Objection to Server Removal

A quick response to the Revolt developers' bad response[^1] on IslamPortal server's removal.

Exhibit A

"[The article Harms of LGBT includes statistics about trans people. While the page claims that it "emphasizes the harms that the LGBT community suffers from due to homosexual behavior,"] being trans has nothing to do with sexuality."

Exhibit A and B attack the server through a criticism the site instead of focusing on the server. Even if we say that I was hateful on the site (for sake of argument); removing my server for things I haven't done inside it is a bad move. Facebook doesn't ban me for breaking the ToS on Twitter, only Twitter does that. There is nothing about this on the Terms of Service (i.e., punishing someone for breaking the rules on another platform).

While the site promotes the server, promotion is not enough of a reason (let alone it being a "reason") to remove a server and it shouldn't be necessarily implied that the server is entirely centred on the site even if they share the same name; the site and the server are both are linked in a way yet they provide entirely different services. As far as documented, the latest description of the server in Discover, before the removal, was this (with no mentions of the site as a side project whatsoever, exceptions apply to my bio):

"The first Revolt Muslim server; Muslims and non-Muslims are welcomed alike, regardless of faith or belief. Literally the only morally superior server on Discover."

Even if the site promoted the server or vice versa, that's irrelevant, because the server again was hidden behind a verification system, so not enough proof can be given on how the server "broke" the rules, thus we find the punishment to be unjust and the message to be against what is advocated for in the Acceptable Usage Policy.

I think that you must primarily focus on your unbelievably toxic userbase, inside of Revolt Lounge and elsewhere, who shit on everything held sacred and who genuinely have a problem with a man giving sincere advice to a porn addict and pursue a higher purpose in life other than asking people for nHentai codes and PornHub recommendations, also because they're extremely hostile to religion, especially Islam since they called it and its followers "stupid" and "braindead," called the Islamic server a "shithole," left a racist remark about suicide bombings, and we also got this loud kid called Sam (i.e., an obvious troll roleplaying as a poor little ex-Muslim from the Middle East oppressed by le shoriya lawz) who found a golden opportunity to begin spouting hilarious nonsense about intolerance in Islam out of nowhere, just to express new levels of hatred inside the official server, albeit it claims to be "inclusive" and "anti-toxic" and all of that nonsense.

Anyways, as for your side note about "being trans is not a sexuality," we're aware of this. That's why we've included "this article deals mainly with homosexuality and LGBT in a general way, and the article specially about transsexuality is found in Harms of Transgenderism" in exactly the same line. Ignorance is bliss, sure, but ignoring this?

"[The article Harms of LGBT says that:] "We aren't trying to attack or insult you, we sincerely want you to leave this revolting lifestyle behind, be guided, and have a life worth living," [and] the implication here is that being LGBT is something that you can choose, which even when taking the listed sources and summaries in good faith, is false because there have been studies to show that it can be genetic (as referenced in the "Pseudo-Science" section)."

I would love to see you back up such empty statements, as I think there's a reason such studies have been referenced in a section literally called "Pseudo-Science." Being LGBT is a choice, and is not embedded into our genetics. Refer to the site archive.

If the claim that people are "born that way" and "it's genetic" was true, then the percentage of people who identify as LGBT would be the same across the globe and generations. This ain't the case; the more men get younger, the more we see they've become part of the LGBT, strongly emphasizing that this has a social influence (which by the way is shown in the article in its appropriate section, "Social Influence").

You may cite a bunch of gay biologists like Dean Hamer, Simon LeVay, and Anne Fausto Sterling, who tried to prove that gays are born that way, however their studies were rejected. Mayer and McHugh have proven in their giant meta-study (p. 7) that the claim that sexual orientation is a biologically determined attribute of man is not supported by any scientific studies. In addition, the biologists William Rice, Urban Friberg, and Sergey Gavrilets published their study, "Male Homosexuality," in the scientific magazine Science (1999, p. 667), and they couldn't find any scientific explanation for homosexuality's innate nature.

Also, if something is genetic it doesn't point out that it's right. If I recall correctly, pedophilia, murder, and psychopathy have been recorded to have been genetically present, so does that justify one being a pedo, psycho, or whatever?

"Briefly looking into some authors on the papers cited, it's easy to see that there seems to be a strong bias and misrepresentation of the truth, [for example] Paul Cameron, who has received widespread criticism for published papers on the grounds of misinterpreting existing scientific literature and data. [...] At the very least, no notice is provided that sources are disputed."

Ah, resorting to ad hominems, I see. Paul Cameron, by the way, has been blacklisted by the SPLC since he stated that his studies show that homosexuality can be changed.

Anyhow, Paul publishes his own interpretation of the studies which can be viewed as "biased," so even if he's wrong sometimes, that's a human thing and one can't necessarily assume that it was intentional only when it attacked an ideology. You guys here are committing two fallacies at the same time; poisoning the well (i.e., disregarding the reliability of other works based on flaws in one or more works), and attacking a strawman (i.e., assuming one's intentions and criticizing the assumption instead of the work). This is hypocritical and disgusting. Whilst he might be a bit biased towards one side for sure, his claims are completely backed by data and he doesn't intentionaly lie or skew stuff, the only "wrong" or "bad" thing he could do is having his own interpretation (as if that's "unscientific"), and some of his surveys having a bit less answers (as if he "intentionaly does that").

However, it's not productive to critique the historical backgrounds of a person; this is the third committed fallacy in a single exhibit note, which essentially is the genetic fallacy, a logical fallacy in which arguments or information are dismissed or validated based solely on their source of origin rather than their content. You didn't elaborate on how Paul is misrepresenting the data actually present in the article, you only said that this particular guy misuses data but you didn't provide examples on one of his researches that were linked as source, and thus resorted to a Wikipedia article. You got to be kidding me. 🤡

Wikipedia is one of the stupidest sources to derive truth from especially from controversial issues like these. Wikipedia maintains and depends on the general consensus of random article editors and paid professionals (e.g., that one time where the CIA edited articles on the Iraq War (2003) and its former executive director, William Colby, as revealed by the now defunct database Wikiscanner in 2007) on the internet, whether it's factually true or false; it's important not to jump to conclusions first, you gotta look at the actual studies, arguments, and conclusions, then they'll give you better insight rather than doing the worst and most common logical fallacy. I still can't believe how you told us that 500+ cited scientific sources were biased and cherry-picked, yet used random user-edited Wikipedia as your source.

"It's unfair to disguise these [mental] issues as a cause of "homosexual behaviour" when in reality it's quite often a cause of societal treatment."

Societal treatment, eh? If this is true, the burden of proof is on you to prove that homosexuals are discriminated against as much as the mental health statistics show. Since, from the article, the rate of discrimination doesn't match the higher rate of poor mental health, the correlation between their mental health conditions and homosexuality are an indication of it (i.e., homosexuality) being a mental illness. Also, discrimination has got nothing to do with mental issues in a general way, as noted by some citations on our article ("Mental Health > General"). Refer to the archive provided in the email.

"In fact, the listed source for eating disorders provides similar reasoning and backs up the contradictory nature of the page."

Irrelevant to the issue at hand.

Exhibit B

"It's worth pointing out however that the mental health describes autism rates for transgender people, this is definitely not a side-effect of "transsexual behaviour", and given the tone of the article as a whole, it seems to come across very ableist."

Again, you're assuming the goals of the cited studies; the sources showing a link between autism and gender dysphoria don't aim to show the former as a "side-effect" of the latter, as this would make absolutely zero sense. Autism is not developmental, it's very common knowledge for it to be something that occurs during brain development in childhood; teens and older persons don't develop autism all of a sudden.[^2] Rather the higher rate among transgender individuals undeniably shows a correlation between the two. This could be explained by the fact that more vulnerable people are targetted to be encouraged to take "gender-affirming care."

Tying it back to the correlation between autism and transgenders, you seem to think calling autism a disorder is "ableist," and it seems as though you'd continue with this mindset even if an autistic person disagreed with you. If we really need to explain how embarrassingly this is stupid then it's not even worth trying to appeal. This ain't environmental, a person can't be blamed for something that can't be helped.

My old friend, the former site co-maintainer and lead writer (I can't utter his name anymore for personal reasons) told me that he has been diagnosed with mildly severe autism (ASD level 2), and that he has been recovering from some symptoms (i.e., eye interactions, difficult facial expressions, speaking lightly and shortly, hard verbal communication, etc.), yet me and him were somehow best buds on the internet, so this disproves this assumed "ableist" nonsense.

Ironically, even our main page's second disclaimer at that time disproves this, it goes like: "[...] keep in mind that we're not being offensive, as we're Muslims, not ableists."[^3]

Exhibit C

On this exhibit; this specific article (Trans Genocide) was discarded, not because I agree with what's written, but because I didn't find it satisfying and conclusive enough to deserve its own separate article.

Also, there's an erratum in your dictionary; using your definition of genocide, we can turn it against you to say that there's a genocide on normal people who are being erased to turn them into gay and trans people, eh.

About the ablelist remark at the end... yeah I took it a bit too far. 😔

Exhibit D

"[...] Gender is not the same as biological sex. This does appear from a first glance to be intentionally discriminatory against trans people."

It's damn well-known that, according to the gender philosophy, psychological gender isn't biological sex (albeit argumentations about the distinctions between gender and sex don't make any logical sense from a philosophical standpoint), and that sex is "assigned" rather than "observed," yet the devs got mad at using "sex" instead of "gender," even though I chose that wording specifically so I wouldn't offend trans people in a sense by saying "there's only two genders" as an opposition, like... what? I've literally included the terms "birth-assigned" and "sex," so how are you guys still assuming that what I referred to was "gender" exclusively!? This is no more than a hateful personal attack.

I've heard the arguments of an anti-theist "catgirl" that goes by the name of Cat-a-clysm (Cataclysm#6905), that mostly consisted of whining that "this question is invasive to someone's private parts," but yeah... this entire "argument" defeats the point of a "question." My server, my rules, and I ask what I want (e.g., biological sex) for people who want to join, otherwise they could just leave peacefully because the server requires that one question to be fulfilled; I'm not forcing anyone to answer that, think of this as an application form. I can ask about one's cock size when joining the server and nobody could object to that. It doesn't break the rules or anything.

Worth to note that a bunch of trans people who have joined the server were treated as equally as other non-Muslims; separation is one of the central values in Islam to protect Muslims against unnecessary intersex interactions. The server's structure basically separates Muslims from non-Muslims (exceptions apply to Certified Members) and male Muslims from female Muslims. However, it doesn't separate non-Muslims based on intersex groundings, so we can safely conclude that trans people are especially safe on the server.

We shouldn't even have uttered the word "gender," because we knew a large portion of you people will get mad at using this term even though an Islamic server was never meant for them in the first place.

Exhibit E

"[The site] provides slight offense to atheists in the tone of the article/insults written."

At this point, the devs are trying to dig so deep to find a problem on the site, whatever it may be. What cowards.

Absolutely no insults were ever written on atheism-related articles nor did it have a negative tone towards atheists as human beings, so you're making all of this up. So pathetic and desperate to sustain your arguments against my server.

Atheism and Mathematics, by the way, is an article I wrote when I was 11. I was a kid and I applied mental gymnastics a lot in my articles, and I thought it'd be cool if I included it in the site when I originally made it (age 14). It's been years and I've been clueless about its existence, so it will be removed, along with Atheism and Mentality for further fixes.

Societal Consequence

"This website can still be used as a vehicle for hate, there will be people who read the website and take things at face value."

Anything can be a vehicle for hate; Islam and Christianity have been twisted by terrorists to create their own interpretation to kill the innocent despite the religions condemning such acts, and similarly, a genuine critique can be twisted as a manifesto to incite violence against the LGBT community, despite it condemning doing so FOUR TO FIVE ENTIRE TIMES ON THE ENTIRE SITE.

If communication has "dangerous consequences," consider closing your chatting platform; it's a vehicle for hate. How about that?

"It is proven that the site has disputed claims listed with no notice so this is especially problematic."

Here's the problem; not enough evidence given, and disputes are natural things for scientific documents so I shouldn't really have put a notice. It's common knowledge to understand that, that's why I linked to the original article so if you find anything wrong, you just contact the ones in charge and present your concerns. This all has nothing to do with the server.

So... that's it? That's the argument behind the server ban? The "societal consequences" of those two LGBT-focused articles as if people are going to get extremely violently motivated to ++++ gay people? That's the argument you're making? That a bunch of articles listing the harms of certain behaviors will somehow evolve to a manifesto going: "let's torture the gays, pin them to a cross, pour gasoline on them, and burn them"?

Notable Mentions

"The banner for the server is an inverted Taliban flag, which is recognised by some countries as a terrorist organisation."

Are you guys seriously THIS retarded? Listen here; if a Hindu uses the swastika (卐) would you accuse him of being a neo-Nazi? Of course not.
This ancient symbol has religious and cultural roots related to Hinduism; the swastika symbolizes the sun, prosperity and good luck, while the left-facing symbol (卍) is called sauwastika, symbolising night or tantric aspects of Kali.

Similarly, if a Muslim uses the most important part of Islam, al-Shahādah (الشهادة), the declaration of faith, in a flag (like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Somaliland does), would you accuse him of supporting terrorists? Rubbish.

This declaration is fundamental to Islam, and it literally represents it. This particular symbol is also present on every mosque and Islamic institute worldwide. I don't think shaming 2 billion people for this symbolic core tenet will work, and I don't think the swastika could even be compared to the Shahādah in terms of popularity and appropriation.

Funny how you mention "inverted" when setting a flag on fire, stepping on it, or inverting it into an opposing color signifies opposition. We oppose the Taliban in a sense, we think they're corrupt and not Islamic enough.

Bonus

I've seen an argument about emotes pop up recently, so bonus level, here we go:

"On the server, there existed a burned LGBT flag emote."

Those emotes had mere political motives because they were against Islam, and Islam was obviously the pillar/theme of the entire server. Me burning the LGBT flag doesn't explicitly mean that I hate gay people, but explicitly points out that I hate the LGBT ideology. I also love how Insert (the founder of Revolt) focused on the LGBT flag burning when we had other flags getting burned, including that of the United Nations, the United States, the European Union, Russia, China, the Israeli government, Nazi Germany, the SS Flag, France, India, a heavily edited flag of ISIL, and the Soviet Union, as well. This doesn't mean I hate Americans, Indians, Europeans, Germans, etc., but it's a form of opposition, and ironically I'll quote this again:

"Funny how you mention "inverted" when setting a flag on fire, stepping on it, or inverting it into an opposing color signifies opposition."


[^1]: An archive of this Rentry document could be found here.
[^2]: Sources for this claim found here, here, and here.
[^3]: This text has ironically existed way before the site's hosting on Codeberg, GitHub even, and you can safely check with a web archive.

Edit
Pub: 06 Sep 2023 17:51 UTC
Edit: 06 Sep 2023 22:38 UTC
Views: 501