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A big YouTuber with over 200,000 subs, converts to Islam and much video responses ensue on the shallow reasons, phenomenon and potential subversive cultural effect. Kanadajin responds in the comments and further response video attempts are made to encourage her to think about what ideology they really are signing up for and promoting. Finally I caught up with them on twitter at the end of all this.
I actually am interested in hearing the case that a benign monotheism attached to pre-existing traditions might have been a force for good in unifying tribes and advancing science, civilisations etc. And that a reformist/abstractionist religious practice can play a part today in helping the disenfranchised find a voice by using fables in their holy book to find solidarity with each other (Saba Mahmood’s Politics of Piety), whereas fundamentalists and neocon war mongering cannot. But I would still only regard Islam as an ideology that was the best of a bad bunch that had traction at the time
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The polite face of psychological warfare in mormon chat
An attempt at engaging missionairies on the immorality of a 10% church tax on people on minumum wage or unemployed.
There’s many things I want to help politicize about the mormon church’s antics, from them sending missionairies to the global south, to their online recruitment efforts to convert people going through a dark period in their life.
Missionaries in the Global South
When it comes to the global south, I think we should stop taking a nicely nicely approach to poor indoctrinated missionaries and say you can’t help here, you will only hurt so you’re message is not welcome here, and activists should actively attempt to shut down their proseltysing efforts.
- 1. “Be thoughtful by not eating too much if food is in short supply.” Not really realistic considering the cultural pressure for all men to go on a mission at 18 without any income for 2 years.
- 2. Preaching abstinence only in HIV hotspots is evil, there are ‘Jack’ Catholic Nuns advocating condom use in Kenya because they’ve seen how much damage it has done and agree with the scientific consensus, for mormon missionairys to go into communities and preach anything that blocks fertility is from the devil is so so wrong.
- 3. “Members should obey, honor, and sustain the laws in any country where they reside or travel” – “Never suggest that people emigrate to another country, even for work or schooling.” Going to countries where people are escaping persecusion and gaining automatic asylum, sustaining the churchs relationship to that oppressive government over the refugees international rights is evil. How that worked out for the mormon church in Nazi Germany.
Online Missionaries
Facebook and mormon.org chat has become a powerful wing of the church in creating a platform for lonely and vulnerable people to come to them. By each missionary talking to 3-10 people at one time, 24hours a day, it’s not hard to imagine they have better results than walking door to door.
If you ever want to remind yourself the mental jumping jacks orthodox Mormons go through to accept certain scripture or church policy, I find it quite funny, a breif look at r/exmormon shows it’s pretty cathartic for ex-members too depending on how traumatic their departure was.
If we wanted to go further and create a publicity stunt, I’m sure we could organise a communications blockade for a day, by getting many people to log on at one time (using an IP scrambler like Tor to chat multiple times) with a central message, e.g. to stop their preaching of practising healthy sexual desires (masturbation, homosexuality) being from the devil.
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Activist Journeys 