The 712-page Google doc that proves Muslims condemn terrorism

‘I wanted to show how weak the argument is that Muslims don’t care about terrorism’

A 19-year-old American-Muslim student has compiled a 712-page document of the number of times Muslims have condemned acts of violence ranging from domestic to militancy.

Heraa Hashmi, a student at the University of Colorado, was asked by a classmate why Muslims "don’t condemn" terrorist attacks linked to Islam. Perplexed by his analysis, the 19-year-old began gathering definitive proof that they do.



Hashmi made a Google spreadsheet and started listing down condemnations backed by sources and made the 712-page long document available to social media via Twitter. The list which includes everything from acts of domestic violence to 9/11 lists over 5,684 incidences, all sourced.

classmate: why dont muslims condemn things
me: *goes home makes 712 page long list of Muslims Condemning Things with sources*
me: fight me pic.twitter.com/sDhwUMIAK1

— Heraa (@caveheraa) November 12, 2016

The tweet got 15, 000 retweets within the first 24 hours followed by requests to volunteer if she needed help in compilation. A week later, muslimscondemn.com came into existence. The tweet currently has over 18,000 retweets and 34,000 likes.

“I wanted to show people how weak the argument [that Muslims don’t care about terrorism] is,” Hashmi explained.

The campaign does not only highlight events that have been condemned by Muslims but also emphasises on the unfair calls for them to apologise for militant attacks.

Hashmi thinks that Muslims are “held to a different standard than other minorities: 1.6 billion people are expected to apologise and condemn [terrorism] on behalf of a couple of dozen lunatics. It makes no sense.”



“I don’t view the KKK or the Westboro Baptist church or the Lord’s Resistance Army as accurate representations of Christianity. I know that they’re on the fringe. So it gets very frustrating having to defend myself and having to apologise on behalf of some crazy people,” she elaborated.

The double standards claim by Hashmi is not new. The debate about Muslims having to apologise for militant attacks has been afloat for awhile now. Every time there is an incident, the community faces backlash – in terms of hate crimes or having to condemn again and again to reinforce their stance. Yet with violent incidents involving other faiths, expecting the entire population who share their beliefs to apologise is not mandatory.

Hashmi has created a platform for Muslims to use when they need to respond to accusations of “not condemning enough”. All the denunciations are now carefully listed at the website.

This article originally appeared on the Guardian.