A/HRC/46/30 film and television producers also engage in the process of “whitewashing” by depicting Muslim characters without having consulted with or cast any Muslims. 26 Dissemination online Harmful narratives and stereotypes about Muslims and Islam are also widely disseminated through digital media – both on platforms that attempt to regulate content, such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, and on networks, such as Gab, 8chan and Voat, which have been established largely in response to the hate-speech policies of larger social media platforms. In Europe, for example, Muslim individuals have been accused of being paedophiles simply for being Muslim. 27 In Myanmar, inflammatory statements shared on social media by prominent Buddhist monks have alleged that Muslims generally are responsible for sexual crimes against Buddhist women.28 Muslims and those who ostensibly manifest an ethnically Arab identity online, including by wearing “Muslim dress” in profile pictures or having “Muslim or Arab names”, are regularly accused of being terrorists and suicide bombers.29 Muslim women are more likely to be targeted than men with expressions of hate, both online and offline. Muslim women also appear to receive more extreme hate speech than other women online: 55 per cent of the most aggressive online hate speech directed at Indian female politicians was directed at Muslim women. 30 Abuse, harassment and threats of gratuitous violence have also been reported by academics,31 journalists32 and human rights defenders33 who report on Islamophobia. In Europe and North America, prominent politicians, influencers and academics advance discourses online on both social networks and blogs that Islam is innately antithetical to democracy and human rights – particularly gender equality – often propagating the trope that all Muslim women are oppressed. 34 In China, popular narratives on social media emphasize the incompatibility of Muslim identities with being Chinese and claim that State initiatives attempting to strip Muslim women of their religious identity serve to rescue Muslim women from their supposed lives as vessels of Muslim reproduction. 35 Conspiracy theories drawing on xenophobic and racist narratives about Muslims are also propagated online by far-right groups. Designed to influence attitudes towards policies meant to promote immigration and inclusion, or to ascribe blame for challenges facing a society, such theories include fabrications that immigrant Muslim populations are going to “outbreed” native populations (these are widespread in Europe36 and North America,37 as well as in Myanmar38 and Sri Lanka).39 In India, Hindu nationalists have pushed the “love jihad” narrative, claiming that Muslim men conspire to marry, seduce or otherwise induce Hindu women into converting to Islam.40 Notably, conspiracy theories have been amplified 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 6 https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1940&context=honorstheses, p. 15. www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1t88zw7, p. 59. www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-28122925. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.617634. www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/india-women-politicians-face-shocking-scale-abuse-twitter-newresearch. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305116678896. UA IND 1/2020 and OL IND 10/2018. www.apc.org/en/pubs/apc-condemns-crackdown-peaceful-protesters-india-including-harassment-apcstaff-member. www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.33428/jsoutasiamiddeas.42.3.0020.pdf; www.brookings.edu/research/muslims-and-the-secular-city-how-right-wing-populists-shape-thefrench-debate-over-islam/; www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2015/12/09/what-americans-really-think-about-muslims-and-islam/. www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10670564.2019.1704995?journalCode=cjcc20. www.ucviden.dk/en/publications/propaganda-and-conspiracy-theories-in-extreme-right-ideologies. Consultation with Canada. See also the manifesto posted online by the gunman responsible for a shooting in 2019 in El Paso, Texas (purposely not linked). https://ash.harvard.edu/links/creating-future-using-natural-resources-new-federalism-and-unity. www.jstor.org/stable/26402133?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents. www.reuters.com/article/us-india-women-law-religion/love-jihad-law-seen-trampling-womens-hardearned-freedoms-in-india-idUSKBN29K260.