Luke-
I wanted to check to see if you'd be interested in a piece I just wrote,
perhaps for use on the Harper's website. I currently serve as a contributor
to Vanity Fair, The Huffington Post, Skeptic, and The Onion, and my other
work has appeared in dozens of publications including National Lampoon,
McSweeney's, American Atheist, and nerve.com. My first book Flock of Dodos:
Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design, and the Easter Bunny was
released in 2007 (with a back-cover blurb from Matt Taibbi, among others);
my second is set for publication next year. I also serve as director of
communications for Enlighten the Vote (formerly known as GAMPAC), a
political action committee dedicated to advancing the Establishment Clause
as well as providing support to atheist candidates for public office. I've
appeared on Fox News and other, more reasonable outlets.
The article in question is pasted below; it's an allegedly humorous
narrative of my experiences with posing as a devout Muslim on the internet.
Let me know if this interests you or if you might like to receive other
queries from me in the future.
Thanks,
Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302
Confessions of a Phony Internet Muslim
It was never my intention to be an atheist. For one thing, atheism is
impolite; intentionally or not, denying society's gods is a reproach to
society itself. The wise man economizes his reproachfulness.
Worse, atheism is boring. An atheist can dream of space elevators that
would allow us to mine the moon and self-replicating nanobots that could
till the soil in places where food would not have grown previously, but so
can a Christian, and Wiccans can have nightmares about such things.
Meanwhile, the Christian also awaits Christ, the Muslim awaits the Mahdi,
and the Jew awaits the Messiah which hopefully does not turn out to be
Christ or the Mahdi.
So I decided to take a vacation from atheism. But eating acid at the
Vatican was out of the question for a number of reasons, largely financial.
Actually becoming religious would be somewhat problematic insomuch as that I
serve as director of communications for a pro-atheist political action
committee. Instead, then, I created an alter-ego for myself, becoming a
devout Muslim going by the name of Ali Desu Hussein. And then I got on the
internet.
My intention was to argue with Christians as a Muslim. This is harder
than it sounds. Mostly, I got myself banned from Christian message boards
immediately after posting the following:
In the name of the Prophet, peace be upon him-
I have come to bring you the truth of Islam, the religion of peace. Surely
does the world itself cry out to you in testimony of this truth, but just as
surely do its cries fall on deaf ears. Surely does the breath of Allah move
over the waters, and just as surely does the Christian believe this to be
the breath of Jesus, when, after all, it was Allah, as noted above. Surely
surely surely.
But I wanted to have a dialogue, not simply to immediately convert others
to Islam by way of such theological magic bullets as the message above. My
Islamic Mr. Hyde would need a YouTube account.
YouTube, like the internet at large, is what the Holy Land would have
been like during the Crusades if everyone in the Holy Land had too much free
time on their hands. Groups once relatively isolated from each other now
mingle freely, if unproductively. Evangelicals of a certain sort post
damning animated narratives of Mormon theology which, sadly, are largely
accurate; Muslims of a certain sort post clips of talking lions who are
apparently Muslims themselves; Jews of a certain sort post videos of other
Jews speaking at great length about something which I'm not entirely clear
on because it is boring and I turned it off.
Then, there is the infinite debate over the infinite. Now was my chance
to truly play the role of the believer, to walk a mile in the shoes of
someone sitting at their computer in bare feet. I didn't have a camera, but
this was probably for the best insomuch as that I would have had to pick up
a lot of empty beer bottles and move them out of the way, and I'd just
recently gotten them all organized the way I like them. But visuals are
unnecessary anyway; aside from videos and video responses, YouTube
theologians also ply their ancient trade by way of old-fashioned text, which
was sufficient for their predecessors, particularly when coupled with the
sword.
If I was to do the work of Allah on as grand a scale as I was planning,
allies would be needed. Luckily, I came across TheFollower72, a fellow
Muslim who appeared to be quite active in his own social network
proselytizing insomuch as that his user page was heavy on comments left by
others. But all was not well. One exuberant YouTuber had posted the message,
"Go Christianity!!!" Clearly, my new friend was under virtual siege by some
virtual Tueton. And there seemed to be treachery afoot even from our own
alleged brethren; one user calling himself AyatollahKhomeini123 had left the
following warning: "Please block and delete the user who is going around by
the name of bakhtash. He is an evil munafiq akhee, and a shahan shahi
royalist pig who has disguised himself as a Moslem but in reality he is a
back stabber who be-friends with you making you thinik he is a moslem and
then stabs you by revealing his own true identity as an anti Islam. Down
with bakhtash. Allah o Akbar. Khomeini Rahbar." But the plot thickened;
bakhtash himself had left this similar warning: "Please block and delete the
users and comments that are only negative against Islam and or are
hypocritical!, the false user 'AyatollahKhomeini123' is a munafiq akhee, he
is a shahan shahi royalist pig whom in this account does a lot of bad
things!"
It was clear that I couldn't trust even my alleged coreligionists; any
one of them could be a royalist pig or even a false Muslim. I would have to
be a false Muslim on my own. I resolved to face this task with all the
bravery of a talking lion.
My next move was to contact the YouTube account of the Worldwide Church
of God, a Christian sect founded by Herbert Armstrong, himself one of the
most prominent prophets of the mid-20th century. I left a friendly message
and got a similarly friendly response: "Greetings Friends! Praise the Lord
Brethren and may God Bless the United States of America!" So far, so good.
But then another, more traditional Christian intervened lest I eventually be
converted to Lord Bretherenism or what have you. "Bro, the Worldwide Church
of God is a dangerous cult," he explained. "This Herbert guy you are
speaking to talks to the dead do not listen to him." This didn't bother me;
if I was actually speaking with "this Herbert guy," then I, too, talk to the
dead insomuch as that Herbert Armstrong died in 1986; it would be
hypocritical of me to think less of him for doing the same thing. Also, I'd
already made cruel fun of Armstrong in an article I'd written concerning the
history of Evangelical prophecy, so it would have been awkward to speak with
him further anyway, dead or not. Plus I'm just kind of neurotic.
It was time to approach the resident atheists, so I posted a couple of
comments on their videos to the effect that Islam is the way and the light
and whatnot. This turned out to be a mistake; atheists can be very, uh,
prolific. One non-believer left three long messages on my user page in quick
succession, each filled with grandiloquent denunciations of the one true
faith. "We are apostates of Islam," wrote a user named CrissyFrog. "We
denounce Islam as a false doctrine of hate and terror... We strive to bring
the Muslims into the fold of humanity. Eradicate Islam so our people can be
liberated, so they can prosper and break away from the pillory of Islam...
Quran is replete with scientific heresies, historic blunders, mathematical
mistakes, logical absurdities, grammatical errors and ethical fallacies. It
is badly compiled and it contradicts itself. There is nothing intelligent in
this book let alone miraculous." I realized I was bored, having accidentally
encountered my own opinion.
But the ultimate cyber-novelty was still to be had - I would allow
myself to be converted from Islam to Christianity. Covertly, I began
interviewing candidates, finally deciding upon a fellow going by the handle
of ps35ffi. The exchange went as follows:
ps35ffi: Who was Jesus? What does the Koran say about him? That he was a
prophet? What does the Koran say about it's prophets?
AliDesuHussein: Qur'an says many things about the prophets my friend, but
most important to know is that Muhammed (peace be upon him) is final
prophet:
1. Allah
2. ???
3. Prophet!
[Note: The Reader may recognize that bit as having been derived from an old
South Park episode. Or the Reader may not, in which case it is mine.]
ps35ffi: Does it not say that what the prophets say is Allah's word and
should be obeyed?
AliDesuHussein: Absolutely my friend, it does.
ps35ffi: Ok my friend. Yeshua said I am the way the truth and the life, no
one cometh to the Father but by me.
AliDesuHussein: where does it say this?
ps35ffi: In my text, it's in John 14.6
That, I decided, was enough evidence for Ali Desu Hussein. I sent my new
spiritual advisor a private message to the effect that I was going to need
to think very heavily on these matters. He was clearly pleased.
And thus it was that I gave this fellow a gift beyond measure: the
belief that he had managed to win over a religious enemy to his own, true
faith. Overcoming the bad manners inherent to my atheism, I had performed
the greatest act of politeness that the world had seen since Christ. Then I
pirated a bunch of games.