jaxn

Product Manager @ Meta | Graduate of Chicago Booth & Vanderbilt

[Imam of Peace @Imamofpeace]

A Statement of Conscience on October 7

I will not start by saying ‘as a Muslim’ or ‘as an imam’, but as a human being.

On October 7, over 1,200 innocent people were killed in a single day. Families were shot in their homes. Young people out dancing were hunted across open fields. Over 250 people, including children and the elderly, were dragged into Gaza as hostages. I think of a mother hiding in a safe room with her baby’s mouth covered. I think of a father listening as the line went quiet. I think of families who waited month after month for someone to come home, only to receive a coffin. I didn’t need my faith to recognize the evil of what happened. My heart told me first.

But I’m a Muslim and an imam, and I owe the world one honest sentence: what was done that day was a crime against God. God teaches that whoever kills one innocent soul, it is as if he had killed all humanity.

This day has an author: Yahya Sinwar. He planned it, ordered it, and knew what would follow. Every death of that day and war he started rests on him and Hamas leaders who sat in tunnels and foreign hotels and called slaughter a victory. It rests on every Palestinian leader who cheered, excused, handed out sweets, or said nothing. They chose this. They own it.

But Sinwar did not invent himself. He was the fruit of a tree planted almost a century ago by the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas named itself in its founding charter as the Brotherhood’s branch in Palestine. The Brotherhood’s poison is slow. It arrives through study circles, youth camps, charity boxes, and kind words to lonely young men. Drop by drop, it teaches him that his religion is a political party, his neighbour is his enemy, the Jew is the cause of his sorrow, and God is pleased by rage. By the time the gun arrives, the soul is already taken.

I have seen this poison in mosques where sermons became rallies and young men could recite slogans but not sit still for a verse on mercy. Every people that let the Brotherhood in has paid in blood and ruined generations. It has never built anything it did not first set on fire.

Behind Hamas stands another hand: the IRGC. It was the IRGC’s money, weapons, and training that turned a hateful idea into an army. One calls itself Sunni and the other Shia, and they may curse each other’s creeds, but they are united in what they worship. It is not God. It is power. The same IRGC that armed the killers of October 7 shoots Iranian girls for showing their hair, hangs young men for asking to be free, and has left graves from Tehran to Damascus to Beirut. They speak in God’s name. So did Pharaoh speak in the name of heaven.

So let me say this clearly. Hamas and the IRGC are not merely enemies of Islam. That would be too small a charge, as if their crime were only against us. They are enemies of God. God is the Giver of life, yet they deal in death. God calls Himself the Most Merciful, yet they have made cruelty a sacrament. God honoured the children of Adam, yet they look at a child and see a target or a shield. To murder what God created and sign His name to it is the oldest blasphemy.

And we Muslims have been too quiet. Some of us were afraid. Some told ourselves it was not our business. Some, God forgive them, felt something other than horror that morning and never confessed it. Silence was the soil this poison grew in. I will not add to it.

So on this anniversary, let us say plainly what our scripture already says. The Jews are not our enemies. They are our cousins in Abraham, and their dead were created by the same God who created us. Today belongs to them: the murdered, the hostages, and families who still set a place at the table. To them I say: I am sorry for what was done to you by men who used the words of my prayers. You’re not alone in your grief or remembrance.

The enemies of God are those who murder in His name. We know their names. It is time we said them from our own pulpits, in our own voices, before they speak for us again.

Imam Tawhidi

[jaxn @LesserJackson]

@CTVNews Thought this was the @TheBabylonBee at first

[Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 @MarinaMedvin]

The New York Times coverage of the Gaza-Israel war was grossly pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel, according to a peer-reviewed study. Jewish casualties were omitted or minimized while Palestinian casualties were amplified and misrepresented.

Yale University Professor Edieal Pinker published the review in the an academic journal Studies in Conflict & Terrorism. His peer-reviewed research quantitatively evaluated 1,559 New York Times articles published between October 7, 2023, and June 7, 2024, to assess potential narrative imbalances.

The study found that:

- 91% of the analyzed articles failed to mention Israeli casualties that occurred after October 7.

- 1,423 articles completely omitted mentions of both Israeli post-Oct. 7 casualties and Hamas combatant deaths.

- 50% of the articles did not reference the Israeli hostages held by Hamas during the fighting, and 41% omitted mentions of the Israeli casualties from the initial October 7 attack itself.

- Personal stories highlighting Palestinian and Lebanese suffering appeared on average two out of every three days. Comparable accounts of Israeli suffering unrelated directly to the October 7 events appeared in very few articles.

- The word "Israel" appeared 27,205 times across the dataset, compared to just 8,499 mentions of "Hamas," meaning Israel was mentioned more than three times as often. This statistical discrepancy places near-exclusive agency and responsibility on Israel while severely diminishing Hamas's role in sustaining the conflict.

Pinker concluded that these consistent editorial choices cultivated a dominant narrative portraying Israel as the sole aggressor facing few consequences beyond losing international sympathy, while Palestinians were predominantly framed as passive victims. He argues that the coverage deprives readers of a comprehensive understanding of the ongoing combat dynamics and the continuous nature of Israeli losses.

Following the initial release of the study data, The New York Times publicly defended its reporting, claiming it has covered the war with rigor and from all angles. Of course my commentary on their reporting shows that this defense is hot garbage.

The New York Times buried the Holocaust in the back pages and then doubled down on downplaying Jewish suffering after October 7. They are a disgusting business that should be boycotted.

[jaxn @LesserJackson]

@benshapiro @AmiHorowitz Terrifying

[jaxn @LesserJackson]

@AOC Shame on you

[jaxn @LesserJackson]

@FranceskAlbs Shame.

[jaxn @LesserJackson]

@DenconMedia What about my dog?

[jaxn @LesserJackson]

@AOC Such a cold take.

[jaxn @LesserJackson]

@SenWarren You’ve become a caricature of yourself

[jaxn @LesserJackson]

Here’s AOC, saying that regulation is… hurting an industry? Hmm.

[Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @RepAOC]

US sunscreens are far behind the rest of the world and our regulations aren’t necessarily making our sunscreens better or safer — but it doesn’t have to be this way!

[jaxn @LesserJackson]

@SenWarren It’s incredible how wrong you are about this

[jaxn @LesserJackson]

@SenWarren No he doesn’t… lol.

[jaxn @LesserJackson]

@AdamSinger 🔥🔥🔥

[jaxn @LesserJackson]

@DeanPreston Arresting people for brazenly shooting up and smoking crack on the streets… the audacity!!!!!!

[jaxn @LesserJackson]

@growing_daniel That was a joke…

[jaxn @LesserJackson]

@TheBabylonBee Pathetic

[jaxn @LesserJackson]

@NickFondacaro LOL. This is incredible

[jaxn @LesserJackson]

Has anyone run the numbers on how the energy/environmental costs of Bitcoin compare to those of ChatGPT and/or large language models collectively?

[jaxn @LesserJackson]

@sfchronicle How about prosecute crime

[jaxn @LesserJackson]

Some high quality gas lighting by the SF Chronicle. “911 calls are down.” Surprise surprise, when the police don’t do anything about shop lifting, stores stop calling the police!

[San Francisco Chronicle @sfchronicle]

Westfield mall blamed "rampant criminal activity" for Nordstrom’s closure. Here’s what the data says: https://t.co/eMj03y6qYW