Googling Shahid Bolsen

Alaikum. To everyone. This is Shahid Bolson. Welcome to the Middle Nation. For anyone who has followed my work for any length of time, you're already aware of this.

But I know that I'm new to many of you, so you will undoubtedly be shocked if you Google my name. Back when I was writing about the anti coup movement in Egypt, I was the target of several unfair and sensationalized media reports that basically accused me of inciting violence. These stories appeared in all different types of media from the New York Times to foreign policy, different newspapers around The United States and in The UK, as well as more fringe right wing patently Islamophobic, news portals, particularly those run by career Muslim hater Daniel Pipes. Now I was an easy target for these kinds of reports because I have a manslaughter case in The UAE, which at the time of the case was reported again in a sensationalized way in The UAE press, basically to sell newspapers. This despite the fact that I was never charged with anything remotely like terrorism or religious extremism or anything like that.

I was charged with manslaughter, and I was eventually ordered to pay Dia and released. Now for the record, my writing on Egypt was almost exclusively posted on Facebook between around 2013 to around 2016 or '17, and then I eventually got off of the platform completely in 2020. I have nearly 4,000 pages of writing from that time, and I defy anyone to find a single instance in which I called for, endorsed, advocated, or even approved of violence. My whole effort regarding Egypt was specifically devoted to trying to ensure that the anti coup movement would not become an armed resistance and that Egypt would not fall down the same path as Syria into a civil war. Here are some examples of what I actually said.

Now I'm actually quite proud of the work that I did on Egypt, and I find it ironic that just a few short years after the writing that I did on Egypt, I saw many of the same tactics that I advocated for the anti coup movement in Egypt. I saw those same tactics being advocated and being actualized on the ground, not in Egypt, but in The United States by the Black Lives Matter movement. And the people who advocated and performed those actions in that movement were highly celebrated in the media and praised. Destroying property which can be replaced is not violence. Whereas, I was accused of inciting terrorism and violence.

And in fact, the the BLM movement engaged in actions that were even more radical than anything I ever advocated. Now, eventually, I stopped writing about Egypt because a deal with the IMF went through, at which point I thought activism is pretty much a dead end street at this point in Egypt. So I stopped writing about Egypt, and the negative hype about me started to die down. But more recently, my name got dragged through the mud again by some obscure journal in out of Bangladesh called the Weekly Blitz, where they outright called me a member of Al Qaeda and also somehow a member or a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, which if anyone knows either of those two groups knows that it's impossible to be both of those things. And I think they claim that I was arrested by the FBI at some point and maybe even arrested in Egypt.

Alright. This is complete defamation and slander from start to finish. I've never been arrested by the FBI. I'm not on any wanted or fugitive lists. I've never even been in Egypt.

I've received death threats from both Al Qaeda and ISIS, and the Muslim Brotherhood hates me. The hit piece that The Weekly Blitz wrote about me was actually part of a campaign that they were engaging in to discredit the work of an organization I was working for called Detained in Dubai with regards to Detained in Dubai's advocacy of and publicizing of the escape of the, daughter of sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum in Dubai, sheikha Latifa, princess Latifa. Famous case now. It's a famous case because of detained in Dubai and because of the work I did on that case. Detained in Dubai is a very important legal advocacy group based in The UK that supports, people who have been unjustly imprisoned and falsely accused in The UAE and in the Khaleids generally.

For anyone who knows about the case, princess Latifa escaped from The UAE on a yacht, an American registered yacht, and was recaptured during a siege of that yacht in international waters by UAE and Indian forces. We publicized the case, and the weekly blitz put out a series of hit pieces against the, founder of Detained in Dubai, Radha Sterling, against Detained in Dubai, against me, and against the entire Princess Latifah case. As a result of Detained in Dubai's, involvement in the Princess Latifah case, we were subjected to numerous hacking attempts, threats, intimidation, and black PR projects like the one in the weekly blitz. Now the man who's behind the weekly blitz isn't really in a position to, cast aspersions or accusations against anyone. He himself is a convicted criminal.

He's accused of being an agent for Israel and faces charges of blasphemy. Now another thing that you'll see when you Google me is the work of Daniel Pipes. He put me on his counter extremism website listing me as an extremist agent in Egypt, listing me somewhere parallel to Sayyid Qutb. Now if you're an American Muslim, you should be familiar with Daniel Pipes. He's a career Islamophobe.

He looks kinda like a weird Frank Zappa from an alternate universe. To begin with, Daniel Pipes was cited in the manifesto of Anders Brevek as an inspiration justifying his mass murders in Norway. So I guess according to Pipes' own logic, that would make Daniel Pipes morally, if not legally, responsible for the 77 people that Anders Brevek murdered. So, yes, Daniel Pipes incites violence and terrorism against Muslims, any Muslims. He's made a career of declaring that all Muslims pose a threat to peace and security and that they should suffer war, loss, and despair until their spirits are crushed.

So Daniel Pipes believes that my writing about nonviolent disruption of corporate profitability in Egypt to support democracy in Egypt after the military coup of, Abdul Fatah Sisi. He believes that that writing makes me accountable and culpable for violent actions that I never advocated, but he doesn't believe that he's culpable for the violence committed by someone who named him as an inspiration. And there's no reason to believe that Anders Brevik is the only person. Daniel Pipes has been around for a long time and he's been a right wing anti Muslim extremist for decades. It's safe to surmise that his writings and his views have motivated and inspired and influenced a whole generation of anti Muslim neo Nazi extremists, which would make him culpable for anti Muslim attacks across Europe, in New Zealand, and in The United States.

But, of course, he's not a Muslim, and he's talking about Muslims. So he's not gonna be held accountable for inciting violence. A Muslim who specifically writes about nonviolent protest, nonviolent disruption is gonna be called an extremist and someone who's inciting violence. If you look at my actual writing, my actual statements, what I actually say, you will see that I have never advocated violence. I've never called for violence, and I've never endorsed or approved of it.

I have warned specifically and explicitly and repeatedly against the use of violence. But the problem is I was speaking against the power structure. I was advocating a policy and a strategy that might have been successful. So my character has to be assassinated, and I have to be maligned in the press. Now, of course, everyone has to decide for themself, and, of course, I am fully aware of what has been said about me in the media.

It hasn't made my life particularly easy, to be honest. You can make your judgment as you like. You can base your judgment on what you read about me, what has been said about me, or upon what I say myself.