Shouldn't be there a continuation of this sentence? When mosque.... then what?

Guys look berlin wall in action again

This is a meme format in english unfortunately so part of the joke is that it’s dumb and oversimplified to poke fun at people taking that position (ie. you think like an idiot). X is when Y

It's a meme to say "blank is when blank" as a sarcastic gesture towards a ridiculous oversimplification. It's not grammatical. They're saying sarcastically, "hahaha you seriously think colonialism is when there are a lot of mosques?" So the progression is... "you think **colonialism** happens merely **when** there are **mosques**?" ***\[add sarcastic, over simplified meme template\]*** "colonialism is when mosque" In other words, they meme is making fun of the oversimplification of saying mosques are related to colonialization by rendering the joke in a grammatically wrong simplified way

The continuation of the sentence is implied, and the poor grammar is part of the joke. It's a sarcastic, mocking way of saying "Colonialism is when mosques take over" or something like that. It's likely to reiterate what a dumb take the OP had.

The “x is when y” sentence is a means of framing the absurdity of an argument. Colonialism is when mosque. When mosque what? When the mosque simply *is*. What Omar is basically arguing is that to call the increase in mosques in Germany “colonialism” is a gross oversimplification of the term

She is using purposefully incorrect grammar while purposefully misrepresenting the argument. Basically: https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/738025-i-was-only-pretending-to-be-retarded

It's a meme way to write a sentence; it's not supposed to sound smart or even make sense.

Not commenting on the politics involved in this meme, but: In meme slang, sometimes a noun (in this case, "mosque") is used as an abbreviated ***noun clause***. The implied sentence being abbreviated here would be, "Colonialism is when mosques are built in large numbers in Germany" (The mosques presumably being part of a culture from a different country than Germany, and thus, the speaker implies, "colonizing Germany"). A less political and polarizing example might be, "Happiness is when cake", meaning "Happiness is when I am eating cake".

r/phantomborders

Note, the internet just likes to oversimplify things in this way. It doesn’t always mean someone thinks you’re stupid. But “me when dog: 🫠” is like, anytime there’s a dog I melt. Aka I love dogs. Aka if you guys wanna send me pics of your dogs you can

You’re correct that this is not Standard English. That would be, (sarcastically) “Colonialism is when there are mosques.”

Its intentionally poor english

Adding context that may not be obvious to a non-native speaker: this is almost always a political meme, usually someone on the American/Western political left (liberal democrats, socialists, progressives, etc.) making fun of someone on the American/Western political right (conservatives, free-market capitalists, etc.). As others have said, this is always a sarcastic response, intended to make the original poster’s argument sound stupid. The meme really gained popularity with “socialism is when the government does stuff” and “communism is when no burger”. In each of these cases, you see someone with left-of-center western political values making fun of a conservative opinion they believe is overly simplistic or misunderstands the meaning of political words like “socialism”, “communism”, and “colonialism”.

It is a figure of speech made popular recently on the internet. It is intentionally incorrect grammar to be funny.

It's similar to the meme ["Socialism is when the government does stuff. And it's more socialism, the more stuff it does. And if it does a real lotta stuff, it's communism"](https://youtu.be/rgiC8YfytDw). Basically, it uses intentionally poor and simplistic grammar to mock the unintentionally poor and simplistic thinking of "government does stuff = socialism" or "mosques = colonialism"

This might also be a reference to the meme "Brutalism is when concrete, and the more concrete there is the brutalismer it is" Which uses extremely simplified, wrong grammar to poke fun at someone having just... Objectively wrong idea of what words mean.

It’s a form of informal speech. The retweeter is pointing out the lack of any real backing of what colonialism and mosques have to do with each other, and how if you do draw some correlation, you might have picked up on a dogwhistle. The lack of elaboration in the retweeter’s response is a combination of both a critique of the og tweet and also a use of informal language.

It's a modification of another joke, that "communism is when the government does stuff", typically made at the expense of those on the right being hyperbolic. This is similarly people on the right being hyperbolic, so it follows the same format. It's relatively typical in this sort of meme-like language to remove something like "exists" as a point of a little extra absurdity/oversimplification.

<a> is when <b> is a meme format. It's not grammatically correct, by design.

In formal English, yes. On social media, like Twitter/X, the meaning is clear enough: "Colonialism is when mosques *spread upon the face of the land (like in the picture)."*

This is meant to be a joke/meme. It means "(Sarcastically) Colonialism is when mosques exist."

The phrase there is a meme intentionally written ungrammatically to convey satire and strip it down to a false dichotomy ( if X then Y, but those aren't related) It’s meant to parody the incoherence of bad-faith discourse online.

It’s word soup, I assume the writer is a learner who yet don’t English good.

... underpants

Please do not attempt to learn proper english from twitter.