This is a collection of 19 short pieces by Mohamed Hassan, a poet and journalist born in Egypt, and a New Zealand citizen. Being a poet, he writes in a very readable way, with beautiful turns of phrase.

The chapters cover various topics: being born in Cairo and migrating to Auckland at age eight, with associated issues of identity; childhood memories, both in Egypt (eg the chapter The witch of El Agouza) and New Zealand (eg being bullied in school for being a migrant); everyday aspects of being a Muslim; the misrepresentation of Muslims in films; and so on.

However, this review addresses two chapters that are of particular interest to MMW: Subscribe to PewDiePie and A stranger in no man’s land.

Subscribe to PewDiePie

The first chapter in the collection starts with Swedish online streamer Felix Kjellberg. His name will probably be unknown to most readers although, as we shall see, his influence on the internet, and thus mankind, has been great.

Kjellberg started his PewDiePie YouTube channel in 2010 as an “online jester”. His audience was mainly teenage boys. The channel was so called because he screams “PewDiePie” at the end of each of his videos in a nasal high-pitched screech. The irreverent nature of many of his videos, eg using the n-word, and wearing a Nazi uniform, got him into trouble. However, his teenage audience rallied to his support each time.

One stunt in 2017 was to pay $5 to anyone who would hold up a sign stating “Death to all Jews”. Needless to say, this led to a backlash from the Jewish community, and You Tube pulling his original series of videos. He issued a backhanded apology claiming it was “absurd humour” and misunderstood.

The episode did not affect his audience figures, the apology being watched by seven million. “He was earning hundreds of thousands of dollars each month in advertising revenue.”

Along came a serious challenger, in terms of audience. T-Series was a YouTube channel showing Bollywood music videos. India was becoming more internet-connected and soon tens of millions of subscribers were watching T-Series.

To try to regain top audience figures from a non-English, non-Western source, PewDiePie fans called on other fans to take action with the hashtag #SubscribeToPewDiePie. By the end of 2018, its subscribers had rocketed from 58 million to 90 million.

With India’s huge population, T-Series overtook PewDiePie with 200 million subscribers in 2021, and 160 billion views of its videos. Other channels grew to challenge PewDiePie.

Things took a sinister turn. From being a channel of absurdist humour aimed at teenagers, PewDiePie gradually contained more and more racist, anti-religionist, anti-migrant and misogynistic content. This was inconspicuous “because no one really meant what they said. Not on the internet.”

Anyone speaking up against such content could soon find themselves a target, with death and rape threats, and addresses and phone numbers published online.

Things only got worse. “Those maimed by the unrelenting acidity of this battle retreated to safety, and those who embraced the chaos emerged as the new leaders of the internet.”

Platforms such as YouTube started to have more content from far-right conspiracy theorists against mass immigration and feminism, as well as nonsense theories such as White genocide (genocide of Whites, not genocide by Whites) and Hillary Clinton-funded paedophile rings operating out of pizza shops.

Is this all just innocent, harmless, absurdist humour?

In 2016, a man entered a pizza shop in Washington DC firing an assault rifle, convinced he was saving children from sex slavery2. Fortunately, nobody was injured.

In 2017, mobs of White supremacists marched through Charlottesville Virginia carrying Nazi flags and shouting “Jews will not replace us”, a slogan with a long history3. One woman was killed.

So, what does all this have to do with New Zealand?

“Halfway across the world, a young Australian man was watching this unfold with keen interest. He devoured their messages and felt them resonating in his own disjointed life.” His last words before he carried out the Christchurch massacre were, “Remember lads, subscribe to PewDiePie.”

Social media is a misnomer. It is making us antisocial, not only by reducing face-to-face daily interaction but also by spreading fake news and ultimately leading to violence and potential deaths.

A stranger in no man’s land

On 11 September 2011, nearly 3,000 people died in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Immediately, the blame was placed on Muslims worldwide, despite the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers were from only one country (Saudi Arabia), “[a]lmost all Muslim political and religious leaders condemned the attacks”4,5, and suicide and killing innocent people are forbidden (haram) in Islam.

As a result of the religious profiling, security measures at airports were tightened against one group – Muslims.

The author’s name – Mohamed Hassan – is clearly Muslim. Mohamed is the name of the prophet of Islam, and Hassan was his grandson.

The author recounts first-hand experiences. Automatic alarm bells were activated. “In the United States they stamp your passport with ‘SSSS’ – Secondary Security Screening Selection – and send you to a room in the back with all of the travellers stuck in limbo at the gates of promise.”

This is a government mandate; the officials who have to carry it out show some empathy with Muslim passengers. “At LAX once, in 2016, a sympathetic customs officer sighed at the screen and asked me if I always got stopped at airports.”

The author’s mother suffered the same indignity. “Growing up, I watched my hijab-wearing mother pulled aside and swabbed for explosive material every time we transited through Australia. Every time, we were told it was ‘a random search’ and asked to sign a waiver that offered us the option to comply or be detained.”

What has this to do with New Zealand? Even returning to New Zealand on a New Zealand passport, the same thing happened.

“I made it to within twenty metres of where [my family] were standing before a customs officer tapped me on the shoulder in the middle of baggage claim and told me to follow him. … My New Zealand passport, which had shielded me from dispossession and state repression, and granted me the privilege of unrestricted travel, couldn’t protect me here. … [T]he dignities my parents had migrated to earn suddenly failed me.”

He felt profiled: “Mohamed Hassan. Born in Cairo. Muslim. Security threat. Suspect. Terrorist.”

The author also recounts a number of second-hand experiences.

When he heard of Muslims being stopped at customs, he went to evening prayer (isha) at a local mosque and asked the imam to make a brief announcement asking for people with similar experiences. “When isha prayers were over, I spoke to no fewer than twenty-five people.

"A Syrian refugee told me he had been stopped every time he entered the country, and that he was sick of it.

"A Somali man said his wife was held back for nine hours despite being visibly pregnant, with three children in tow.”

Such profiling is unwarranted. The 9/11 attacks by a small group of men behaving in an unequivocally unislamic way were condemned by Muslim authorities. Yet collective responsibility and collective guilt was projected onto all Muslims worldwide, roughly one quarter of humanity.

The discrimination faced by the author and other Muslims was the result of Islamophobia perpetuated by continued media misrepresentations of Islam and Muslims since 9/11.

The book is recommended for anyone wanting a first-hand account of the issues involved in living as a migrant in New Zealand – especially a Muslim one.