The Internet Is a great place for harvesting knowledge.
It is also the world's primary repository of virtual rubbish and
misinformation, and it seems to be a mechanism of unparalleled
efficiency when it comes to spreading prejudice.
The Internet
Is a great place for harvesting knowledge. It is also the
world's primary repository of virtual rubbish and misinformation, and
it seems to be a mechanism of unparalleled efficiency when it comes to
spreading prejudice.
It really made me mad! And I don't
get mad very often - not at emails anyway.
As a representative of the church I get more
than my fair share of cyber-trash attempting to deride non-Christian
religions and cast suspicion on my Islamic neighbours, so I really
didn't think there was anything that the smug, white supremacist world
could throw at me that would shock me. I was wrong.
It was an email with a photograph of a
storefront of a shop somewhere in Texas. Clearly visible on the glass
door of the storefront was a sign that explained that the store was
closed for the day as the proprietor was commemorating the martyrdom of
Imam Ali. The email then stated that Imam Ali was one of the 9/11
hijackers who died in the Twin Towers attack!
The author of the email then went on to
helpfully supply the name and exact location of the shop so that
anybody in the region with a spare Molotov Cocktail would know exactly
where to hurl it. After all, why shouldn't this guy have his
shop trashed and his business destroyed? Why shouldn't he be
lynched in fact? Does anything less than death befit such an arrogant
anti-American traitor who boldly displays his reverence for America's
enemies on his shopfront window?
The only problem with this scenario of
course is that Imam Ali
was NOT one of the 9/11 hijackers. Imam Ali was the
son-in-law of the prophet Mohammed and was assassinated while praying
in the year 661. Imam
Ali had as much to do with the 9/11 tragedy as did Mohammed Ali, and
what's more, the author of the email must have known that!
It is not possible that the author of the email simply made a mistake,
and that that perhaps one of the suicide jihadists coincidentally
shared the same name as the historical Ali, for 'Imam' is not a
name. It is a title, comparable to 'Father' or 'Reverend'.
Imam Ali was a holy man. Indeed, for Shi'a Muslims Ali is the first of
the great Imams and hence holds a position in the Islamic faith similar
to that of St Peter or St Paul for church-goers (whose martyrdoms many
Christians remember each year).
Of course I appreciate that the majority of
Western people will not know any of this, and I'm sure the author of
the email was counting on that. I happen to know a fair bit about Imam
Ali, mainly because last year some Islamic friends invited me to a play
on his life (and death).
It was a long production, started an hour
late and was performed entirely by well-meaning teenagers. I
found it hard going. Even so, by the end of the production I
knew who Imam Ali was, and had a pretty good appreciation of the
central role he played in these people's faith.
Back to the email...
What was running through the author's head
when he thought of staging this hoax. It couldn't have just been a
knee-jerk reaction. This guy had taken the time to get a good photo of
the shop, with a clear image of the sign displayed on the window. He'd
then embedded it in an html email and crafted his story. He must have
known the potential for damage.
Was he perhaps the owner of a competing shop
in the same mall? That's possible, and it would have been an
effective way of getting rid of a competitor. My guess though
is that it was just some guy full of hate who believes that all Muslims
are terrorists-in-the-making (if not actual full-blown terrorists) and
hence any attack against any Muslim person is warranted, even if based
on a lie, because if they aren't our enemies yet they are no doubt on
the way to becoming our enemies, so the more we get rid of in the short
term the less we have to deal with in the long term. I think
the logic goes something like that.
Of course a slightly more intelligent person
would see that spreading lies about someone and trashing their shop is
an excellent strategy for creating enemies out of potential friends,
but guys like the author of this hoax probably don't get that far in
their thinking. They prefer simpler equations: eg. All Muslims are terrorists. All
terrorists must die!
The Internet Is a great place for harvesting
knowledge. It is also the world's primary repository of virtual rubbish
and misinformation, and it seems to be a mechanism of unparalleled
efficiency when it comes to spreading prejudice.
How are we supposed to deal with garbage like this? The answer is
simple enough. We fight back in kind by publishing truth. We
uncover lies and dispel myths, and we encourage our peers to check out
their facts before they trash someone's shop.
For those who thrive on simplistic equations
such as 'all Arabs are
Muslims', 'All Muslims are terrorists', etc., we give them
the facts.
All Arabic people are not Muslims. Many Arabs are
Christians, and indeed some of the oldest churches in the world are
made up of Arabic Christians.
Conversely, all Muslims are not Arabs. 62%
of the world's Muslim population actually live in Asia.
Islam did not introduce suicide bombing into the
world. That was done primarily by the Japanese in World War II, and was
reintroduced by the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka.
Not all suicide bombers are Muslims. An analysis of
Hezbollah suicide bombers after the first Lebanon war found that only a
third were Muslims. Most were communists and there were some Christians.
And most importantly … not all Muslims are terrorists.
I'm sure I don't need to give statistics to
back up this last point. How many of the Muslim people you
know are terrorists? Of course the great irony is that the persons I
know who are the most fearful of their Muslim neighbours are persons
who don't personally know any Muslim people at all!
It should work the other way around,
shouldn't it? If we are going to fear anyone it should surely
be those people who have I have an established record of doing us
harm. When I think of the long list of people who, over the
years, have hurt me, maligned me, threatened and betrayed me, there's
not a single Arabic or Muslim person amongst them. I suspect that for
most Islamophobic people it's exactly the same. You'd think
that would count for something.
No. We fear what we don't
understand. We fear the unfamiliar. Prejudice is built upon
this sort of ignorance and it becomes the fuel for violence and war. It
is the truth that sets us free.
February 2010
Rev. David B. Smith
(the 'Fighting Father')
Parish
priest, community worker,
martial arts master, pro boxer, author, father of four www.fatherdave.org
