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Netflix Keeping Christian Content, Not Removing It Due to Muslim Complaints — 1,200 Facebook Likes For Viral Satire Piece

By Paula Mooney
Published on: 03:37 PST, Mar 30, 2016

The rumor is going around that Netflix is removing all of their Christian movies, TV shows, and comedy specials due to complaints from Muslims about the Christian content. However, Christians and others can relax, because Netflix isn’t planning to remove all of their Christian content. The “Faith & Spirituality” section of Netflix is alive and well, with movies like The Passion of the Christ, Say Amen, Son of God, The Bible, The Gospel of John, and many more that aren’t likely to depart from Netflix anytime soon despite the rumor spreading that claimed all mentions of Christ and Christianity would be done away with on Netflix.

The rumor was started by a satire article that not everyone realized was fake.

As reported by Lead Stories, in the article titled “Hoax Alert: Netflix NOT To Remove All Christian Content After Complaints From Muslims” by Maarten Schenk, the original article appeared on a site called News Thump.

The original article was published on March 29, and with claims that Netflix would remove any mention of Christ and the Christian faith, it quickly swelled to more than 1,200 likes on Facebook. However, the claims within the satirical article aren’t true, even though not all folks can distinguish satire from the truth.

“Netflix are to remove all references to Christ and Christianity from its services after a record number of complaints from Muslims. The quite good video streaming service is pulling all its latest shows featuring Christian themes such as The Vicar of Dibley, Father Dowling Investigates, as well as 1990 smash hit Nuns on the Run.”

A quick search for “Nuns on the Run” on Netflix proves there is no such movie on Netflix. Also, Father Dowling Investigates cannot be found on Netflix. The Vicar of Dibley is a series that’s currently found on Netflix. However, the satire article blamed the “Muslim Brotherhood of Bath and Northeast Somerset” and their “strongly-worded” letter to Netflix’s CEO as the reason for the decision about Netflix’s Christian content.

“This comes after the Muslim Brotherhood of Bath and Northeast Somerset sent a strongly worded letter to CEO Reed Hastings. The complaint, written by leader Ali McLaren on 18th century halal goatskin, outlined the offence caused by some of Netflix’s programming. It said: ‘We demand you remove this terrible material from your website immediately.'”

The article went on to claim folks complained about paying Netflix for stuff that could be downloaded for free online anyway. The jokes about three group members speaking for the entire Muslim population didn’t give away clues to some that the piece was satire.

“Netflix subscriber and pub philosopher Jim Shaker, at a press conference at a table by the slot machines, said: ‘It’s an absolute disgrace. This is a Christian country and if we want to watch s*** sitcoms and British cinema before it was good, then we have earned that right through years of suffering them the first time round. If I actually paid for what I watch on the Internet then I’d be really annoyed.'”

As seen on the below graph from Lead Stories, the trajectory of the quickness of likes on the satire article, as witnessed by the blue line on the graph, shows that by 11 a.m. ET on Wednesday, March 30, the satire article had quickly gained more than 1,200 likes on Facebook. That means some of those folks understood the satire and liked the article, or they liked the fact that Netflix was purportedly removing Christian content — or they liked the fact that the article was informing them of Christian content being removed from Netflix.

With talk about a Netflix “spokesbuffer” pausing for five minutes prior to claiming that the Muslim community wouldn’t make Netflix cave to their demands, the viral piece contains quite a bit of humor. Even Donald Trump’s name was brought into the fake article.

[Image via PRNewsFoto/Netflix, Inc.]

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