The AstroTurfing of Muslim Communities

AstroTurf: simulated or artificially created public support for something, generated by an orchestrated marketing or public relations campaign.

Recently an emotionally charged post was made on another Muslim sub, which dealt with a husband sabotaging his wife’s birth control in order to get her pregnant while knowing she wanted to wait to have children. It garnered a lot of buzz (surprise, surprise), and everyone had an opinion on the matter, regardless of knowledge. It was brought up in our Discord server, even, so we discussed it and moved on. A few days later, an update was posted.

That’s when the alarm bells started going off in my head.

The update closed with the following paragraphs:

[We] are keeping the abortion and situation a private manner. Honestly, I do not regret my abortion. I feel like it was ultimately the best decision for me. Had I continued on, I knew I would regret it and possibly resent my child. When I bring a baby into this world, I want to cry tears of joy and be happy at the time of birth, not upset.

We are living in scary times. As most of you know, Roe vs. Wade was overturned, removing the constitutional right to abortion. I am lucky to live in a state that would not ban abortions, but it is saddening to know that women who might be in a similar situation or worse will be forced to continue depending on what state they live in.

Aouthubillahi min as-Shaitaan ir-rajeem.

What a transparent attempt to sway the opinion of Muslims in favor of a hot button political topic that’s taking over the current political discourse. This is a pathetic attempt at shoehorning politics into religion and curbing Islam to be in line with modern sensibilities.

As Muslim women, let us not be naïve. There are absolutely targeted campaigns from within and without to water down our religion and separate us from the Command of Allah. For us women, specifically, there are even more targeted attacks to separate us from our homes, families, haya, hijab, and more.

Tale As Old As Time

If you pay attention you will see these kinds of similar posts popping up anytime there are major political issues on the national/international stage. They all bear some general similarities:

• high on emotion, low on logic or religion
• dismissing religion out of hand or outright demonizing it
• often (not always) newer accounts (example OP’s account was a week old)
• suspicious timelines
  • in the example, OP started a fresh reddit account for the purposes of sharing this story 2 weeks ago, but a week goes by and she posts nothing
  • 1 week ago, she posts the story, noting that her husband JUST told her last night that he’d sabotaged the birth control and she was beside herself
  • 4 days later, she posts an update saying she’d had the abortion
• they will ALWAYS mention the political issue explicitly or tie it in somehow
  • in OP’s example, you can see that the message doesn’t even fit the tone of the rest of the post but it’s hamfisted in there to yield an emotional response and leave the reader with that as the final take-away from the exercise

Let us not be from those who follow our desires or change our colors with the wind. Let us learn our religion from the ones with knowledge and let us be as the Muslims are:

The only statement of the [true] believers when they are called to Allah and His Messenger to judge between them is that they say, "We hear and we obey." And those are the successful.

—Qur’an (an-Nur) 24:51

Anything can be made into a political issue—and in fact, very many things are, specifically so that they can be "debated" upon and changed. If tomorrow a consensus ruling is passed in America that says there is no god and everyone must be athiest (as it is in some countries), does that mean we will all have to give up Islam? La, wallahi!

Islam is greater than politics. It is the decree of our Lord, it is perfect in every sense, and it will remain until the Day of Judgement.

On Abortion

Due to the subject of the example, I’ll take a moment to say I’m not knowledgeable enough to speak on the topic of abortion in Islam. Anyone with any questions should seek counsel with an imam, qadhi, Shaykh, or other learned person upon the Sunnah.