Vigilance needed to stop the peddlers of hate of 'others'. (Kiron Reid)

Vigilance needed to stop the peddlers of hate of 'others'.

May 15, 2009 11:16 AM

Quite a few fake stories are circulating on the internet to try and stir up anti-Islamic sentiment. The worst one I've seen is the fake internet story claiming that teaching about the Holocaust has been banned in Britain. A complete lie. I write about the 'it seems impossible. . pps' in some detail on the views and the downloads section of my website.

Another one of these made up stories was doing the rounds a lot in England on St. George's Day (23 April) but I found was a few years old and made up - the same kind of thing, purporting to be a liberal dialogue on free speech against a Muslim bigoted woman in a supermarket. I was convinced by the critique I saw that pointed out the woman (supposedly an Iraqi Muslim) was not described in a way that would be consistent with Muslim women in Iraq at all. I was sent that by a British friend in America who I guess was partly taken in because she is far away from home. There were lots of people unthinkingly repeating it here on far right BNP websites, I guess much more keen to believe anything negative about other races than to put their minds into gear.

For reference this latest misinformation often begins with an email headed:

'My thoughts exactly........'

And begins

"My thoughts exactly........

Don't you wish you had said it...................?

Hit the nail on the head! An incident occurred in a supermarket in England recently, when the following was witnessed:

A Muslim woman dressed in a Burkha"

All the evidence on the internet that I can see points to this being an urban myth. Probably not true and probably spread by people on the far right to encourage anti-Muslim sentiment. Most of these things that circulate by email are. Of course it is not just one sided lies. There are a lot of idiots out there who damage community relations with sweeping attacks claiming they are protecting 'Muslims' (the far left loonies who make up now most of the UK 'Stop the War coalition' for a start - as if all people from one religion are a group, idiots!).

Like an American reader it took me quite a while to track down any official statement about the 'it seems impossible' file. I said "I wonder if some people in our Education Ministry don't realise that they need to be a lot more high profile in rebutting this kind of thing straight away."

The new hate file convinced me again that we all need to be vigilant to quash these wherever we can and to point out errors to our friends who may have been taken in by them. Thank fully a search of the internet again shows lots of good minded people doing that, taking their time to promote tolerance and truth, to help correct misinformed but well intentioned people and to strike a written blow for understanding rather than ignorance. That is good work you are doing.