This is a guest post by LibertyPhile
Muslims and their faith get a lot of stick. Some of it is very nasty, strongly expressed to the point of rudeness, and some based on extreme ignorance. The examples of hateful comments quoted by writers such as Mehdi Hasan are shocking and I won’t repeat them here.
However the fact is that the great majority of negative comments that appear on Guardian CiF in response to articles by Muslim writers like Mehdi Hasan are reasonable, make good points, or ask valid questions.
By ignoring this completely and concentrating on the minority, the haters, those with no manners, and the ignorant, and yes, there are people like that (what a surprise!), the Guardian is wasting its time – and apparently alienating its readers.
The Guardian CiF comment area allows readers to express their own opinions. Another measure of reaction to the writer is given by readers who “recommend” comments they agree with. Here is the (telling) statistical analysis of the first 100 comments on the MH article.
| Analysis of first 100 comments | |||
| Type of comment | Comments | Votes | % of Votes |
| Critical of Mr Hasan | 48 | 22,160 | 79 |
| Neutral/unclassifiable | 24 | 2,981 | 10 |
| Supportive of Mr Hasan | 28 | 3,039 | 11 |
| Total | 100 | 28,180 | 100% |
The above analysis was done Thusday late am 3.5 days after the MH article was published. Comments had been closed. The result shown is in line with similar analyses of similar Cif articles over the years. See here for example.
Then something strange happened!
By late Friday, 1.5 days later, the recommendations on five pro MH comments made early in the comment stream which had had only 1159 recommendations in total, shot up to a total of 13,361 recommendations, an increase of 12,202 recommendations. See new summary below.
All the other pro MH comment recommendations grew as one might expect with the passage of another day and a half.
Amazing!!!!
| Analysis of first 100 comments | |||
| Type of comment | Comments | Votes | % of Votes |
| Critical of Mr Hasan | 48 | 30,412 | 60 |
| Neutral/unclassifiable | 24 | 4,125 | 8 |
| Supportive of Mr Hasan | 28 | 16,034 | 32 |
| Total | 100 | 50,571 | 100% |
Over 12,000 recommendations going to just five comments in 36 hours or so.
As one can’t vote for the same comment twice, if this is an outside effort, then at least 2400 individuals have been cajoled/directed/recruited to vote, or came along by chance, in that space of time. This seems – quite extraordinary.
