How This Muslimah Turned Hateful Messages From Her Ignorant Trolls Into A Force For Good
Susan Carland: intelligent, outspoken, engaging, charming, funny and charitable.
By Sadho Ram — 14 Nov 2015, 04:57 AM
Meet Susan Carland, a proud Muslim woman who calls herself 'Hijabulous' and is taking on her haters in the best possible way
Susan grew tired of having online bullies hate on her religious beliefs and her choice of dress. The Muslim academic from Australia tried debating, ignoring, and finally shutting them out. However, none of it seemed right for the high-profile media commentator.
As a Muslim woman, people from many different quarters are eager to tell me how to dress and how to act. They also seem determined to tell me what I believe. I regularly get tweets and Facebook messages from the brave freedom-fighters behind determinedly anonymous accounts telling me that, as a Muslim woman, I love oppression, murder, war, and sexism.
They have no interest in what I actually think about these things, or any other; I realised this quickly after pointless attempts to engage achieved nothing. I am just a blank canvas onto which they can project their own prejudices and fantasies about Muslims.
Their online abuse ranges from requests to leave Australia, hope for my death, insults about my appearance (with a special focus on my hijab), accusations that I am a stealth jihadist, and that I am planning to take over the nation, one halal meat pie at a time.
As I browsed some of their Twitter timelines, I noticed just how many of the tweets they sent out were full of rage, scattered at any recipient they could find. It seemed that as people so full of darkness, they could only see darkness in others.
Most of her trolls are men and seek attention
Most, as far as she can understand them, want attention.
"They just send out a lot of hate to a lot of people. They are at their core very unhappy people. People who are happy and secure just don't do this sort of thing – they don't send out machine guns of hate."
So she turned to her faith and decided to fight hate with kindness
"In response to all the hate I receive simply because I am Muslim, it was only natural that my response would be rooted in the fact that I am Muslim," she wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald, quoting a passage from the Quran that reads, "Good and evil are not equal. Repel evil with what is better."
And the response has been incredible
Dr Carland’s husband, one of Australia’s most prominent TV broadcasters Waleed Aly, even expressed some concern with all the attention it was getting. “(Waleed) actually called me up this morning and said, ‘Hi darling, how much is this costing us?’”
Other people have seen what she’s doing and got in contact to help out.
“A number of people have sent me tweets who’ve donated to UNICEF $50 to $100 and said that’ll cover the next 50 or 100 hateful tweets.”
Her simple gesture has even prompted UNICEF to launch a campaign called, “Tweets For Good” calling for people to turn something “hateful” into a “force for good”.
buzzfeed.com
Susan agrees that's what it's all about
“These hateful trolls are pushing so much hate online. So why don’t I push out some light in there. It’s about trying to even up some balance in the universe.”
buzzfeed.com
In the end, Susan says, "Any Muslim certainly seems to attract a lot of hate online. And then being a Muslim woman - and when you're an unapologetic Muslim woman - you get a lot of hate."
Susan and her approach are a proof that we should never descend to a bully's level. There are always, always better ways to fight back.