imagine waking up one morning and
receiving this message in your inbox
from a Nazi all Muslims will be removed
from America and Europe and you will all
ultimately burn in hell for worshipping
a demon god I bet you’re a pedophile how
would you react block him report him
respond in kind all of the above the
words we choose can have a profound
impact and on the internet that can have
an exponential impact social media
companies are struggling and scrambling
and spending millions of dollars trying
to figure out how do we combat cyber
bullying how do we stop online youth
radicalization and all the solutions
that they come up with are all reactive
once the bullying has already happened
they haven’t found a way to prevent that
from happening in the first place and so
the mantra goes don’t feed the trolls
but what if I told you that feeding the
trolls is exactly how we can prevent and
end cyber bullying from happening in the
first place see I believe that words can
resolve in minutes what wars cannot in a
millennium and that’s not just a catchy
line to start my talk though I
appreciate you guys noticing it’s
something that I’ve discovered through a
proven model I call collateral education
what collateral education teaches us is
that we have an ability to not only
influence a person that we’re speaking
with but influence those who are
watching the conversation unfold in
real-time
I was a novice on social media I’m one
of the last people generations to
graduate college without ever using
social media something that sounds
incredible now back when I graduated
college Twitter didn’t exist Instagram
Pinterest snapchat were all a far cry
myspace was actually popular to be fair
and Facebook was in its infancy so the
only reason why I even got on social
media was because a friend of mine
signed me
you know we all have that one friend
that makes us do things we don’t want to
do I had one of those if you’re not sure
who that friend is in your circle I’ve
got news for you unfortunately and
though I was a novice the one golden
rule of social media I was told was
don’t feed the trolls it only encourages
them but with a name like Qasim and a
Twitter handle like Muslim IQ that
really wasn’t an option
fact is I’m an immigrant to America I’m
a person of color I’m a practicing
Muslim I’m also a lawyer that doesn’t
help but one way or another
trolls found a way to find me I just
knew that there simply had to be a
better way because the reality was that
not feeding the trolls wasn’t doing
anything to stop the anti-muslim
violence and Islamophobia that I’m
seeing in fact has had the opposite
effect adding to the fact is that very
few Americans know Muslims according to
Pew sixty-two percent of Americans have
never met a Muslim in their entire life
and there’s a powerful lobby trying to
keep it that way since 9/11 there have
been over 200 million dollars spent
solely to create fear and propaganda
against Muslims and that same Lobby that
is funding these anti-muslim articles
and propaganda is also funding the white
nationalist Nazi movements that we’re
seeing rise so they’re definitely
connected but to blame that would be a
mistake as well even seemingly liberal
publications like the New York Times for
example last year published more
articles showing cancer in a positive
light than Islam when your religion has
a worst rap than cancer
you’ve got a lot of PR work to do and
has had an impact Butler University came
out with the study is just this month
that shows that Muslims are the single
most feared demographic in America so
yeah I believe there’s a better way
because I believe in a couple of sacred
rules I believe that the right to
practice your faith peacefully should be
a life choice not a life sentence I
believe that people
are inherently good and want to build
bridges of understanding and tear down
walls of bigotry and I also believe that
we must engage in this jihad of the pen
together jihad means struggle and we
must struggle together against bigotry
but we can’t resort to bigotry ourselves
because what’s happening now is that
this online radicalization is having
real-life impacts the studies show that
over the last three years anti-muslim
hate crimes have increased over 300%
there have been more attacks vandalisms
and fire bombings on mosques than at any
point in American history and contrary
to the claim that this is the response
to radical groups like daesh or the
Taliban the data shows that this is a
manufactured hatred of Muslims that
spikes in the run-up to the Iraq war the
Ground Zero mosque controversy and every
single presidential election Americans
are being manipulated to hate Muslims
when the fear they should have should be
towards bigotry in general
and this is manifesting in the highest
offices of our land
Democrats and Republicans this is not a
partisan issue the FBI reports that the
single greatest terror threat to America
right now is not Isis it’s white
supremacist there’s over 1,000 white
supremacist hate groups in America right
now FBI study show that white
supremacists are radicalizing white male
youth at a faster rate than Isis is
radicalizing Muslim youth and this is
happening right here in America things
like Dylann roof and his terrorist
attack at the Emmanuel Church in South
Carolina is just one example of those
but in 25 presidential debates
Republican and Democrat white supremacy
terrorism was mentioned zero times
so-called radical Islamic terrorism was
mentioned each and every single time all
this came to a head for me in January of
2016 as I struggled with this idea of
how to respond to trolls in a way that’s
effective I wanted to find a way
hatred and turn it on his head but I
didn’t want to legitimize hatred or
bigotry it was around then that I got
this message from Nathan Otzi that I
showed you a little bit earlier today
and my initial instinct was to block him
but I thought let me do something
different let me feed the troll and it
turns out that in feeding the troll I
stumbled upon something that I didn’t
expect in a famous Seinfeld episode
George Costanza talks about accidentally
discovering plutonium except where’s
plutonium is used to create weapons of
mass destruction and collateral damage I
discovered a way to create a weapon of
mass construction and what I call
collateral education so I said let’s
feed the troll what’s the worst that
could happen I responded thinking that
you know he may never have met a Muslim
come on Nate do you know any Muslims
personally we’re gonna call him Nathan
not C for this discussion he responded
unfortunately yes you Muslims are sick
expletive freaks so now I’ve been
slapped in the face / verbally twice by
a Nazi but I thought let me chase this
rabbit hole see how far it actually goes
where have you met Muslims can we
dialogue without vulgar language and
name-calling and that was a deliberate
act to try to take that hatred away from
him and play on a level playing field he
responded okay
I thought all right that’s a victory how
can you consider Muhammad to be the
holiest prophet of God he killed lots of
people started Wars and he married
children so though his message was full
of misinformation and distortion and
flat-out lies the fact that he stopped
cursing was a step in the right
direction
I continued there’s a lot of
misinformation about Prophet Muhammad on
the internet he never killed anyone he
only fought in self-defense and he
certainly never married a child now one
thing that trolls will do when they’re
stumped is resort to Google scholarship
Google scholars are the worst because
you can go on google and find anything
to justify what you believe
the earth is flat vaccines cause autism
aliens are secretly inhabiting of the
United States and taking over our
government that might be true actually
so he resorted exactly to that yes he
did Mary look at this Wikipedia article
on Asia
so anticipating this I responded its
Wikipedia it’s wrong she was between 15
and 19 that was normal at the time do
you know the legal age of age of
marriage in America is 13 in most states
or that Mary Mother of Jesus was 13 and
Joseph was 90 according to the Catholic
Encyclopedia how many people here know
for example that in the United States is
the year 2000 there have been 200,000
child marriages some as young as 11
sanctioned by the church and given
judicial decree as well
Nathan Ozzie didn’t know this either so
he tried to change the subject no a
thousand years ago he said Muhammad was
forcing his religion onto people again
notwithstanding the fact that Prophet
Muhammad lived 1,400 years ago
this was still more information and
wrong so I responded with facts Nate
Prophet Muhammad did no such thing the
Quran commands Muslims to protect all
houses of worship instead of Google read
the Quran I can send you a biography of
Prophet Muhammad it’s innate shifted
again would you invite millions of poor
white Christians to come live in your
richest Muslim countries notwithstanding
that this is exactly what happened
during World War two when Europeans fled
and went to Muslim countries for refuge
I responded yes in fact Prophet Muhammad
himself invited Christians to worship as
they wish in his own mosque he wrote a
letter to the st. katherine’s monastery
at Sinai promising to defend Christians
against all that they hate and then just
for emphasis I sent him the whole letter
Nader Nazi responded okay I guess
there’s good and bad people in every
demographic and my heart was elated for
just a moment until he added but I still
think white people should have that own
homogeneous living spaces that can
happen with millions of Muslims moving
to Europe I figured I’d gone this far
and I’d broken down this many obstacles
maybe I can keep going one step further
and I said yes every community has good
and bad
but all humans are equal I’m brown
you’re white but I see you as an equal
human being this is what islam teaches
can we work together Nate what do you
say I felt like I’d given him a really
strong argument for us to work together
and they didn’t respond after several
hours so I asked him Nate and this was
my response you are no longer permitted
to send messages to this user
Nathan Otzi had blocked me so as i sat
there wondering did I just waste all
this time I got another message from
Dave Dave the dude they have the dude
said I’ve been following your page and I
had a question I hope you don’t mind I’m
a Christian and I’ve heard islam teaches
Muslims to hate Christians is that true
and it suddenly occurred to me that Nate
the Nazi and Dave the dude had very
similar questions but they were coming
at it from polar opposites
and so in a flash I thought hold on a
second there’s something here I took my
entire conversation with Nathan Ozzy and
I pasted it on Facebook copy-paste just
to see what would happen the
conversation reached 125,000 people and
the responses I got this is a
cross-section Janet said very engaging
some commentator said they wish that
Nate has said to you you’re right but
this isn’t the movies you offered a
bridge a chance that connect as equals
and inspiring read Martin responded I
think he blocked you because you were
making him think very surreal courage we
are not alone in this struggle struggle
means jihad we are not alone in this
jihad against bigotry and this concept
has since gone viral I found ways to
repeat this over and over again when a
troll tweeted me Islam is cancer I
responded with collateral education
saying cancer no the Quran was revealed
in Ramadan 610 which was done in January
or February thus Islam is a queries it
reads 40,000 retweets with 7 million
people responding to it a white
supremacist DM me that wears a Christian
version of Isis and every other
asking for a friend I responded with
collateral education with a list of
terrorism done by so-called Christian
groups it was retweeted eighty thousand
times and reached nine million people
another person responded to me and said
go home we don’t want you here I
responded you’re wrong I’ll prove it
Twitter retweet if you want me here as
an American Muslim it was retweeted 112
thousand times and reach 10 million
people his account on Twitter got
suspended and his employer reached out
to me to apologize that the employee had
promoted bigotry against me
and then when a certain elected official
tweeted about so-called radical Islamic
terrorism I responded actually refugees
have kills your Americans there have
been 150,000 Americans killed by guns
but we have zero gun bans and three
refugee bans stop fear-mongering I got
double the retweets as the president and
it reached 13 million people you heard
me mention earlier that my
conversational with Nathan hace reached
125,000 people now these conversations
are reaching over a hundred million
people per month that means that by the
end of the year I have reached over 1
billion people with collateral education
this isn’t to boast but it’s a toast to
the fact that people want to work
together against bigotry people are
desirous of finding a way to build a
bridge we just need to create the avenue
for that to happen
I mentioned that online hate leads to
real-life violence and this is the best
part about collateral education it can
be radicalized and it’s proven I woke up
one morning not too long ago to find out
that someone had shot at my mosque 30
times fortunately nobody was killed but
imagine for a moment you find out that
somebody has shot at your place of
worship the the federal government
wanted to put them away for as long as
possible they wanted to give them a 14
year sentence we went to the judge and
said your honor we want you to forgive
him and I judge looked at us like we
were crazy but ultimately after much
lobbying to the judge he listened to us
and gave him only six months instead of
14 years
and now he’s become one of our strongest
allies I owe them he says convicted mass
shooter embraces Islam he’s still a
Roman Catholic in a devout Roman
Catholic but he’s become one of our
biggest advocates to fight back against
bigotry and hatred he admits I was
radicalized on Facebook but because of
this opportunity to dialogue collateral
education we found ways to work together
imagine if every person in this room
responded to biggest not by blocking
them not by simply reporting them but
trying to engage them with civility with
compassion and with education think
about the exponential impact each one of
us can have on a mass kill for that to
happen you need three things you need
humility to re-educate yourself on Islam
because obviously the media is doing a
terrible job you need the courage to
engage in trolls and let them know that
this is not their narrative this is our
narrative you need a resource to learn
what Islam actually teaches the first
two you control the last one I can help
you with we lost a true Islamic
education campaign to do exactly that
and we’ve had over 16,000 people since
sign-on is a Muslim ally to stand
against bigotry into combat trolls when
it comes down to it I still get the same
hate messages and death threats that I
got before but now my messages of love
and compassion are infinitely more this
is my invitation to you don’t sit by the
sidelines engage in collateral education
forsake that golden rule of don’t feed
the trolls go on feed the trolls and
let’s win the hearts with collateral
education thank you
you
you
receiving this message in your inbox
from a Nazi all Muslims will be removed
from America and Europe and you will all
ultimately burn in hell for worshipping
a demon god I bet you’re a pedophile how
would you react block him report him
respond in kind all of the above the
words we choose can have a profound
impact and on the internet that can have
an exponential impact social media
companies are struggling and scrambling
and spending millions of dollars trying
to figure out how do we combat cyber
bullying how do we stop online youth
radicalization and all the solutions
that they come up with are all reactive
once the bullying has already happened
they haven’t found a way to prevent that
from happening in the first place and so
the mantra goes don’t feed the trolls
but what if I told you that feeding the
trolls is exactly how we can prevent and
end cyber bullying from happening in the
first place see I believe that words can
resolve in minutes what wars cannot in a
millennium and that’s not just a catchy
line to start my talk though I
appreciate you guys noticing it’s
something that I’ve discovered through a
proven model I call collateral education
what collateral education teaches us is
that we have an ability to not only
influence a person that we’re speaking
with but influence those who are
watching the conversation unfold in
real-time
I was a novice on social media I’m one
of the last people generations to
graduate college without ever using
social media something that sounds
incredible now back when I graduated
college Twitter didn’t exist Instagram
Pinterest snapchat were all a far cry
myspace was actually popular to be fair
and Facebook was in its infancy so the
only reason why I even got on social
media was because a friend of mine
signed me
you know we all have that one friend
that makes us do things we don’t want to
do I had one of those if you’re not sure
who that friend is in your circle I’ve
got news for you unfortunately and
though I was a novice the one golden
rule of social media I was told was
don’t feed the trolls it only encourages
them but with a name like Qasim and a
Twitter handle like Muslim IQ that
really wasn’t an option
fact is I’m an immigrant to America I’m
a person of color I’m a practicing
Muslim I’m also a lawyer that doesn’t
help but one way or another
trolls found a way to find me I just
knew that there simply had to be a
better way because the reality was that
not feeding the trolls wasn’t doing
anything to stop the anti-muslim
violence and Islamophobia that I’m
seeing in fact has had the opposite
effect adding to the fact is that very
few Americans know Muslims according to
Pew sixty-two percent of Americans have
never met a Muslim in their entire life
and there’s a powerful lobby trying to
keep it that way since 9/11 there have
been over 200 million dollars spent
solely to create fear and propaganda
against Muslims and that same Lobby that
is funding these anti-muslim articles
and propaganda is also funding the white
nationalist Nazi movements that we’re
seeing rise so they’re definitely
connected but to blame that would be a
mistake as well even seemingly liberal
publications like the New York Times for
example last year published more
articles showing cancer in a positive
light than Islam when your religion has
a worst rap than cancer
you’ve got a lot of PR work to do and
has had an impact Butler University came
out with the study is just this month
that shows that Muslims are the single
most feared demographic in America so
yeah I believe there’s a better way
because I believe in a couple of sacred
rules I believe that the right to
practice your faith peacefully should be
a life choice not a life sentence I
believe that people
are inherently good and want to build
bridges of understanding and tear down
walls of bigotry and I also believe that
we must engage in this jihad of the pen
together jihad means struggle and we
must struggle together against bigotry
but we can’t resort to bigotry ourselves
because what’s happening now is that
this online radicalization is having
real-life impacts the studies show that
over the last three years anti-muslim
hate crimes have increased over 300%
there have been more attacks vandalisms
and fire bombings on mosques than at any
point in American history and contrary
to the claim that this is the response
to radical groups like daesh or the
Taliban the data shows that this is a
manufactured hatred of Muslims that
spikes in the run-up to the Iraq war the
Ground Zero mosque controversy and every
single presidential election Americans
are being manipulated to hate Muslims
when the fear they should have should be
towards bigotry in general
and this is manifesting in the highest
offices of our land
Democrats and Republicans this is not a
partisan issue the FBI reports that the
single greatest terror threat to America
right now is not Isis it’s white
supremacist there’s over 1,000 white
supremacist hate groups in America right
now FBI study show that white
supremacists are radicalizing white male
youth at a faster rate than Isis is
radicalizing Muslim youth and this is
happening right here in America things
like Dylann roof and his terrorist
attack at the Emmanuel Church in South
Carolina is just one example of those
but in 25 presidential debates
Republican and Democrat white supremacy
terrorism was mentioned zero times
so-called radical Islamic terrorism was
mentioned each and every single time all
this came to a head for me in January of
2016 as I struggled with this idea of
how to respond to trolls in a way that’s
effective I wanted to find a way
hatred and turn it on his head but I
didn’t want to legitimize hatred or
bigotry it was around then that I got
this message from Nathan Otzi that I
showed you a little bit earlier today
and my initial instinct was to block him
but I thought let me do something
different let me feed the troll and it
turns out that in feeding the troll I
stumbled upon something that I didn’t
expect in a famous Seinfeld episode
George Costanza talks about accidentally
discovering plutonium except where’s
plutonium is used to create weapons of
mass destruction and collateral damage I
discovered a way to create a weapon of
mass construction and what I call
collateral education so I said let’s
feed the troll what’s the worst that
could happen I responded thinking that
you know he may never have met a Muslim
come on Nate do you know any Muslims
personally we’re gonna call him Nathan
not C for this discussion he responded
unfortunately yes you Muslims are sick
expletive freaks so now I’ve been
slapped in the face / verbally twice by
a Nazi but I thought let me chase this
rabbit hole see how far it actually goes
where have you met Muslims can we
dialogue without vulgar language and
name-calling and that was a deliberate
act to try to take that hatred away from
him and play on a level playing field he
responded okay
I thought all right that’s a victory how
can you consider Muhammad to be the
holiest prophet of God he killed lots of
people started Wars and he married
children so though his message was full
of misinformation and distortion and
flat-out lies the fact that he stopped
cursing was a step in the right
direction
I continued there’s a lot of
misinformation about Prophet Muhammad on
the internet he never killed anyone he
only fought in self-defense and he
certainly never married a child now one
thing that trolls will do when they’re
stumped is resort to Google scholarship
Google scholars are the worst because
you can go on google and find anything
to justify what you believe
the earth is flat vaccines cause autism
aliens are secretly inhabiting of the
United States and taking over our
government that might be true actually
so he resorted exactly to that yes he
did Mary look at this Wikipedia article
on Asia
so anticipating this I responded its
Wikipedia it’s wrong she was between 15
and 19 that was normal at the time do
you know the legal age of age of
marriage in America is 13 in most states
or that Mary Mother of Jesus was 13 and
Joseph was 90 according to the Catholic
Encyclopedia how many people here know
for example that in the United States is
the year 2000 there have been 200,000
child marriages some as young as 11
sanctioned by the church and given
judicial decree as well
Nathan Ozzie didn’t know this either so
he tried to change the subject no a
thousand years ago he said Muhammad was
forcing his religion onto people again
notwithstanding the fact that Prophet
Muhammad lived 1,400 years ago
this was still more information and
wrong so I responded with facts Nate
Prophet Muhammad did no such thing the
Quran commands Muslims to protect all
houses of worship instead of Google read
the Quran I can send you a biography of
Prophet Muhammad it’s innate shifted
again would you invite millions of poor
white Christians to come live in your
richest Muslim countries notwithstanding
that this is exactly what happened
during World War two when Europeans fled
and went to Muslim countries for refuge
I responded yes in fact Prophet Muhammad
himself invited Christians to worship as
they wish in his own mosque he wrote a
letter to the st. katherine’s monastery
at Sinai promising to defend Christians
against all that they hate and then just
for emphasis I sent him the whole letter
Nader Nazi responded okay I guess
there’s good and bad people in every
demographic and my heart was elated for
just a moment until he added but I still
think white people should have that own
homogeneous living spaces that can
happen with millions of Muslims moving
to Europe I figured I’d gone this far
and I’d broken down this many obstacles
maybe I can keep going one step further
and I said yes every community has good
and bad
but all humans are equal I’m brown
you’re white but I see you as an equal
human being this is what islam teaches
can we work together Nate what do you
say I felt like I’d given him a really
strong argument for us to work together
and they didn’t respond after several
hours so I asked him Nate and this was
my response you are no longer permitted
to send messages to this user
Nathan Otzi had blocked me so as i sat
there wondering did I just waste all
this time I got another message from
Dave Dave the dude they have the dude
said I’ve been following your page and I
had a question I hope you don’t mind I’m
a Christian and I’ve heard islam teaches
Muslims to hate Christians is that true
and it suddenly occurred to me that Nate
the Nazi and Dave the dude had very
similar questions but they were coming
at it from polar opposites
and so in a flash I thought hold on a
second there’s something here I took my
entire conversation with Nathan Ozzy and
I pasted it on Facebook copy-paste just
to see what would happen the
conversation reached 125,000 people and
the responses I got this is a
cross-section Janet said very engaging
some commentator said they wish that
Nate has said to you you’re right but
this isn’t the movies you offered a
bridge a chance that connect as equals
and inspiring read Martin responded I
think he blocked you because you were
making him think very surreal courage we
are not alone in this struggle struggle
means jihad we are not alone in this
jihad against bigotry and this concept
has since gone viral I found ways to
repeat this over and over again when a
troll tweeted me Islam is cancer I
responded with collateral education
saying cancer no the Quran was revealed
in Ramadan 610 which was done in January
or February thus Islam is a queries it
reads 40,000 retweets with 7 million
people responding to it a white
supremacist DM me that wears a Christian
version of Isis and every other
asking for a friend I responded with
collateral education with a list of
terrorism done by so-called Christian
groups it was retweeted eighty thousand
times and reached nine million people
another person responded to me and said
go home we don’t want you here I
responded you’re wrong I’ll prove it
Twitter retweet if you want me here as
an American Muslim it was retweeted 112
thousand times and reach 10 million
people his account on Twitter got
suspended and his employer reached out
to me to apologize that the employee had
promoted bigotry against me
and then when a certain elected official
tweeted about so-called radical Islamic
terrorism I responded actually refugees
have kills your Americans there have
been 150,000 Americans killed by guns
but we have zero gun bans and three
refugee bans stop fear-mongering I got
double the retweets as the president and
it reached 13 million people you heard
me mention earlier that my
conversational with Nathan hace reached
125,000 people now these conversations
are reaching over a hundred million
people per month that means that by the
end of the year I have reached over 1
billion people with collateral education
this isn’t to boast but it’s a toast to
the fact that people want to work
together against bigotry people are
desirous of finding a way to build a
bridge we just need to create the avenue
for that to happen
I mentioned that online hate leads to
real-life violence and this is the best
part about collateral education it can
be radicalized and it’s proven I woke up
one morning not too long ago to find out
that someone had shot at my mosque 30
times fortunately nobody was killed but
imagine for a moment you find out that
somebody has shot at your place of
worship the the federal government
wanted to put them away for as long as
possible they wanted to give them a 14
year sentence we went to the judge and
said your honor we want you to forgive
him and I judge looked at us like we
were crazy but ultimately after much
lobbying to the judge he listened to us
and gave him only six months instead of
14 years
and now he’s become one of our strongest
allies I owe them he says convicted mass
shooter embraces Islam he’s still a
Roman Catholic in a devout Roman
Catholic but he’s become one of our
biggest advocates to fight back against
bigotry and hatred he admits I was
radicalized on Facebook but because of
this opportunity to dialogue collateral
education we found ways to work together
imagine if every person in this room
responded to biggest not by blocking
them not by simply reporting them but
trying to engage them with civility with
compassion and with education think
about the exponential impact each one of
us can have on a mass kill for that to
happen you need three things you need
humility to re-educate yourself on Islam
because obviously the media is doing a
terrible job you need the courage to
engage in trolls and let them know that
this is not their narrative this is our
narrative you need a resource to learn
what Islam actually teaches the first
two you control the last one I can help
you with we lost a true Islamic
education campaign to do exactly that
and we’ve had over 16,000 people since
sign-on is a Muslim ally to stand
against bigotry into combat trolls when
it comes down to it I still get the same
hate messages and death threats that I
got before but now my messages of love
and compassion are infinitely more this
is my invitation to you don’t sit by the
sidelines engage in collateral education
forsake that golden rule of don’t feed
the trolls go on feed the trolls and
let’s win the hearts with collateral
education thank you
you
you
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