Slashdot Mirror
Google News, Censorship or Responsible Journalism?
MSTCrow5429 writes to mention an article published by WorldNetDaily attacking the policies and actions of Google News. The author takes issue with the practice of removing sites that offer very frank discussions about radical Islam and terrorism as "hate speech." Several sites have complained about removal including The Jawa Report, MichNews, and most recently The New Media Journal. In the termination email to The New Media Journal Google cited several stories as objectionable in order to further explain the action.
Mich News has appalling layout & a rather distasteful red, white, blue color scheme (why is he so obsessed with the french flag?)
In short, the blogs were not news sources, they were at best aggregators of chauvinistic news, at worst (like the first link), poorly written anti-moslem blogs, that just happen to tie in current events.
Frankly, I new google news was going to hit this sort of trouble as soon as they started indexing this blog.
Anyway, good on you google for not linking to hate as 'news' - the reaction of the moslem haters is as predictable as allways, crying about censorship, but frankly, everyone just thinks you're a bunch of whiners.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
At first I was shocked to read the /. blurb, but then I realised that all of these were mere blogs and thus had no place in a news aggregation site to begin with.
/. starts filtering entires tagged "blog".
Can't wait till
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
You will be guilty of the crime of posting while conservative. Enjoy your downmods. Have a nice day.
Conservatism and Islamophobia have nothing in common.
The new media journal is not a conservative rag, it is an Islam-fear-spreading propaganda machine.
Sorry!
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Having taken time to read the "The New Media Journal" objectionable stories linked in the summary, I have to say the answer is clear, Google are being responsible. The line has to be drawn somewhere, and of course some will complain that Google have't drawn it in exactly the right place, but IMHO it's perfectly reasonable to take the position that those stories are out-and-out anti-Islamic hate material, with not a shred of responsible journalism.
Oh no... it's the future.
They are opinion pieces at it's best, and certainly contains heavy bashing, trolling and hate speach. I am against censorship as next liberal guy, but these guys don't deserve any kind of additional promotion, in my humble opinion.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Leave it to World Net Daily to assign a political agenda to the actions of Google. Reality really does seem to have a liberal bias.
The content of the articles aside, one has to wonder why an site that is unabashedly slanted towards political commentary can really be considered news in the first place. There is a big difference between political analysis of world events (i.e. what one party is doing, what is going on with legislation, etc.) and political commentary (diatribes about various organized groups, short fictions about the way the world works, etc.). WND comes down in the later camp, it always has, and the fact they were ever included in a 'News' aggregator is troublesome.
I mean, isn't there a line somewhere, where information stops being news and starts being propaganda? I always thought it had something to do with whether or not a story is a recitation of facts or someone's personal opinion. There seems to be some confusion between objectivity and fairness these days, where a plurality of viewpoints (slanted in one direction or the other) is considered a substitute for faithfulness to events in themselves.
M
of far-right self-pity over the media's refusal to abandon its last shreds of decency and publish bigotry as "balance".
Newsbusters says it has observed a pattern of intolerance toward conservative sites that deal with radical Islam and terrorism.
I'm curious to see how these same people would react if Google started indexing sites lambasting Christianity and calling Christ a false prophet and pedophile and whatnot. I'm willing to bet that they'd launch a "Boycott Google" campaign if those sites weren't immediately removed.
This isn't censorship. This is a media outlet choosing not to publish opinion pieces which it thinks would be irresponsible, and possibly contrary to its editorial viewpoint. Should the Times (either of them) publish every editorial sent their way? If not, then why should Google?
My Photography - http://ian-x.com
The Deathlings (comic) - http://thedeathlings.com
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Only we enlightened "Progressives" can be trusted with the awesome power of free speech.
Now, go back to your MTV and iPods and let us protect you from the evil right-wing neo-con republikkklans.
By many of the posts I just read, I've got to believe that few of you have either read the Koran or have bothered to learn a little about the so-called "Prophet" Mohammed and Mohammedism history. Is criticizing Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin "hate speech"? I think not. People, mostly those people of the fringe left, are calling anything that disturbs them as "hate speech". I will not allow them to censor me. www.SpelledSideways.com
Fata viam invenient.
Here in the Netherlands there was a big uproar when Hirshi Ali basically said the same thing: Mohammed was a pedophile because he took a 9 year old for a wife. Yet she gets elected Woman of the Year by Times magazine.
Reference please? (Nederlands of Engels)
And anyway:
1) Ayaan Hirsi Ali got woman of the year because she is an amazing woman.
2) Criticism from within a culture is different to criticism from without - can you imagine if it'd been an arab who made piss christ?
Anyway, I thought Americans were so big on freedom of speech. I'd said get ready for some real rucus, because Hirshi Ali (or Magan actually) is coming your way!
Not a freedom of speech issue - you can still find all those sites using google. Google's removed them from their news sites, because they're not news sites they're hate sites!
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
we are rapidly turning into a nation of "freedom of politically correct speech" which is a sad state of affairs.
I discount most arguments used any side to any argument when they toss out the terms "hate speech" or "racist". Its the old "boy who cried wolf" syndrom. After awhile the people using the terms so compromise them that they no longer have any real effectiveness.
I think the issue with google news is that it is bending to pressure from outside groups to modify its content. Just as they caved into the Chinese they cave into groups who claim that any non-compliance is the same as supporting hate-speech or racism. It is no different than the blackmail some groups use against corporate interest. Either pay us or we will sully your name.
Discussion is only permitted if you agree with the PC stance. Any deviation from the PC stance and you will be villified. If you fight back you will have the extreme examples tossed at you as if they were the majority and not the minority they are. Favorite phrases will include "you don't like Nazis do you" while comparing the target you are defending to them. Along the lines of "its for the children" to thereby attempt to dissuade any potential objection.
If Google News is going to be unbiased then they need to list all views, even those the staff at Google does not agree with. Anything else reduces the value of their service.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Khilafah.com Seems like a double standard to me. If a blog or opinion site is unsuitable, why are Islamist sites allowed to spue and call it "news"?
If you bothered to read almost any conservative blog on the subject, the complaint is not simply that these sites are removed from Google. The complaint is that these sites are removed from Google while similar sites from another end of the spectrum (say, those blaming Israel for all of the Mideast's problems) continue to be listed. Conservatives recognize that Google is a private company with the right to remove sites as they expect. Conservatives also recognize that if Google applies a subjective or double standard, Google's reputation could be shot. They obviously prefer an objective and uniform standard, but if Google refuses to use one, they will continue to go after Google.
In the USofA, the "Free Speech" is about saying the government is wrong and not being arrested for saying that.
There is still "libel" and other other categories where "speech" is not "Free".You seem to have problems with this "category" concept.
A "blog" may contain actual news items. In which case, it is news.
Or a "blog" may contain nothing more than someone's bigotted rantings. In which case it is not news.
So claiming that all "blogs" should be removed from a news site simply because one sub-category was is ignorant.The "discussion" is about the "blogs" and how they do not contain any news. Just some bigot's rantings.
Google is a company, not a government.
You can still find those site via Google's web index. They just aren't listed as news sites on Google's news index. And, again, that is because they don't have any news, just some bigot's rantings.
And if you don't agree that those are the rantings of bigots, then go back and read the article that says Islam is a "cult" and a "false" religion. Then look at the stats for followers of each religion.
Let us all remember that Freedom of Speech is a two way street. Just because you don't agree with someone, doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to say it publicly.
Not a Freedom of Speech issue.
1) They're still saying it.
2) Google search engine is still linking to them.
3) They've been kicked from a news site because they're not news sites, but hate sites.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
What if a muslim gay basher is beaten up in jail by skinheads? Would you cry for him?
Lots of left-wing people seem unable to fathom the idea that some muslims might just be right wingers who just happen to be muslim rather then protestant and have a slightly darker tan.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend is an old saying and is the way a lot of the world seems to think. Sadly it is also 100% wrong.
It led to a lot america's foreign problems. India was the friend of the soviet union, wich was america's enemy, pakistan was the enemy of india therefore america now finds itself the friend of a military dictatorship and on shaky terms with the world largest democracy.
It led to america being friends with Saddam because he was the enemy of Iran. That all worked out wonderfull didn't it?
Same with the support to Al Queda in their fight against the hated soviets. Another wonderfull case of the enemy of my enemy is my enemy as well.
If you are leftwing you are probably for gay rights. So how do you defend being pro-muslim then a religion that is very anti-gay rights? How come so many leftwingers defend right wing muslims when they would never ever defend a right wing christian?
It is not that all muslims are right wing offcourse. Far from it. In fact a lot of the real refugeee muslims came here precisly because they were left wing. but they tend to keep quiet. Just as in the west it is the right wingers that make the most noise.
But just because they are muslim doesn't mean they are not right wingers and oppose every politcial ideal of left wingers.
Hatred because of someone's religion is very bad, but so is loving someone because of his religion. Judge a person on his political believes. If they are not yours then act like it and don't led the fear of being called a racist stop you from calling them out on their ideas.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
They do a lot worse all the time. I'd like you to list one reaction even remotely similar to the staged protests over the Mohammed photos in the Jyllandsposten. Just one.
m -professor-at-berkley would ever use the term "cognitive dissonance" with a straight face.
That's precisely what I mean, those (stupid & ill-informed) protests were a reaction to criticism from without. Plenty of moslems have done things as bad as the cartoons without the same reaction.
What you imply is that if a culture suppresses criticism from itself, it should be immune from all criticism.
No. You inferred incorrecctly. I believe change comes quicker following criticism from within. (and yes, there's plenty that I think should change in the muslim world)
Criticism from outside makes a culture or country more insular, less prone to change (just look at the reactions of the vast majority of the US after external criticisms)
That is a double standard. Further, you imply that the validity of a critique depends not on what it says but on who says it. That's ad-hominem. It's standard leftist ideology, and it's amazing that any person can espouse it and claim to be educated; the cognitive dissonance required to hold it should break any functioning mind.
Frankly, I am amazed that anyone other then a pipe-smoking-leftist-literature-and-post-modernis
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
What you imply is that if a culture suppresses criticism from itself, it should be immune from all criticism. That is a double standard. Further, you imply that the validity of a critique depends not on what it says but on who says it. That's ad-hominem. It's standard leftist ideology, and it's amazing that any person can espouse it and claim to be educated; the cognitive dissonance required to hold it should break any functioning mind.
Actually, in my experience, it's only "educated" people that espouse it. As the saying goes, you'd have to hold several advanced degrees to be that stupid.
Most reasonably intelligent people with a high-school education can figure out that something can be true or false, good advice or bad, independent of where it's coming from; it seems to be universities (and particular departments of universities) that convince people that the source of a particular viewpoint is more important than its content, and that some viewpoints are more valid than others.
At any rate, bull on that. While I'm not saying that some people don't have more background or authority on which to speak from than others, to blindly write off "external" criticism amounts to sticking one's head in the sand (especially in cases where most if not all "internal" criticism is suppressed or self-censored). That sort of litmus testing is totally contrary to the pursuit of knowledge, truth, and greater understanding; unfortunately, it's almost endemic in some places.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Of course you are, to the extent that you're paying them at all by using Google and viewing ads. The entire point behind Google is that it uses "intelligent searching algorithms" to filter out the nonsense and only show actual relevant results.
I find that statement really amusing, because that's exactly what Google sells themself as doing. They evaluate the site based on their PageRank algorithm, and decide what you should or should not see based on that. The entire point behind Google is that it filters content. A search is a filter, and then the order is determined based on other filters. Google is a filter - that's why you use it, to filter out things that aren't relevant to what you're looking for.
What Google is doing here is declaring that some blogs aren't worth appearing on Google News, and is removing them as a source from Google News (although not the Google Search index). You'll still be able to find them using Google, just not Google News, since Google News is supposed to be a filter returning only valid news sites. (Why it still returns results from Slashdot in that case is anyone's guess. :))
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Dutch policy seems to be to cover everything up and hope it goes away.
We hoped WW2 would pass us by too. That worked well.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Google news sold itself as being the first truely machine-based news aggregator. The whole idea was that they were unbiased because they just polled the sites and made their lists based on things like PageRank (and other super-secret factors).
Well, now we see that's not the case. There are actually editorial decisions being made as to what is and is not considered news. There is also some criticism that those decisions are not being applied in a uniform manner. Those may be unfair criticisms mainly because blogs definitely blur the line between news and opinion but many people have seen a lot of major news outlets also willfully blur those lines of late.
So, yes Google has the right to list whatever and whoever they want and it's not a First Ammendment issue as they're not the government. Just if they are going to start filtering then they need to acknowledge it and drop any claims to a pure unbiased machine created news source.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
In Europe, there are still some old social rules that you cannot patronize certain restaurants if a member of the lower class even if you can afford to go there.
Doesn't the U.S. also have private clubs which can more or less deny you access for whatever reason they like?
In the Middle East, the imans or Islamic Religious rulers dictate how you live your life even to the type of clothes you wear such as jeans not being acceptable.
The U.S. has no shortage of conservative church leaders who would be glad to tell you what type of clothes to wear, what activities you may engage in, who to associate with, and who to vote for. We even have some factions which would like to enforce their religious rules on all citizens.
In this country, it is the liberals that have disdain towards common people.
There is no shortage of conservatives who do all of the things you mention. Does that mean that conservatives have disdain toward the common people too? Elitism crosses political, religious, and economic lines. Egos are a part of human nature, and few/none are immune. Elites in the U.S. push policies from all sides. They do not show disdain towards the common people because they are "liberal" or "conservative", but because they view themselves as above the common people. Some of them simply have no understanding of what life as a common person is like. What you may perceive as "disdain" may simply be them looking out for their own interests.
Personally, I think one of the many unfortunate things about the current U.S. political scene is the demonization and redefinition of the word "liberal". In the U.S., we should all be liberals of one type or another. The set of beliefs we supposedly agree on (like the Constitution) are liberal. Conservatives should be opposed to radicals. All of us liberals should be opposed to authoritarians. If I were cynical, I might believe that the demonization of liberalism was done intentionally to widen the door for authoritarianism, which seems to cross political and economic boundaries as well.
If either the "liberals" or the "conservatives" not elitist, why are they discussing getting rid of the "death tax" (which only hits the elite) and not the self-employment tax?
From the first link to The New Media Journal, "Come to think of it, before 9/11, we never heard of words like Al Qaeda, Taliban, Jihad, Homeland Security..." With the exception of Homeland Security (which didn't actually exist at the time, except as a fictional deptartment in various fiction stories about dystopian, totalitarian futures) all these other things were in the news or elsewhere long before 9/11. Perhaps most glaring is Al Qaeda. It would have been hard to miss when they bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, or when they bombed the USS Cole in 2000, unless, of course, you paid no attention to the news. I even remember thinking after the bombing on the Cole how Al Qaeda kept coming up in the news. So, yeah, I wouldn't exactly trust this guy to report the news. Taking this site out of Google news was almost certainly the right decision.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
What do you think Google does? Both the search engine and the news service do nothing but FILTER results to be relevant to you. Notice how you say "find the information I am looking for" which means they must NOT find information you are NOT looking for.
Seeing as they are running a news service, one would expect the users of the service to be searching for NEWS. A few blogs that are slightly more read than the average bitchfest apparently do not count as news sites for google anymore.
I understand some people might agree with the drivel posted on those sites, but that doesn't make those sites news. The Google News service is nothing but a FILTER that only shows you sites on the internet that are news.
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
The GP talked about a difference in how the criticism is received not in the ultimate validity of the critique. We do tend to look towards criticism from "outsiders" different than criticism from "insiders".
For example imagine an uninvited outsider criticizes some aspect of your family. We tend to receive these types of criticism as threatening even though they may be true. If the criticism originated from a family member we tend to be more receptive.
Even in the scientific community, criticisms from non-scientists are often discarded. This is just a human phenomenon that may stem from our tribal past. We have to be at least sensitive to these issues while introducing directed critiques as an outsider.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
Majority of Liberals = smart and educated
Liberals much like conservatives in America are a mix of both those educated and those not educated. If you didn't allow anyone to vote without having a high school diploma, do you think the democrats would win any more national elections?
Majority of Slashdot users = smart
Maybe.
and educated Perhaps.
The crossover there means that yeah, of course a lot of slashdot readers will be liberals.
Have you ever heard the saying:
If you are under 30 and a conservative you have no heart, if you are over 30 and a liberal you have no brain.
While I realize that might offend you, it makes an important point...many liberals are young people much like the slashdot crowd is.
You have obviously never visited Europe let alone lived there. The reasons why Europeans and most people in the world hate America (i.e. the US administation and its military/industrial complex) is because of its attempt to unilaterally control the entire world. This has involved over the past century the US killing millions of innocent civilians putting, it on a par with Nazi Germany and Stalin's Russia.
Europeans don't hate americans, in fact they even quite like individual americans. However europeans have a contempt and pity for a lot of americans as the widespread hypocrisy and double standards applied by the US administration is reflected in the views of a lot of americans. These americans are stupid enough to blame their own problems on "liberalism" rather than on US capitalism and imperialism.
Out in the rest of the world (the real world) a lot of people are out fighting the real evil "liberalism" that is the neoliberalism which is the ideology behind the global economic policies promoted by US capitalism.
So to sum up we don't really hate you we just pity you.
Educated and/or well-paid people tend to be more liberal than conservative.
I know this is a talking point, but it's absolutely false. In fact, the more educated and well-paid people are, the tendency is that they become more conservative.
Liberals have a long history of espousing that they'll help the poor, but in reality they either don't help at all or worse, give them no way out of being poor. Worse, the really radical liberals think that people in countries that support oppressive dictators aren't worth trying to help. I mean, how weird is that? They call conservatives in this country facists, yet they turn around and support facist dictatorships. Doesn't sound too "educated" to me.
Don't give me any lines about "what about universities, they're really educated, and they're liberal". The liberals there have a base camp from which they can't be extracted because they can't be fired. They grant this same status only to people who buy into the same "group think" they do; rarely do conservatives slip past this gauntlet. Look at that kook in Colorado who's been posing as a Native American and has been proven a plagurist. The guy is a complete wack job they STILL can't get rid of him.
Yeah, real "educated".
Majority of Liberals = smart and educated
Majority of Slashdot users = smart and educated
When is this stupid myth going to die. The actual "curve" is U shaped. The majority of high-school dropouts are liberal, the majority of phds are liberal. High school graduates have a slight liberal edge, and masters degrees have a slight republican edge, and 4-year degree holders have a slight republican edge. I don't have to time to dig up the numbers and provide a source, but it's reasonably easy to find, if I remember.
Furthermore, the average slashdot reader is definitely not smart (ha ha). More seriously, he doesn't have a phd. It has nothing to do with education. If you want to find a correlation between slashdot audience and political spectrum, you should try age. I realize you want to believe the reason you are liberal is because you are smart and educated, however the real correlation to be found has to do with youth.
Hehe.. this is interesting, we say the same thing about conservatives. "If it wasn't for the tobacco-chewing, cousin-marrying, religous red states...
You realize, you are implying that 'religious' people (ie Christians) in those red states marry their cousins. That is as bad as the stuff google is censoring.
we wouldn't be in this mess." Is the kind of thing that's said in liberal circles. Of course, it's BS too. It's all about perspective ^_^
I don't think it is BS. If you subtracted certain interest groups from either party and they wouldn't win any national elections.
Of course, they would find new groups to pander to, since that is the nature of a two party beast.
As a sanity check on how a people under similar circumstances as Iraq today should behave: the USA invaded Germany and Japan in 1945, after reducing both countries to rubble by air bombing. How did the Japanese and Germans react? They said, OK, we had some horrible dictators, now that we got rid of them let's work to reconstruct our countries. Suicide bombing ended when Japan surrendered.
/. about Godwin and i wish i had the link to it. Needless to say it's a whimps way of getting out of an argument that makes them uncomfortable.
This doesn't really apply to the current situation. Those were cohesive countries who had working governments. Iraq is a country that has been ruled by whichever despot initiated the last coup for many years meaning that the entire nation is divided, none of them are willing to work with the other groups to surrender or make it better because they cannot imagine working with the other groups, they have been fighting and their lives have been on the line for so long that it no longer frightens them. Whereas the Germans and Japanese had seen peace in their country before world war II. Now granted some of the germans were alive during and after WWI as well and there have been occasional attacks on liberty by people who fancy themselves nazi's even up to this day which explains this small part of it. For the most part however the countries gave up and began to rebuild because they were a cohesive country who realized that they had been defeated and wanted to see things get back to normal. For the Iraqi's this IS normal, no one has been able to help them to have peace or make life better in the past so why should they trust us to be able to do so now, especially when we ravaged their country and then pulled out and left them to their own devices only about 15 years ago?
Oh yah, and HOW are you going to invoke Godwin and then go on to talk about the Germans in a way that REQUIRES someone to compare a current group of people to nazis in order to counter your argument. There was a really good rant about a week ago on
You realize, you are implying that 'religious' people (ie Christians) in those red states marry their cousins. That is as bad as the stuff google is censoring.
:P
Yes I do realize that. It was my point, in fact. That's why I said it was BS.
If you subtracted certain interest groups from either party and they wouldn't win any national elections.
Of course not, but if one interest group a) consists of a massive portion of your consituency and b) cuts into what would be your opposition, they sure help. Poor people generally are thought to be democrats, but that breaks down when you add in a specific religion. Here in the south, converting someone to Southern Babtist = converting someone to the Republican party.
A non-religious example (on the state level) would be the hispanic population in Florida. Usually Democrats think they have minorities in the bag, but the Cubans Floridans tend to vote Republican.
Of course, they would find new groups to pander to, since that is the nature of a two party beast.
Well, ideally. We Democrats have got to find someone else to pander to. College kids are not reliable voters
This is not cencorship. Google, as a private corporation, has the right to edit the information it presents. It has no obligation, whatsoever, to be balanced or fair. It can link to whatever it wants. Part of freedom of speech is exercising editorial control. Freedom of speech isn't just being able to say whatever you want, but to also not say what you don't want to say.
On the other hand, if it is true (I am not saying that it is true... I am not that familiar with Google News) that left wing bigotry and racism are tolerated while right wing bigotry and racism isn't, that would clearly be a double standard. While Google has the legal right to present any information they want, in any way they want, they do have an ethical obligation not to slant the news presented to be of any one viewpoint.
At the least, Google should publish an objective set of criteria that is used to evaluate if a news source is "acceptable" or "not", and keep the whole process transparent.
I've got two problems with Google's censorship here. The first is that people don't just use Google for "news", but for research of various kinds. That means that they need to find whatever is out there. If you want to understand political attitudes, for example, you certainly need to know the positions and arguments of those with whom you may disagree violently. As a left-wing secular Jew I have not the slightest sympathy for Nazism, but I have read Mein Kampf and think that it should be widely available, precisely so that people can understand the evil of Nazism and how the Nazis rose to power. Similarly, anyone trying to understand such topics as the relationship between the West and the Muslim world or American views on foreign policy needs to look at web sites offering the full range of views, even if some of them are considered by most people to be vile.
The second problem is that Google evidently has an overly broad notion of hate speech, as do many /-ers. True hate speech falsely vilifies a group of people and urges violence or discrimination against them. Criticism of a movement or ideology is not hate speech. Islam is an ideology with both religious and political elements, and it is also a movement (or if you like collection of movements), and it is legitimately subject to criticism just like any other religion or political movement. If it is legitimate to condemn Communism, Neo-Conservatism, Nazism, or right-wing Christian fundamentalism, why is not legitimate to condemn Islam?
One can argue about the accuracy of some of the material in the allegedly objectionable posts - I, for example, wonder about the accuracy of the claims that Mohammed slept with nine=year old girls and had 20 wives - but much of what they say is quite true. In its mainstream forms, Islam is an expansionist movement, it is intolerant of other religions and atheism, it is exclusive, it does advocate theocracy, it does consider the use of force to conquer territory for Islam justifiable, it is oppressive of women, etc. It is by no means the only religion with such properties (Christianity in the forms dominant in the 15th century, for example, had very similar faults), but it is not false and defamatory to raise these issues. We need to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Islam and other ideologies and movements, and deliberate or reckless demonization of particular ethnic groups or followers of an ideology and advocacy of violence against them.