THIS IS THE EMAIL I told you about last time.
It's titled "No words can describe this."
The contents read:
No religion can ever justify such hideous crimes
Pass it on ......let the world know what's happening in the name of Islam...
Pass this to all, for public awareness.
It must be sent WORLD WIDE!
Even if this message is sent to you more than once, just keep on passing it on!
That's the message in the email.
Attached are the following photos:
Pretty awful, yes?
Except that it isn't true.
The photos document the act of a group of street magicians, who go around doing this stunt, then pass the hat.
The child is not harmed, and the grimace on his face is acting.
Notice how calm the kid is in the first picture, and how it only takes one hand to hold him down. Also notice the microphone in the adult's hand.
You can find evidence, and links to further documentation at Snopes, along with a very interesting and detailed explanation of the kinds of penalties Sharia Law does exact for theft.
(They don't involve crushing the arm of a child this age, but they can be, in extreme cases, more physically severe than the penalties under U.S. law—they're closer to the kind of thing you might find God prescribing in the Bible.)
So, like the other examples in my last two posts, this email was a straight-forward lie: a distortion of small t truth, in the interests of a political agenda.
I have, as I'm sure you do, some suspicions about whose agenda that is, but that question is beside the point.
The real problem is not that there are liars among us, or that they are well-financed and apparently without shame.
That will always be the case, until the day comes that we can cure sociopaths.
The real problem is a values problem.
We, the people, have somehow lost sight of the value of small t truth.
We have come to give it a lower priority than loyalty to one's party, we have come to give it a lower priority than the desire to win an argument—or an election.
We will pass on an email because we like its rhetorical impact, without once asking whether what it says is actually so.
We will forgive or ignore the lies told to us by political pundits and politicians if they are on our end of the political spectrum.
And that may be our downfall.
Next time: a spiritual discipline which
is essential to democracy...
