Just posted to Digg today.
This is interesting, though. A social video website, explicitly modeled after YouTube (hey, the name says so, doesn’t it?), that is dedicated to the Muslim audience.
Now, I’m not going to react by advocating for a JesusTube just yet (if someone wants to, gon’ ‘head then), but from viewing the Muslim vids on YouTube – and especially the acrimonious comments posted on there by advocates, opponents, and e-thugs – something tells me that, if this new website intended to be social in its nature, then there’ll be plenty of conflict from within – not just without, but within – this potentially-burgeoning Internet ummah.
Why?
Well, considering that the majority of Muslims are of the Sunni orientation, and that the most politically-combustible (and controversial) subset of the Sunni demographic is the Salafi or Wahhabi ideological collective, I’m very certain that the same demographic majority will figure prominently on this site.
This is a worry for me since Sunni Islam – and especially Wahhabi Islam – is biased against the Shi’a demographic (you know, the one with the Ayatollahs), regarding it as following an innovated path which doesn’t reflect their own precise view of the world and Allah.
They are also just as biased against the Ahmadiyyas and the Sufis.
So if this new video site starts to swell and prosper, it may also become a highly fertile ground for these rivalries to play out in video.
This could, worryingly, become a host to homemade insurgent and militia videos from Iraq. I expect to see roasted, mangled bodies turn up on this site in the near future.
I’m not knocking the site, just worried about the potential extremism that could turn up on this site.
One of the things that concerns me with such a site, or any number of sites with strong ideologies is that they can feed on themselves and rapidly become echo chambers, magnifying more extreme views in the absense of dissent. I’ve seen/heard it played out on the local talk radio show. After a few years I couldn’t take it any more and stopped listening, but then that’s the selection process that brought it to that point.