account and be able to share my blogs, videos, podcasts etc which will continue to contain robust criticism of Islam and promotion of exmuslims.

It’s an odd paradox where opinions and images posted directly to Twitter can earn you a ban, but external links to podcasts, blogs and Youtube videos with the same content are less likely to do so.

I hope you understand this sad, sad decision. And I’m sorry I had to make it.

Stephen Knight is host of The #GSPodcast. You can listen to The Godless Spellchecker Podcast here, and support it by becoming a patron here.

14 comments

  • The pictures were highly offensive and blasphemous (as were the marchers who shamelessly carried these signs). Glad you were forced to remove them!

    • Paul, I am offended all the time by every page of that terrible book, the Koran, but I would never call for its ban. So, apart from your outrage being an indication of your reaction to Stephen’s work, I am unclear about the corollary in your world-view. England and Wales do not have blasphemy laws. Can you indicate the religions which you would protect under blasphemy laws? Sathiya Sai Babaism? Bahá’í? Satanism? Which other areas of the human conversation should be censored? Politics? Human evolution? Israeli archaeology? It would be good to know, were you Censor-in-Chief, what the rest of us could not talk about.

        • The term God is simply used in context of argument, it’s not belief or anger at your non existent deity.
          Honestly why are some theists baffled by this?

          • In my experience many atheists are very angry at God. It’s quite bizarre. I pray they come to their senses and give up their rebellion against their Creator.

        • Paul, the link you direct us to is wrong. We are not angry with a non-existent god, just as the author is not angry with unicorns. We’re angry with the believers of imaginary gods and their desire to push their infantile beliefs on us. Your original post being a prime example!

          • ‘A new set of studies in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology finds that atheists and agnostics report anger toward God either in the past or anger focused on a hypothetical image of what they imagine God must be like. Julie Exline, a psychologist at Case Western Reserve University and the lead author of this recent study, has examined other data on this subject with identical results. Exline explains that her interest was first piqued when an early study of anger toward God revealed a counterintuitive finding: Those who reported no belief in God reported more grudges toward him than believers.’

    • Hi Paul, can you explain why you think people with no faith should be forced to observe blasphemy rules? Thanks.

    • Paul, what’s offensive about identifying Jesus as gay? Jesus has told you in the bible that he’s everyone who faces oppression.

      “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, “I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

      “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

      “The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”

  • Vote with your feet, show some principle and stop using Twitter and other platforms who behave in that way.
    If enough people follow suit, they will change their policy, or viable alternatives will arise.

    I didn’t see any mention of the EMCB at Pride in the establishment media today.
    Good on them

  • LiberalDestroyer420

    Shut the fuck up,crybaby pillowbiter

  • Eminently sensible (but sad, as you say) decision. These things are simply judgement call and this is your judgement. You might change your mind, you might not. It’s up to you.

  • Sorry Stephen, but you must be incredibly naive not to have anticipated such a twitter storm. If you honestly imagine that a few ex-Muslims expressing distaste for the tenets of the most authoritarian religion in the world is going to make any significant change you are very mistaken.
    The likes of Nawaz and Hirsi Ali, are always bringing up very welcome secular issues to stir up the fanatics into an entertaining veritable fury but Im sure most Muslims just ignore them. Any ex- Muslim is just that, ex, has been, out of the picture and no longer of interest to the holders of the faith. Even the mildest of adherents to Islam simply accept the religion and all its beliefs without question regardless of what they might say in public.
    They believe that homosexuality is a very punishable sin along with adultery, same sex marriage, women’s place in society, secularism and many other liberal shibboleths that are a key part of Western freedom and culture.
    Not just you but the entire ruling elite are naive to imagine they can bully people who take their religion very seriously into simply turning their backs on it and adopting a watered down ‘western version’ of their faith.
    They succeeded in doing this with Christianity because that is a much weaker religion. The result being that few people in Europe, at least, take Christianity seriously any more. That is a good thing. I believe religions of any coloour have long since had their day and have no significant place in modern societies.
    But that is not likely to happen with Islam. They have seen what Western decadence and moral decay has done to Christianity and they are very unlikely to roll over and let the same thing happen to them.
    That is the reason why encouraging immigration of Muslims into Europe is such a terrible mistake as they will never accept the Western way of life and we will eventually be faced with the reality of Sharia Law. Trying to convert them is a ridiculous undertaking. If you think you will succeed in that any time soon you will be disappointed.

  • Can I ask, did you report the threats to the authorities, and if so how did they respond?

What do you think? Leave some comments!