It was widely reported earlier in the week that two chapters of The Satanic Temple , San Jose and Minneapolis, issued a public offer to aid Muslims in their communities. The aid being offered by The Satanic Temple chapters was fairly broad, ranging from being merely the presence of a couple big guys walking around with Muslims that may have felt threatened to going on a grocery run if someone didn’t feel safe in public. The offers were made in response to increased anti-Islamic sentiment following the Paris terror attacks on November 13.
The offer of aid by The Satanic Temple chapters went viral. Dozens of news articles on the subject were written and shared, with many of them drawing an ironic comparison to The Satanic Temple offering aid to Muslims while the largely Christian political “right” in the U.S. was valiantly pulling every string imaginable to keep Syrian refugees out of their respective states and out of the country. People were shocked and grateful to see such an outpouring of support for the Islamic community from a source as unlikely as The Satanic Temple.
Now, just days after the offer of aid was posted by the first chapter of The Satanic Temple on November 17, we’re learning that it’s being rescinded. Kind of.
The issue, reports Daily Kos , is that the individual chapters of The Satanic Temple didn’t technically have the authority or authorization to make such an offer on behalf of The Satanic Temple. The person within the chapter, who was responsible for posting the sincere and sympathetically-inclined offer simply didn’t imagine that it would go viral or even extend beyond the immediate geography of the chapter itself. When the offer did explode all over the internet, it became a bit of an issue.
This is because The Satanic Temple, like most organizations, has explicit rules that must be adhered to pertaining to the approval and implementation of public campaigns, which must be vetted through the group’s Executive Counsel. When the offer of Muslim aid received national and even international attention, the unexpected level of attention to the offer led to the public perception that the well-intended offer of two chapters was a national campaign.
The national headquarters of The Satanic Temple and other chapters of the organization unrelated to the original, well-intended offer of assistance to Muslims in their respective communities, began to be contacted about the personal protection services they were believed to offer.
Because The Satanic Temple lacks the training, liability coverage or logistics ability to offer legitimate protection services for individuals, the requests were a serious issue. Because of the confusion and unwanted attention drawn to The Satanic Temple, the chapters who had originally issued offers of protection were contacted by the organization’s leadership. The individual chapters of The Satanic Temple were requested to remove their original posts and replace them with a new, vetted and approved statement.
In response to the media queries to The Satanic Temple’s national leadership, which followed the replacement of the chapters’ offers of aid to Muslims with the above cold, legalese-sounding post, the organization’s spokesperson and co-founder issued a letter of explanation. In his letter, Lucien Greaves explains the breach in The Satanic Temple’s protocol that led to the original offer. He goes on to mention the legitimate issues The Satanic Temple faced with legalities, liabilities, and logistics, and continues by telling anyone who’s gotten a credible threat of physical violence to “contact Law Enforcement, not The Satanic Temple.”
“While we have been the beneficiaries of an outpouring of positive response since the escort offer was posted, we think it only responsible to be transparent regarding our limitations. In the absence of any credible, active calls to violence against American Muslims we must also consider that the act of flanking American Muslim citizens on their way to carry out daily errands may, in itself, be unnecessarily provocative and threatening.”
Of course, The Satanic Temple has received some flack for “going back” on their offer, despite the fact that it was not an offer made by The Satanic Temple as an organization in the first place. The Urban Twist even went so far in their reporting to suggest that associating with “Satanists” might do Muslims in the U.S. more harm than good if they want to be accepted by the Christians in America.
“With many Christians turning a new, fearful eye toward Islam, the last thing Muslims likely need is an organization with the name “the Satanic Temple” going to bat for them.”
Not surprisingly, the withdrawal of the offer of assistance of The Satanic Temple has garnered far less media coverage than the idea of “friendly Satanists.” It has, therefore, been largely ignored since the correction post was made on November 21. When it’s all said and done, though, what people would do well to remember is the underlying tone of religious tolerance that accompanied the original, totally sincere offers of two branches of The Satanic Temple.
Death threats against The Satanic Temple don’t violate Facebook’s “community standards”, but a thoughtful essay about abortion choice does.
— Lucien Greaves (@LucienGreaves) November 20, 2015
In the wake of increased Islamophobia in the U.S., the tenants of The Satanic Temple were compatible with an offer of respect and empathy, not hate and fear.
[Image Courtesy Of MuseZack/Twitter/The Satanic Temple]