The question https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/12512/does-radical-islam-use-nazi-style-propaganda asks about the claims presented in a You-Tube video that has more than 7 mil views. While at first it had no claims in the body of the question, the question was edited (by me) to include the main claims of the video in the body of the question. Yet the question remains closed, and keeps getting down-votes. Why is it?


I can think of a few problems:

  1. The claims you extracted (thanks!) are a bit too fuzzy to be meaningfully answered.

  2. A lot of the claims are simply logical fallacies, trying to associate Radical Islam with Nazism.

  3. As Konrad said, which organisations make up "radical Islam"?

If #3 were answered meaningfully (i.e. if the video made specific, disprovable accusations against a real entity), then we would still have a problem with the questions themselves:

Radical Islam is using similar propaganda to the Nazis.

Nazis used propaganda. Radical Islam uses propaganda. Pretty much any country or movement or corporation uses propaganda. Some of the imagery is similar, some other is going to be different. This is not a very good claim to debunk!

The following question would be answerable and could stand on its own feet: "Are the following images (A), (B), (C) presented by the video actually radical Islam propaganda? Are they in any form representative of their propaganda style?"

Children are being indoctrinated in an organized way to hate Jews and Israel, like the Hitler Youth.

Hitler Youth's purpose was to create adult people who would blindly obey Hitler and the Reich. Hating Jews was a consequent part of it, but not its mission. Israel did not exist at all.

The Hitler Jugend (HJ) was an offcial, state sponsored youth organization, whose primary goal was to create a class of youth totally obedient to the wishes of the German Nationalist Socialist Workers Party leadership and to Germany's Führer, Adolf Hitler.


So what is it that we are asking here? In my opinion, a possible meaningful question is "Does radical Islam have any organisation which systematically indoctrinates children hate Jews? If so, is its size significant?". Otherwise one could ask "Does radical Islam have any organisation similar, in size, objectives and scope, to HJ?", but this would not be a good question as I would contend that that's not what is being claim in the video.

Blood libel is depicted as factual truth and as a real Jewish tradition.

Not really sure, but this is not a question at all as is lacking a question mark. In any case, blood libel is an accusation towards the Jews to have a tradition, not the tradition itself — at least according to the Wikipedia page you linked. Thus, maybe a question could be "Does radical islam engage in blood libel?"

Finally, it is not enough to fix the questions, specify the meaning of "radical Islam" and so on. There has to be notability. The video does not really say, for example, "Hamas engages in blood libel", thus, asking "Does Hamas engage in blood libel" is not questioning a notable claim...

All in all, it can't really be easily salvaged.

  • Why is the last one not a question?
    – SIMEL
    Nov 6 '12 at 12:10
  • @IlyaMelamed see my edit.
    – Sklivvz
    Nov 6 '12 at 12:23
  • The video does say that some muslim propaganda engage in blood libel, wouldn't the question "Do some prominent muslim figures accuse Jews of Blood Libel?" be acceptable?
    – SIMEL
    Nov 6 '12 at 14:28

I’m hazarding a guess here:

– Because it’s a stupid question, and a straw man to boot. There is no one “radical Islam”. It’s like asking whether humans use Nazi-style propaganda. Of course. Some do. Some don’t. Stupid question.

What’s more, “Nazi-style propaganda” isn’t all that specific. The Jesuits said “Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man”. Does that mean that they used Nazi-style propaganda? Or is that simply a common way of indoctrination?

For that matter, how does it differ from normal education?

  • While there is no one central headquarters of the radical Islam (or even just Islam), and no one organization that is addressed in the video. There are several organizations that have Islamic roots that are addressed in the video, and a good answer would differentiate between the different organizations. And would preferably also try to make some comparison with non-muslim organization making similar claims (Neo-Nazis, KKK, Aryan Nations and others).
    – SIMEL
    Nov 6 '12 at 11:49
  • @Konrad Rudolph: That is not a Jesus quote. It's attributed to either Francis Xavier or Ignatius of Loyola (or Jesuits in general, anyway).
    – Alenanno
    Nov 9 '12 at 13:46
  • @Alenanno That exact wording, yes. But wasn’t there something in the New Testament? I might be mistaken – not that the original author of the quote really matters. Nov 9 '12 at 13:52
  • @Alenanno It matters because it’s a wrong fact (and I’ve corrected). It does not matter for the point I was making. Nov 9 '12 at 13:57
  • @KonradRudolph Please re-check my comment. :P eheh
    – Alenanno
    Nov 9 '12 at 13:58
  • @Alenanno The quote wasn’t lost on me. ;-) Nov 9 '12 at 14:09
  • @KonradRudolph What does that mean?
    – Alenanno
    Nov 9 '12 at 14:10
  • @Alenanno Well your comment previously said something along the lines of “it does matter” (or similar; don’t remember exactly), hence my reply. I did notice that the comment contained a witticism about quotes on the internet – I just didn’t specifically reply to it. Nov 9 '12 at 14:14
  • @KonradRudolph Ah gotcha. :)
    – Alenanno
    Nov 9 '12 at 15:06

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