The US is not a Muslim country. I’m not talking about Muslims in a Muslim country or Jews in Israel. I’m talking about the US, which this article is about.

In general, Muslims don’t. Only the extremely conservative ones do.

Many religions have conservative factions that think that their religious laws should also be general laws.

Muslim religious law, just like Jewish religious law, only applies to people of their faith. For most people in their faith, the religious law is only applied in religious settings. It is independent of non-religious law because both religions realize that not everyone belongs to their faith. It’s only when you get zealots that you get the idea that everyone has to follow the religious laws.

It’s only Christianity that tries to force non-Christians to live by Christian rules, whether it’s businesses closed on the Christian Sabbath (something that’s waned in the past 50 years, but I can recall it being hard to find stores open on Sunday in the 1980s), laws about women’s reproduction rights (outside of extremists, Judaism is pro-abortion) as well as gender and sexuality, and protests over absurd things like the words “happy holidays.”

I’ve yet to see Jewish people protesting that bacon is sold at Kroger or Muslim people demanding that they’re wished Eid Mubarak.

This is such a common attitude, and it’s nonsense. Non-moderators think moderators are “power hungry” when they ban people. While there are some few exceptions, moderators don’t ban people because they like power. Moderators ban people because they’re disruptive and causing trouble.

What moderating is really like, part 1

What moderating is really like, part 2

99% of the people I’ve banned who were not obvious spammers or bots are one kind of troll or another. Usually they fall into three categories: Concern Trolls (“But I’m only saying this for your own good!”), Factoid Trolls (“I’m here to tell you the TRUTH!”), or Disruptive Trolls (dick picks, offensive memes, slurs and racism, etc.).

Roughly 1% of the people I ban apologize for their mistake, remove their rule-breaking content, and either follow the rules or quietly leave.

I regularly get called a power-hungry mod by the crybabies who get angry when they aren’t allowed to break the very clearly stated rules, and repeat their offenses after getting first, sometimes second warnings. They run to other places and go try to stir up other crybabies to come and cause the same kind of trouble.

Moderating is tireless and endless. Jerks don’t get banned for saying “Dur the mods suck! Free Speech!” Jerks get banned because they think the rules are for other people, or because they think that the rules are wrong so that means they don’t have to follow them.

Thank you for coming to my Moose Talk. (Ted is taking a nap right now.)

Thank you.

I know what it’s like to try to build up something good only to have trolls try to take it over. It’s nice to think that kindness and guidance can make everything shiny and happy, but the reality is that sometimes you just have to shut the door to bad actors and lock it behind them.

Some people have a need to try to ruin things for others. There’s no reason to give them a platform. Actions have consequences.