Norm,
There has been much talk of radical and militant Islamic websites in the news lately, such as that immigrant alleged to threaten national security because he directed his Internet browser to such websites.
I have read the Internet for years and, although I have consulted many websites where information pertaining to one religion or another can be accessed, and although I have seen websites on which terrible acts of violence are advocated against allegedly terrible people by other, patently terrible people, the authors, and websites about weapons, fighting and the military, I have yet to find a website with any faith or agency of its own.
Naturally, regular incantation of this sonorous phrase, “militant Islamic web sites” caught in my ear, spun and was cast up to float on the surface of my attention.
I am suspicious, particularly when it comes to attributing human qualities to intangible things and their supporting appliances, so I asked the Internet, and what it told me* is shocking.
As it turns out, there are 28,200 Islamic websites, 4,230 Muslim websites, 1,960 radical Islamic websites, 507 militant Islamic websites, 55 militant Muslim websites, and 43 radical Muslim websites.
There are 769 terrorist websites, 619 jihadist websites, 476 jihadi websites, 127 weapons of mass destruction websites, 4,680 evil websites, and 4 tyrannical websites.
In addition, there are 1,440 Satanic websites, 3,750 militant websites and 23,300 military websites.
There are 2 militant Christian websites, 14 radical Christian websites, 12 radical Catholic websites, 18 radical capitalist websites, 14 radical anarchist websites, 2 militant anarchist websites, 1 radical socialist website and 1 radical Hindu website.
There are 154,000 Christian websites, 21,400 Catholic websites, 10,500 Jewish websites, 8,790 Hindu websites, 4,510 Baptist websites, 929 Buddhist websites, 864 Voodoo websites, 826 Orthodox websites, 807 Methodist websites, 763 Lutheran websites, 584 Taoist websites, 567 Sikh websites, 518 Mormon websites, 430 Presbyterian websites, 422 fundamentalist websites, 357 Baha’i websites, 302 Gnostic websites, 248 Episcopal websites, 240 Protestant websites, 158 Jehovah’s Witness websites, 83 Coptic websites, 77 Pentecostal websites, 53 Rastafarian websites, 49 Zoroastrian websites, 24 born again websites, 22 nondenominational websites, 21 Native American Church websites, 5 Confucian websites and 1 Dominionist website.
There are 55,800 American websites, 260 peaceful websites, 135 pacifist websites, 28,000 profitable websites, 4,970 democratic websites, 1,070 capitalistic websites, 35 civilized websites, and 2,330,000 free websites among 1,070,000,000 websites containing the syntax websites.
So ultimately, if such syntax is to be believed, although faced with a daunting array of potential foes, the numbers come out strongly in favor of American capital Christiandom.
Go team.
Respectfully submitted,
Count Ng
* Naturally, these numbers indicate search engine “hits” for pages containing the requested syntax ("web cites"), and not actual accurate descriptions of the referenced pages’ theological convictions, and are limited to the English language search terms, handily excluding most of the rest of the world.
Necessarily, many of the instances may refer to the same websites, or may refer to no extant websites; many may import their author’s bias (for example, “militant” websites generally do not describe themselves that way, as military websites might, but are described thus generally by critical third parties); for this reason many websites which do advocate violence or intolerance will not be included while many purporting to track the intolerant activities of others and not, necessarily, advocating violent intolerance, will be represented.
All these considerations may skew the results.