A reader who wishes to remain anonymous has forwarded a YouTube message he received, from a Muslim YouTube member who’s organizing a private group to promote Islamic videos and suppress criticism of Islam:

From: …
Date: May 14, 2007, 11:18 AM
Subject: salam

to all muslim brothers and sisters please read

Our Islamic videos will not get full attention unless they come in the top ranked videos in youtube. For this purpose we all Muslims have to rate the videos to 5 stars and have to add them to our favorites. This will not be achieved if we Muslim Youtubers are scattered, i.e., one muslim rating one video and other muslim rating another. So we have to be highly organized. We will do a massive campaign of focusing to rate a single video collectively at once, so that it can show up on the top videos at least in the “Today’s top videos” list.

Doing this job in an open broadcast or in a public group is not a good idea. So it should be done in a private group. I have made the private group with the name: Burn the Boats. The group URL is in accordance to its goal as:

http://www.youtube.com/group/actnow

How to act immediately?

1- If a memeber wants a video to rate 5 stars and to be added as favorite video and to add a comment in video, then he will send the video link as:

Good Video: [video link here…..]

2- If a memeber wants a video to rate to 1 star and as an inappropriate video, then he will send the video link as :

Bad Video: [video link here…]

(Link sender must mention if it should be rated as hatespeech or graphical violence etc.)

#### Please propagate this message to the youtubers who are confirmed to be Muslims. ###

Do not send this message to any person who you doubt if he is Muslim or not. Any brother/sister who wants an invitation to the group, he can send me a short personal message.

JazakAllah.

UPDATE at 5/15/07 10:30:41 am:

A search at YouTube for the name of this group reveals where the title comes from: Burn the Boats.

Tariq bin Ziyad, he led the muslims to conquer spain and bring islam to europe. With his back to the Mediterranean Sea and a seemingly overwhelming force in front of him, Tariq gave the unthinkable order to his men to ‘burn their boats.’ His army’s only means of escape.

Tariq’s strategy of burning his boats did three things. Firstly, he was now committed to either victory or death. Secondly, it caused his men to focus totally on the job at hand. Thirdly, it scared the hell out of the Spanish. What sort of crazy men burn their boats in the face of overwhelming odds?”

Nice. Notice also that the group is listed as having 131 members—so this isn’t just a couple of people in their basements. (Hat tip: Killgore.)