By Charles Rein
Sept. 11th remembrances event today will occur with patriotic songs, neighbors coming together with candle vigils, powerful vertical searchlights as a tribute in lights, yet we're still in the dark regarding extremism/terrorism. Sometimes our information on this topic arrives stealthy and electronically. Beware of what you read or forward to others, especially when it's received anonymously-there's no author given credit, it's possibly false or a misleading email.
In a factcheck.org 2008 article, a writer who debunks rumor and lore shared advice. David Emery, author of About.com Urban Legends page was mentioned in the article titled, 'That Chain Email your friend sent you is (likely) bogus. Seriously.'
In 10 years of this line of work he reviewed 1,000 or so e-mails and responded: "A substantially larger portion – maybe around half of all the emails or a little more – contain a mixture of facts and falsehoods.” Then, there’s a little thing called “spin.” “You can take a string of incontrovertible facts and present them in such a way that they point to a false conclusion.”
That's how a chain email appeared to me, but you be the judge. Interesting that the email sender resembled the mindset of an Immigration Officer. (link below) She may even have a personal ax to grind against anyone named Mo- Mohammad. This Kuwaiti-American/comedian MO AMER jokes about it here:
https://www.tiktok.com/@summitcomedy/video/7269722691949661483
So back to that chain email which I received from, oh let's call her Lonnie. It also affirmed 'the Facts below are "Historically correct." Another indication that it could be mis-leading. If it was really true, why would they push to hard to convince you that this is historically accurate.
In the forwarded chain email, 'Lonnie' has more dates, than the Brad Pitt as a teenager! Historical battles dates: 732, 1532, 1683. Next is a long list of atrocities taking place over nearly 13 centuries (1300 years for those not so good at math) and seemingly due to only two factors: "Muslim+Male" shortened here to M&M. (Not to be confused with the candy of - same name.)
Returning to the email and looking into one of the so called 'historically correct facts': The 1968 assassination of RFK, I felt like a detective. Watch out tv detective Colombo. Here I come! The date was correct; the rest was misleading. In reality, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was born on Jerusalem the son of a Christian Arab. Arab doesn't automatically mean Muslim.
The chain email further mentioned an embassy hostage crisis in 1979, a military barracks bombing in Beirut Lebanon in 1983, commercial airline hijackings in the 1970's-all the worst sort of news and blaming all one type of people. How are these people labeled? Hint-they're not Christians. But they do respect Jesus and have devoted a whole chapter in their Holy book to Jesus's mother, Mary or Maryam as they call her.
I can't state all the historical events presented (due to space constraints) but you can read about them. Google, 'Camel's Nose Under the Tent'. Rather than labeling a group of people by sex and religion, let's ask: Who helped to put some of the terrorists behind bars? The answer may surprise you.
I recommend watching, 'The Looming Towers' based on the Ali Soufan's book, 'The Black Banners-The Inside story of 9-11 and the War Against al-Qaeda.' (Spolier Alert-author is a MALE MUSLIM and an FBI agent) You'll see that the star witness of the trial was a MALE MUSLIM, whose testimony helped sentenced four Al-Qaeda terrorists.
Imagine it the other way around.
An atheist creating a false image of violent "MALE CHRISTIANS" and sending out thousands of emails as equally misleading. Imagine these emails stating, without nuance:
Killer of Lincoln - John Wilkes Booth -Male Christian
Jeffrey Dahmer - murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991 was a cannibalistic, murdering rapist (converted in prison) -Male Christian
Timothy McVeigh convicted of blowing up the Oklahoma City Federal Building was raised Christian (Catholic). (Though honestly it's uncertain how connected he was with church or God upon his death).
The pilot of the military plane, The Enola Gay, which dropped an atomic bomb and killed thousands of Japanese civilians - Paul Tibbits, a Male Christian.
See how ridiculous the above sounds? We owe it to ourselves to learn more about topics and groups. A recommended book, 'Who is My Enemy - Questions American Christians Must Face About Islam and Themselves' by Christian author, Lee C. Camp. He writes of standing near ground zero in NYC (to observe and pray) not long after the 9/11 attacks: I came across a small note... from a little girl. She raised the question often heard in those days about the terrorist attackers. "How could they do this to us?" ...What if we take that question as an authentic agenda of understanding?
...Lee continues "the point is this, if we are even to begin to make space for the possibility of peacemaking or change, then we must first examine ourselves. The Christian author, goes on to write of the term 'double vision' and "seeking to practice that enemy love through acts of empathy- an empathy that may not agree, approve or necessarily even tolerate, but nevertheless seeks to understand... We may, in the process, learn more about ourselves than we learn about the one we call our enemy."