15 mn tweets, 8,000 folks: Survey exhibits Mohamed Salah’s star energy is curbing hate crime

“If he scores another few, then I’ll be a Muslim too. He’s sitting in the mosque, that’s where I want to be… Mo Salah-la-la-la-la.” In 2018, football-intoxicated white followers had been belting that music within the stadiums and pubs of Liverpool about Mo Salah, the Afro-haired Egyptian footballer of their membership for the English Premier League.

The juxtaposition of the thing of that music and the folks singing it stirred the world and startled 4 Stanford University researchers — Ala Alrababah, William Marble, Salma Mousa and Alexandra Siegel — who had been moved to review the phenomenon. “What was that, I remember wondering. The song intrigued us,” Marble advised The Indian Express.

The outcome — after months of laborious work put in, 15 million tweets analysed, 8,000 folks surveyed and crime stats dissected — astonished the world.

“We find that hate crimes in Merseyside (home to Liverpool FC) dropped by 16 per cent…and Liverpool FC fans halved their rates of posting anti-Muslim tweets relative to fans of other top-flight clubs. Our survey experiment suggests that the salience of Salah’s Muslim identity enabled positive feelings toward Salah to generalise to Muslims more broadly,” the report learn.

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On Saturday evening, 1000’s could be echoing the spirit behind that music as Salah tears up the best wing on the Saint-Denis’ Stade de France in Paris within the Champions League closing the place Liverpool could be chasing a well-known treble, having already received the League Cup and FA Cup.

The findings of the examine had been outstanding, particularly in context of what was occurring in pre-Salah Liverpool when two attorneys Abubaker Bhula and Asif Bodi went underneath a stairwell on the Anfield stadium, the membership’s residence, to hope. Another fan tweeted their footage with a tagline “Disgrace” — it went viral in right-wing teams.

Two years later, the bearded Salah joined Liverpool as an overtly religious Muslim footballer who prostrated on the bottom in “sajdah” after objectives, who raised his index finger in “shahadah”, whose daughter was named Mecca, and whose spouse was veiled — and whose social media posts had been stuffed with non secular imagery.

“That was what was special. Here was a man, by all accounts, humble, a do-gooder, a great footballer who was just himself. But by being himself, he stirred something in others,” stated Marble, the researcher. “He stays out of politics, doesn’t talk up his religion even, he is just himself.”

“We highlighted Salah’s Muslim identity in a part of our survey and we found people saying there was no clash between Islam and British values. That a smooth integration was possible. People whom we administered the survey with that religiosity angle responded by saying they were more tolerant of Islamic values,” he stated.

Or, in different phrases, there was no conflict of civilisations. “We had lots of people saying it was important to understand the culture of players representing their club. That openness was highly suggestive,” he stated.

But Marble and his colleagues needed to seek out out whether or not the folks they surveyed walked that speak. They sought out police information for hate crimes.

“What we saw was that in Merseyside there was a drop in hate crimes right after Salah was signed, compared to the rest of the country, and that continued in his first few seasons with the club. We did various statistical modelling to find if this big drop would have happened even if Salah hadn’t signed and we found that wasn’t the case. There seemed a direct impact of Salah from the evidence from the behavioural data that in extreme outcomes linked to bigotry,” he stated.

One of the exams was to verify whether or not there was a drop in different crimes, unrelated to hate crimes. “What we found was that the biggest drop was in hate crimes, not in others. That gave me assurance that we were on the right path with Salah’s impact,” Marble stated.

The researchers then analysed 15 million tweets as a part of their philosophy to examine a number of totally different proof to reach at a conclusion. “We coded their tweets where they mention Muslim/ Islam and classified it as positive/ negative/ neutral. We found the proportion of anti-Muslim tweets of Liverpool followers dropped by half, based on what we found in other clubs’ fans,” the researcher stated.

Asif Bodi, one of many followers focused for praying on the stadium, spoke to the digital community Middle East Eye in regards to the post-Salah adjustments. “Some fans might have been a bit more reserved and afraid to show their faith but because of the effect Salah has had, they feel emboldened to show their faith.” Multi-faith prayer rooms popped up at stadiums.

Ben Bird, who self-admittedly “hated muslims” as soon as, wrote in “The Guardian” about how Salah’s presence modified him — he even transformed to Islam.

“As that song ‘If he scores another few then I’ll be Muslim too”, and I actually took that to coronary heart… Salah confirmed me that you may be regular and a Muslim, if that’s the best phrase. You might be your self. He’s a fantastic participant and is revered by the soccer group and his politics, his faith, don’t matter — and to me that’s what soccer can do,” Bird wrote.

However, British-born Pakistani poet Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan warns in regards to the hazard of stereotyping the “good Muslim immigrant” and the necessity to respect all Muslims. “Love us when we are lazy, love us when we are poor, love us high as kites, unemployed, joy riding, time wasting, failing at school, love us filthy,” he stated.

But then, that’s less than Mo Salah.