The wildly popular social media site Twitter, which allows its millions of users to post short messages and “follow” their favorite friends, celebrities, media outlets, bloggers and more, was the subject of controversy this past weekend as a “trending topic” titled “#blamethemuslims” drew widespread attention.

British blogger and activist Sanum Ghafoor said she began her Twitter topic “#blamethemuslims” as a sarcastic response to the media’s tendency to speculate and blame Muslims for attacks before evidence is released, including after the recent Norway shootings. Photo taken from Youtube video

The trending topic sidebar on the site lists the top ten phrases or topics each day being discussed by users within a region, ranging from the United States to Detroit and other cities. 

The topic #blamethemuslims (the hash tag icon is used to designate a phrase that others can comment on) reached the top of the list on Sunday, July 24  in the U.S. to the surprise of many users. The majority of people commenting on the topic expressed disgust with it, calling it in some cases “the most ignorant” or “most prejudiced” topic they’d ever seen on the site. 

But many others commenting on the topic pointed out the beginnings of the #blamethemuslim trend, which was started in a sarcastic manner by poster Sanum Ghafoor, a British Muslim student, activist, and video blogger who uses name of @Strange_Sanum on Twitter (the @ designates a user’s location and name) and has over 6,000 followers. Ghafoor began making the sarcastic posts in the wake of a shooting spree that left dozens dead in Norway, an event that led to incorrect assertions and speculation that the suspected shooter was a “Muslim terrorist” or “jihadist” by various media outlets, even though the suspect is 32-year-old Norwegian Christian Anders Behring Breivik. 

Among the posts were “Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, #blamethemuslims;” and ” ‘Wheres your homework?’ ‘I made it into a paper aeroplane and it got hijacked,’ #blamethemuslims.” 

Ghafoor herself set the record straight in a Twitter post after the topic began gaining momentum, however, pointing out that she is a female Muslim who “doesn’t hate Muslims,” while encouraging people to read her posts which were clearly sarcastic in nature. 

Many of the sarcastic tweets were re-posted and forwarded by Twitter users, causing the trend to gain even more popularity. 

Ghafoor posted her thoughts on the phenomenon earlier this week, saying that the topic highlighted a “growing prejudice” against the Muslim community as revealed by some news reports. 

She also said that it was “really overwhelming to see the volume of support for Muslims, going as far as to even drown me in hate mail,” she said with a “winking” emoticon at the end referring to people who originally believed her topic was serious. She also said she was moved in seeing so much support from non-Muslims and pledged to respond to as many messages as she could on Wednesday, July 27. Many of them apologized for taking her topic out of context.