Anti-Muslim rhetoric drives surges in Qur’an distribution requests

Evidence

We were going to what they call simply “the office,” two small rooms in Staten Island from which they host a Web site called FreeQuran.org. As the name promises they send Qur’ans to whoever wants one, Muslim or non-Muslim. It’s a shoe-box organization, supported by private donations, most of which Mohammad raises by asking his Friday prayer attendees to contribute. I asked him how many Qur’ans they send a month, and I whistled when he told me the number is about three thousand. “It’s the kuffar”—the nonbelievers—“who are doing our work for us!” Mohammad said happily as we turned off the highway. He explained that hits to the site crest every time some public figure speaks ill of Muslims, the last being after the pope’s controversial comments on Islam. One woman, he said, even embraced Islam after watching Showtime’s Sleeper Cell on television. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 914

Categorization

• CANDY: The counterintuitive flip: Islam’s public critics are its best inadvertent marketers, sending three thousand Qur’ans a month.
• XREF: Mirrors the Streisand effect and any backfire dynamic where persecution markets the persecuted cause — parallel to religious violence actually advertising faith in the sacrifice article.