This is going to come as a shock to some people but not everything you read on the Internet is true. Now that I’ve shattered your world let me discuss something that should raise red flags whenever you read it: anything that looks like propaganda. Propaganda can be easily recognized as it will make one side of an issue look perfect and the other as evil as possible. The reason I’m bringing this up is because there is a lot of people in the shooting community have, shall we say, a negative view on Muslims. While I can’t see wisdom in shoehorning approximately 2.2 billion people into a single caricature but I digress. Not too long ago news was circulating that Isis had handed down a decree that all girls between the ages of 11 and 46 be subjected to genital mutilation. This spread like wildfire and I heard plenty of variations on “See! Muslims are a bunch of barbarians!” As it turns out this story, like many stories that put a group into a very negative light, is probably bullshit:
top UN official quoted from a statement saying that Isis wanted all females aged between 11 and 46 in the northern city to undergo the procedure.
Jacqueline Badcock said the decree was of grave concern.
But media analysts say the decree seen on social media may be a fake.
It has typos and language mistakes and is signed by “The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant”, a name the group no longer uses, instead referring to itself as the Islamic State.
Some bloggers suggest that the alleged fatwa, which has been circulated on social media for about two days, may have been aimed at discrediting Isis.
Isis is a bad gang and can be easily discredited without fabricating stories. It is a bad enough gang that the story about female genital mutilation is believable. But just because something is believable doesn’t mean it’s true. And that brings us to today’s lesson. If it sounds like propaganda take it with a grain of salt. Try to verify the information through credible (or at least pseudo-credible) sources before you begin writing your epic hate-filled Internet rant on random message forums.