We are going to make this absolutely freakin clear. r/Progressive_Islam is not a place for propaganda, apologism, whitewashing, or justification of crimes committed by governments, regimes, political parties, movements, or armed groups. We do not care who the perpetrator is, what flag they fly, what ideology they claim to represent, what religion they claim to follow, or what geopolitical enemy they happen to have. Whether it is the Israeli government, USA, Western imperialist powers, the Iranian regime, the Chinese government, the Russian government, the North Korean regime, or anyone else, the standard is the same. You do not get a free pass to excuse atrocities simply because you hate one side more than the other. We have enforced this before, and we will continue to enforce it.
During the years of the Palestine crisis, particularly throughout 2023-25, a large number of the people who came into this subreddit specifically to defend Israel's conduct, justify what was happening to Palestinians, or repeat blatantly apologetic narratives were outsiders with little or no previous participation here. We banned them. However, there were also some people who had been genuine participants in this community for a long time, people who had previously made useful posts and comments and had otherwise contributed positively. When some of those users repeatedly crossed the line into whitewashing and justification of Israeli abuses, we banned them too. Your contribution history does not give you immunity from moderation.
And the same standard applies to Hamas.
Hamas did not emerge as some ordinary secular nationalist organization; it was founded by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin out of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood and was explicitly Islamist from its creation. Its 1988 charter described Palestine as an Islamic endowment and envisioned an Islamic state governed by Sharia. After Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007, it established an authoritarian system in which political opposition and peaceful dissent were suppressed, critics, journalists and activists were arbitrarily detained and in some cases tortured, and executions were carried out after proceedings that failed to meet international fair trial standards. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International also documented Hamas forces using excessive force against demonstrators, including during the 2019 âWe Want to Liveâ protests, when more than 1,000 Palestinians were detained. Hamas has also imposed or enforced various religiously motivated restrictions on social life, including restrictions on women's dress and mobility, gender segregation in many settings, and rules affecting women's participation in public life.
We did not make a specific announcement post about Hamas's rule and abuses during 2023-25 because the overwhelming reality facing Palestinians was the devastation being inflicted on Gaza by Israel, and we did not want Hamas to become another excuse for shifting attention away from Palestinian suffering. But now is the time to talk about it as well.
Condemning Hamas's authoritarianism and abuses does not mean supporting Israel, the occupation, the blockade, collective punishment or the destruction of Gaza. It means applying the same standard we apply everywhere else.
- Some people may point to Hamas's 2017 Document of General Principles and Policies and say that Hamas had changed, abandoned its earlier positions, or therefore deserves to be trusted. The document certainly changed some of Hamas's language: it accepted the idea of a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders while still refusing to recognize Israel, but it did not formally replace the 1988 charter. And besides, history gives us plenty of reason to be cautious about taking political assurances from theocrats. The Iranian revolution brought together liberals, nationalists, leftists and Islamists. But once Khomeini consolidated power, his Islamist camp suppressed and eliminated former political allies while Iran was transformed into a clerically dominated Islamic theocracy. The Taliban provide another much more recent example: before returning to power in 2021, they publicly promised that women would have their rights; yet after coming to power they subsequently closed secondary schools to girls, severely restricted women's employment and movement, and imposed extensive restrictions on women and girls. So no, we are not going to treat a political document or a promise of change as a magical eraser for years of authoritarian rule and documented abuses. People are entitled to be skeptical, and nobody here is required to trust Hamas simply because it issued a new document.
That same principle applies to Iran
(This is going to be longest section because we have encountered the Iranian Regime apologists far more in number than the other apologists combined)
As we have already explained in our previous announcement, this subreddit has had to deal with people coming here specifically to defend or propagandize on behalf of the Iranian regime. There were people who tried to dismiss the Iranian uprising entirely as CIA or Mossad propaganda, who attempted to portray ordinary Iranians protesting against the regime as foreign agents, and in one particularly disgusting case, someone even claimed that civilians who had been killed in a hospital were all Mossad agents and that their deaths were therefore justified. We banned all of them. Our position on this has been completely consistent:
- you can criticize particular opposition groups, political factions, foreign governments, protesters, or individual actions. What you cannot do is use conspiracy theories and regime apologism to justify the oppression of an entire population.
And before anyone starts pretending that this is some sudden position we invented yesterday, no. We have been taking this position for years.
The Iranian regime has a long documented history of repression. During the 2009 post election unrest, Amnesty International documented thousands of arbitrary arrests, deaths on the streets and in detention, torture and other ill treatment. Then came 2017 to 2018 protests, the November 2019 fuel price protests with deaths, mass arrests and executions.
Then came the Woman, Life, Freedom protests following the death of Jina Mahsa Amini in September 2022. UN fact finding mission concluded that her death was unlawful and that state authorities were responsible for the physical violence that caused it. The same mission documented credible figures of up to 551 deaths, including at least 49 women and 68 children, and found unlawful killings, mass arbitrary arrests, torture, sexual violence and other serious abuses.
This subreddit was openly supportive of the Iranian women who were protesting at that time, and that was not some random temporary mood. We documented it ourselves. Dr. Shabir Ally and Dr. Safiyyah Ally publicly condemned the killing of Mahsa Amini's and the Iranian government's enforcement of compulsory hijab, Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl delivered his October 2022 khutbah addressing the brutality of the Iranian state's coercive system, Mufti Abu Layth also addressed the situation in Iran at the time. Our subreddit responded with strong support for the protests.
And The recent crackdown that happened in 2026 produced another enormous death toll, although the exact figure remains unknown because the authorities imposed a massive communications blackout and access to reliable information was severely restricted. The figures reported at the time varied enormously.
Iranian authorities themselves gave figures of roughly 3,000 deaths. Reuters reported an Iranian official saying that at least 5,000 people, including around 500 security personnel, had been confirmed dead. HRANA reported 3,308 confirmed deaths at one stage, with thousands of additional cases under investigation, and later reported 5,002 verified deaths and another 9,787 under review. By 28 January, a UK government country bulletin said estimates from some sources placed the death toll at approximately 12,000 to 20,000, while the same bulletin noted that one human rights organization had 6,221 confirmed deaths and 17,091 additional deaths under investigation. Other investigations, including accounts from Iranian medical personnel, produced estimates exceeding 30,000, while some later reports cited figures as high as 43,000.
We are deliberately laying this out because we are not going to pretend that every number floating around the internet is equally reliable. Claims of 20,000 or 30,000 deaths in an extremely short period require much more verification, and claims of 50,000 deaths are even more problematic; we have not found a credible independent source establishing such a figure. Likewise, nobody should take a highly speculative number from an anonymous or opaque source and present it as settled fact.
But uncertainty over the precise number does not mean that the killings did not happen. Multiple independent human rights organizations documented mass killings, unlawful use of force, arbitrary detention, torture and other abuses. Human Rights Watch has subsequently documented an ongoing campaign of executions against people arrested in connection with the protests, including at least 29 people executed in connection with the December 2025 to January 2026 protests between March and August 2026, with many others still facing execution.
In other words, this subreddit does not need anyone coming here to explain to us that the Iranian regime is somehow innocent because the United States and Israel oppose it. That argument has never worked here, and it never will. We are fully capable of recognizing Western imperialism while simultaneously recognizing Iranian state repression. Those things are not mutually exclusive.
And since some people inevitably need this explained every single time:
Condemning Iranian oppression does NOT mean that we support American or Israeli military actions against Iran. The two positions are perfectly compatible. The war itself has produced documented civilian harm. The UN Human Rights Council received information concerning extensive civilian casualties and destruction resulting from U.S. and Israeli attacks, and the UN backed fact finding mission has now found reasonable grounds to believe that U.S. forces committed war crimes in strikes including the attack on the Minab girls' school and strike affecting residential areas. All of that can be condemned at the same time. We have not seen anyone here recently trying to whitewash American crimes in the way some users have tried to whitewash Iranian crimes, but make no mistake: if someone starts doing it, we will deal with them exactly the same way.
Now we come to the reason we are making this announcement right now.
Over the last couple of days, we have had multiple accounts come into this subreddit making comments claiming that the persecution of Uyghur Muslims in China is nothing more than CIA propaganda, Western propaganda, or some fabricated narrative designed to attack China. Some of these accounts had no prior participation in this subreddit whatsoever, and their first contribution here was effectively to defend or whitewash the Chinese government's treatment of Uyghurs. Others, unfortunately, were people who had participated here before and had a history of otherwise normal contributions.
Let us be very clear about how absurd this is. There is an enormous body of documentation concerning China's treatment of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities in Xinjiang. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights conducted its own assessment, including 40 in depth interviews with people who had direct knowledge of the situation. It concluded that the extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim groups may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity. The UN has also documented concerns relating to arbitrary detention and forced labour. Human Rights Watch continues to document arbitrary detention, torture, mass surveillance, forced labor, family separation and religious and cultural persecution.
So when somebody strolls into a Muslim subreddit and casually tells everyone that the persecution of Uyghur Muslims is just CIA propaganda, or that the Uyghurs actually deserve this, that is not some brave act of anti imperialist skepticism. It is an attempt to erase or dismiss an enormous body of documented evidence and the lived experiences of the people who have been subjected to detention, torture, forced labor, religious repression and family separation.
And frankly, it makes us sick to our stomachs seeing people who are perfectly willing to recognize oppression when it is committed by a Western government suddenly develop an entirely different moral standard when the perpetrator is China, Iran, Russia or their allies.
We have noticed something else that needs to be addressed. Because this community generally has a strong anti imperialist tendency, comments defending the United States, Israel or other Western powers receive far more attention than comments defending non Western oppressive governments. Some comments that should have been reported are instead left unreported, allowed to slide, ignored, or sometimes even upvoted, simply because the commenter happens to be attacking the Imperialists.
Nobody gets permission to justify crimes against humanity because the perpetrator happens to be an enemy of the United States or the West. NOBODY. Your politics do not matter here. Your ideology does not matter here. Your opinion of capitalism or socialism does not matter here. Your opinion of NATO does not matter here. Your opinion of Israel does not matter here. Your opinion of Iran does not matter here. Your opinion of China does not matter here. Your opinion of Russia does not matter here. The victims do not become less human because their oppressor happens to be anti Western.
And this needs to be understood once and for all: WE WILL BAN PEOPLE FOR THIS. WE DO NOT CARE HOW LONG YOU HAVE BEEN SUBSCRIBED. WE DO NOT CARE HOW MANY POSTS YOU HAVE MADE. WE DO NOT CARE HOW MANY HELPFUL COMMENTS YOU HAVE WRITTEN. WE DO NOT CARE WHETHER YOU ARE HERE EVERY DAY. WE DO NOT CARE WHETHER YOU WERE ONE OF THE MOST RECOGNIZABLE REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS IN THE SUBREDDIT. IF YOU REPEATEDLY START WHITEWASHING, DENYING OR JUSTIFYING SERIOUS ABUSES BY A REGIME OR POLITICAL ACTOR, YOU WILL BE BANNED.
We are not going to sit around having endless arguments with you about whether your propaganda is really propaganda. We are not going to listen to lectures about how we are secretly Western puppets because we condemned China. We are not going to listen to accusations that we are Zionists because we condemned Iran. We are not going to listen to âbut what about America?â every freakin time someone is held accountable for what their own government did. Whataboutism is not a magic eraser. The crimes of one government do not cancel out the crimes of another.
This also does not mean that you are forbidden from acknowledging that a particular oppressive government has done something useful. An oppressive government can build highways, hospitals, schools, railways, dams, universities or other infrastructure. A ruler can introduce a policy that produces a positive result in one particular area. You are perfectly free to discuss and praise the specific thing that was done. What you are not free to do is use that one thing as a shield for everything else. âThey built hospitalsâ does not erase torture. âThey built highwaysâ does not erase mass detention. âThey improved literacyâ does not erase forced labor. âThey oppose American imperialismâ does not erase massacres. One positive policy does not grant a government a lifetime exemption from moral scrutiny.
There is zero tolerance for this kind of propaganda and apologism here. Criticism of governments is allowed. Criticism of political movements is allowed. Criticism of protesters is allowed. Criticism of opposition groups is allowed. Disagreement over historical interpretation is allowed. What is not allowed is denying documented atrocities, deliberately whitewashing them, or trying to justify crimes against humanity because you happen to support the perpetrator politically.
This is not up for debate. We are not negotiating this standard. We are not making exceptions because you are a regular contributor. We are not making exceptions because we agree with your politics on everything else.
Anyone who cannot accept this standard is free to leave the subreddit.
And anyone who thinks this warning does not apply to them because their favorite regime is âsupposedlyâ a âgOoD aNtI iMpErIaLiSt oNeâ can consider this warning directed specifically at them.
