In my opinion, the threat of atheism is no lesser than that of terrorism, and the atheistic wave is no longer a passing storm. You can easily realize this if you take a look at the number of views on the YouTube videos that cast doubts on religions in general, and on Islam in particular. Atheism and terrorism are equally dangerous, for atheism kills identity and questions beliefs in history, canons, religious symbols, the Prophet s companions and followers, and ultimately leads to the collapse of the foundations of whole nations and of their sacred beliefs.
You might argue that the number of views on YouTube videos is not a solid enough indication of how fast atheism and the waves of skepticism are spreading, but the commentaries on the videos, the level of interaction, and most of all the number of positive comments on the videos supporting them indicate that such ideas are indeed widespread.
I attempted, for instance, to examine the reactions of young men and women to the recent crisis of Jerusalem following Trump s decision to move the Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and no sooner had I written the words Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque than I found tens of videos which question the holiness of the city in the first place, and which express contempt towards its sacred place in the Quran and Hadith. Those videos were the most spread during the recent Jerusalem issue, and those young people absorbed the ideas of intellectuals, holy men, politicians and atheist activists who believe that Jerusalem was never a fundamental element in Islamic thought since the time of Prophet Mohamed.
Yes, Skepticism in Isra and Mi raj (Mohamed s journey from Mecca to Jerusalem and his ascension to the seventh heaven) and in Jerusalem s significance to Muslims is coming from inside. Some even claim that Jerusalem s issue was nothing but a card played by Gamal Abdel Nasser in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and by Islamic groups before and after him to deeply root the perception of Arab governments which neglect the Jerusalem issue as faithless and infidel governments.
Those videos have millions of viewers, and once you click on any of them it takes you to tens of related videos with similar content, and these in turn take you to a bunch of other videos which use this skeptic argument as a tool to question and cast doubt on Quran itself and on Hadith (Prophet Mohamed s sayings, peace be upon him), be it those verses and sayings which speak about the change of qiblah (the direction towards which Muslims pray, it was towards Al-Aqsa Mosque in the early days of Islam and later on changed towards Kaaba) or the ones which tell the details of the Isra and Mi raj journey and Prophet Mohamed s prayer in Al-Aqsa Mosque with all the other prophets.
In short, if you search the word Jerusalem on YouTube, you ll be taken on an endless journey of skepticism; you ll have doubts about Jerusalem s place in Islam, its Arab identity, then about the verses related to the first of the two qiblahs, Al-Aqsa Mosque, and from then on to a systematic questioning of the veracity, the interpretation, and the politicization of religious texts. I was only trying to examine young people s reactions towards the Jerusalem issue, but what I found was a vortex of skepticism, existentialism and atheism through videos which alter basic beliefs and in which different parties are involved and are playing a dangerously critical part.
The issue is indeed a dangerous one because this atheistic content and these skeptical videos are reinforced by the extremist behaviors of Islamist groups such as the Islamic State, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah and many others. As a result of their fanatic ideas which turned Islam into a killing parade for the benefit of their own political interests, a stream which rejects religion itself was born, thanks to the violent and belligerent tendencies of those so-called Islamists.
And I repeat, the issue is very serious, and it is one that needs research so that the side-effects of the extremist ideological enterprise of terrorism can be remedied, and its influence on the atheistic wave and its heavy growth in the cyber space that is out of reach can be thwarted. This issue will be in our agenda of priorities in the coming period.
