Earlier this week, GitHub took down a hate site that targeted Muslim women and put them up for sale. The website, named Sulli Deals, is a derogatory term used for Muslim women.
Someone created a ‘Sulli Deals’ app that has the Twitter accounts of so many Muslim girls. You are one click away from finding the girl like your business.
This app has our photos and our names.
The motto of the app says: “open source community driven project” pic.twitter.com/Rc2vyynRMy– K (@madeforbrettLEE) July 4, 2021
I didn’t check Twitter last night. I woke up this morning to realize that my name, along with those of many other Muslim women, was on GitHub as a “Sulli Deals” list. Fortunately, by the time I met him it had been taken apart. But only the screenshots made me shiver. pic.twitter.com/CGXivEyjyC
– Fatima Khan (@khanthefatima) July 5, 2021
In a statement, GitHub said its policy prohibits content targeting a community:
GitHub has long-standing policies against content and conduct involving harassment, discrimination and incitement to violence. We have suspended user accounts as a result of investigating reports of such activity, which violate all of our policies.
This is the second incident this year involving Muslim women targeted online ahead of Eid. In May, during Eid-ul-Fitr, a YouTube channel called Liberal Doge live-streamed photos of Muslim women while “rating” and “auctioning” them. As Newslaundry noted, the channel’s owner Ritesh Jha also operates other YouTube channels and Telegram groups that broadcast hateful content. There was no criminal action against Jha.
It is also worrying that this event adds numbers to other similar incidents, when Muslim women – including journalists, actors and activists – on the internet in South Asia have been repeatedly targeted.