NationStates Jolt Archive

Some well meaning Christian fundamentalist at work left an e-mail copy of this essay (http://www.metrovoice.net/www.metrovoice.net/2003/0903_stlweb/0903_columns/mathes_sept_column.html) posted for everyone to see. The last lines had been changed to say that the story should be required reading for all Americans but the 'liberal' justice system, media and the (evil) ACLU would never allow it so pass it on yada yada. Other than that, Mr. Mathes essay was intact.

Knowing a bit about the Muslim faith, I immediately began to doubt the validity of the authors claims. So I decided to check it out.

Armed with a high speed connection and my favorite search engine it took me about 30 seconds to find the first link exposing the essay as a hoax. Well not really a hoax, the author does exist and did write the essay, but researchers found a different story. Let's just say Mr. Mathes embellished his encounter with a muslim inmate and invented some dialogue.

What really struck me was how ignorant some christians can be. This e-mail has been making the rounds apparently for about a year (google shows pages of places where fundies have posted it to their sites) and people are still being taken in by it. I doubted it the moment I read it and confirmed my doubts easily. Are so many Christians blinded by their 'faith' that they can't see through such weak lies? I guess it's easier to believe all Muslims evil than to actually take the time to understand their faith.

It isn't just Christians who believe 'everything' they read, as long as it agrees with what they already believe. Thank the gods Snopes exists to help those willing to investigate all these smarmy emails by doing so much legwork for them!

Personally, I think the sweetest enhancement they could make to e-mail would be for the forward button to route everything through snopes first, then send the crap back to whoever forwarded it with a big raspberry attached. :P

I don't think there are many Christians who buy anything people like this guy put out...then again things have gotten pretty bad since Falwell started calliing it Islam names

Of course it's easier to believe that, and if you're a member of a faith that believes that your way is the only way to salvation, then it's easy to demonize anything that's not the same as what you believe.

It should come as no surprise that the oldest religions--Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism--don't see their faiths as the only ways to salvation, while the younger ones--Christianity and Islam--see themselves as the only hope for salvation. There are some individual Christian churches that are starting to develop the same philosophy as the older religions as regards salvation--the more liberal sects like the Unitarians for instance also believe that there are many pathways to come to know God and that none are any better than any others.

Hoaxes that are promoted are the worse ones.

Ah, the brazen lies that fundies come up with! :lol: You don't have to be an imam to know that there is no paramount authority figure in Islam who can issues fatwas that all Moslems would consider binding.