Comedy Ensues as Twitter Users Hijack Newsweek’s #MuslimRage Hashtag

September 17, 2012

When Newsweek’s social-media gurus instructed Twitter users to use the hashtag #muslimrage to discuss the magazine’s inflammatory new cover story on Islam, they got more than they bargained for. The hashtag is fast becoming a meme — for Twitter users to mock Newsweek en masse.

In the controversial cover story, which uses the embassy attacks in Benghazi last week as a jumping-off point, outspoken Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali makes the sweeping claim that “in the age of globalization and mass immigration, such intolerance has crossed borders and become the defining characteristic of Islam.”

Ali’s husband Niall Ferguson, the notorious Harvard history professor, authored a widely contested Newsweek cover story last month that took truthy aim at President Obama.

Twitter users — Muslim and non-Muslim alike — took over the #muslimrage hashtag by the thousands on Monday to mock Newsweek’s immediately infamous cover story and its accompanying cynical social media strategy, registering their dismay with the most hilarious tweets possible. (The hashtag #muslimrave is also rising in popularity.)

Here are some of the best recent tweets with the #muslimrage hashtag.