Susan Carland, wife of The Project host Waleed Aly, has found a way to channel the daily abuse she receives at the hands of Twitter trolls. 
 
 As one half of “Australia’s Muslim power couple”, Susan Carland is exposed to a daily onslaught of hate-filled tweets from social media trolls. The respected Muslim sociologist, who is married to The Project host Waleed Aly, is bombarded by racial slurs, targeted because she wears a hijab and speaks openly about the rights of Australian Muslims. 
 
 But in an effort to bring about something positive from her experiences, Carland is donating $1 for every hateful tweet she receives. Speaking about her decision, the highly-regarded academic said that she was “getting a lot of hate on Twitter. Sometimes I’d respond to them and sometimes I’d ignore them, and I felt like none of that really achieved anything.” 
 
 “How about I try to repel it with something better, with something good? “What about for every hate-filled tweet I get, I donate a dollar to UNICEF? Children in need, it doesn’t get much nicer than that.” Carland is a recent PhD graduate, and lectures at Monash University in Melbourne. 
 
 Although she was brought up in a Christian household, she decided to convert to Islam when she was 19 years old. Some of the more horrifying tweets label Carland as “a filthy traitor” and accuse her of converting to a religion that is “a disgusting cult started by a child molesting war mongering slave keeper.” One user spat "it's your religion and deception that anger me and how you prey on innocent people (sic)." 
 
 Another disgusting tweet reads "@SusanCarland is stupid enough to convert to a religion that considers her half a man..." That is just the tip of the iceberg; Carland has to ignore a daily barrage of insults. 
 
 This means that although she undertook the pledge a little more than two weeks ago, she has already donated over $1000 to the worthy cause. “I started this project on a whim… I knew that I was getting a lot of hate on Twitter.” ||||| Bombarded with hateful tweets from trolls, it was only natural that my response would be rooted in the fact that I am Muslim. 
 
 As a Muslim woman, people from many different quarters are eager to tell me how to dress and how to act. They also seem determined to tell me what I believe. 
 
 I regularly get tweets and Facebook messages from the brave freedom-fighters behind determinedly anonymous accounts telling me that, as a Muslim woman, I love oppression, murder, war, and sexism. 
 
 Susan Carland and her husband Waleed Ali. Photo: Don Arnold 
 
 They have no interest in what I actually think about these things, or any other; I realised this quickly after pointless attempts to engage achieved nothing. I am just a blank canvas onto which they can project their own prejudices and fantasies about Muslims. 
 
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 Their online abuse ranges from requests to leave Australia, hope for my death, insults about my appearance (with a special focus on my hijab), accusations that I am a stealth jihadist, and that I am planning to take over the nation, one halal meat pie at a time. 
 
 As I browsed some of their Twitter timelines, I noticed just how many of the tweets they sent out were full of rage, scattered at any recipient they could find. It seemed that as people so full of darkness, they could only see darkness in others. 
 
 Susan Carland is fighting Twitter trolls by donating $1 to UNICEF for each hateful message she receives. Photo: Simon O'Dwyer 
 
 And while these trolls are desperate to tell me what I believe in order to wedge me into their own miserable world-view, I am not defined or confined by that. My response to them is not an act of angry defiance but a calm reaction that is deeply rooted in who I am and the faith that defines me - not a perverted caricature of Islam that people try to force on me, but one that instructs its followers to take the higher road and be a force for good in the world, not because people necessarily deserve it but because it is simply the right thing to do. 
 
 So, in response to all the hate I receive simply because I am Muslim, it was only natural that my response would be rooted in the fact that I am Muslim. 
 
 I donate $1 to @UNICEF for each hate-filled tweet I get from trolls. Nearly at $1000 in donations. The needy children thank you, haters! 😎 — Susan Carland (@SusanCarland) October 21, 2015 
 
 As I sat in front of my laptop one day, reading the merry stream of toxicity directed towards me, I wondered what the most edifyingly Islamic response I could give would be. The Koran states "Good and evil are not equal. Repel evil with what is better." I'd tried blocking, muting, engaging and ignoring, but none of them felt like I was embodying the Koranic injunction of driving off darkness with light. I felt I should be actively generating good in the world for every ugly verbal bullet sent my way. 
 
 And so the idea of donating $1 to UNICEF for every hate-filled tweet I received came to me. I particularly liked the idea of giving to UNICEF, as so often they were assisting children who were in horrific situations that were the direct outcome of hate – war, poverty due to greed, injustice, violence. These children seemed like the natural recipients for the antidote to hate. And donating to them every time I was abused felt like tangible good in response to virtual hate. 
 
 I've been doing this for some months (so the sudden news interest is somewhat baffling) simply as a way of authentically living my beliefs. Now when a ghastly tweet comes my way, I barely bat an eyelid. It represents nothing more than a chalk-mark on my mental tally for the next instalment to UNICEF. 
 
 And this has been an unexpected outcome; by refusing to let the hate of others mould me, I am more secure and relaxed in my own identity than ever. Their hatred of what they believe Muslims are has encouraged me to recommit to the beauty of my tradition. 
 
 I have a choice: to respond similarly, or respond with "that which is better". Their hate doesn't define me; my beliefs do. And so what my response should be is clear. 
 
 Dr Susan Carland lectures in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University. ||||| Police in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, have arrested a burka-clad woman who stabbed an American teacher to death in a lavatory outside Waitrose. 
 
 Ibolya Ryan, a 47-year-old mother of three who lived in Denver before moving to the UAE, was taken to hospital after the frenzied attack on Monday, but later died of her injuries. Her husband Paul, from whom it is thought she was separated, was travelling to the Gulf to be with their 11-year-old twins - their third child was not living in the country. 
 
 Vithi Cuc, a Vietnamese restaurant worker, told The National newspaper that she heard two women arguing in the disabled lavatory, while she was using the adjacent lavatory. 
 
 “Women go to the bathroom together and gossip, talk and argue all the time,” said Ms Cuc. “But then I heard one of them threatening the other saying 'Sit down or I’ll kill you’.” 
 
 Ms Cuc said she then heard banging sounds from the cubicle. 
 
 “I heard one of them try to call out for help. By this time there were three of us outside the lavatory and one of us ran to get security. When the female security guard arrived they told us to leave the bathroom. I was so scared and frightened for her,” she said. 
 
 CCTV footage showed the woman fleeing the Boutik Mall on Reem Island in central Abu Dhabi – leading to the killer being dubbed “The Reem Island Ghost”. 
 
 The killer had waited in the bathroom for 90 minutes until Mrs Ryan arrived, and stabbed her repeatedly with a kitchen knife. 
 
 Saif Bin Zayed, minister of the interior for the United Arab Emirates, told a press conference that the “face covered” suspect seen in security footage fleeing the scene of the crime is an Emirati national now in police custody. 
 
 He called the murder “a slap to every noble human value that the UAE cherishes - which are derived from the teachings of Islam and the genuine Arab heritage.” 
 
 “We stand today before a crime that is alien to our secure country - a crime that has disregarded all human values and norms and targeted innocent people,” he said. 
 
 He said the attacker targeted her victims based on their nationality alone in an attempt to create chaos and terrorize the country. 
 
 “The victim of this brutal crime was a school teacher who was committed to building strong future generations and was known for her dedication to work. The victim was not only a teacher - she was also a mother of three children.” 
 
 The detained woman is also suspected of planting a bomb outside a 46-year-old American-Egyptian doctor’s home on Abu Dhabi Corniche, according to police, after the murder. Investigators found bomb-making materials at the suspect’s home, said Colonel Rashid Borshid of the Abu Dhabi police’s criminal investigation department. 
 
 The bomb was dismantled and no one was hurt, he said. 
 
 When asked if the police considered this sequence of events to be a terrorist attack, he said: “This is under investigation now, and I cannot say yes or no now.” 
 
 But on Twitter, known Islamic State fanatics were praising the murder, describing it as “Dabiq epic” - in reference to the town of Dabiq, a place in Syria that is supposed to be the location for one of the final battles according to certain Muslim myths about a final apocalypse. It is also the name of Isil’s propaganda magazine. 
 
 And Abu Dhabi’s police celebrated the arrest by compiling a Hollywood-style video of the woman being detained, edited with the soundtrack to the Batman film The Dark Knight, and showing the raid on her grandiose, white colonnaded home. 
 
 On Twitter, some questioned the suitability of the soundtrack. 
 
 “These Abu Dhabi police vides are getting more COPS every day. The headcams. The soundtrack. Sheesh,” said Ben Hubbard, Middle East correspondent for the New York Times. 
 
 Victoria Scott, editor at large for Doha News, tweeted: “The security video of the Abu Dhabi mall stabbing is chilling enough without a musical soundtrack. What was the security firm THINKING?” 
 
 Others, meanwhile, praised the police for their quick response. 
 
 The murder has shocked the expat community in the UAE – where 76 per cent of the country's 2.4 million people are expats. A total of 100,000 Britons live in the UAE, with a million passing through each year. 
 
 Violent crime is relatively rare in Abu Dhabi although there have been attacks on foreigners elsewhere in the region. 
 
 In Saudi Arabia on Saturday, a Canadian was stabbed while he shopped at a mall in Dhahran on the Gulf coast. 
 
 Last month, a Dane was shot and wounded in Riyadh – an attack IS claimed on Monday was carried out by its supporters. 
 
 And the Abu Dhabi murder comes little more than a month after US embassies in the Gulf, including the UAE, called for vigilance when a post on a jihadist website encouraged attacks on American and other international schools there, specifically on teachers. 
 
 The embassy said on October 29 that it was "unaware of any specific, credible threat against any American or other school or individual in the United Arab Emirates." 
 
 “Nonetheless, the Mission is working with local schools identified with the United States to review their security posture,” it said. “US citizens residing in or visiting the UAE should remain vigilant regarding their personal security.” 
 
 The murder also took place on the same day as a recording attributed to Isil spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani urged Muslims to attack Westerners by any means, even if only to “spit on their faces”.
– "Good and evil are not equal. Repel evil with what is better." That's the line from the Koran that Dr. Susan Carland says came to mind as she sat one day mulling the best way to deal with online trolls attacking her because she's Muslim. She writes in the Sydney Morning Herald that she endures a regular litany of abuse, including jeers at her hijab and even death threats. "I'd tried blocking, muting, engaging, and ignoring, but none of them felt like I was embodying the Koranic injunction of driving off darkness with light," she writes. Then Carland—who converted to Islam at age 19 and is now considered part of "Australia's Muslim power couple" with TV host husband Waleed Aly, per Australian Women's Weekly—hit on a way she could repel that darkness: give money to others each time she was attacked. "I donate $1 to @UNICEF for each hate-filled tweet I get from trolls," she tweeted on Oct. 21. "Nearly at $1000 in donations. The needy children thank you, haters!" She writes in the Herald that UNICEF seemed like the natural choice as her recipient, since the group often helps kids "in horrific situations that were the direct outcome of hate—war, poverty due to greed, injustice, violence." Many are praising her idea, with Mashable calling her efforts "inspired," and UNICEF Australia tweeting: "You've turned hate into something wonderful: education, health care and protection for kids." Carland's mission has even had an effect on how she responds to nasty postings. "Now when a ghastly tweet comes my way, I barely bat an eyelid," she writes. "It represents nothing more than a chalk-mark on my mental tally for the next [installment] to UNICEF." (A slain Japanese journalist tweeted against hate before he died.)