I fact-checked that old anti-Muslim mass email, and you'll totally believe what happened next

Tuesday, July 12, 2016

A beloved relative recently included me on an email forward that I simply could not ignore. I’m not the first person to write a rebuttal to this email. It has been making the rounds since at least 2009, as the screenshot below illustrates.

[caption id=“attachment_2525” align=“aligncenter” width=“700”]<img class=“size-large wp-image-2525” src=“https://joeross1.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/27aed-scr.png?w=1024&amp;h=768" alt=‘Earliest Google result for “An Eye Opener” email: archive.is/jO20n’ width=“700” height=“525”> Earliest Google result for “An Eye Opener” email: archive.is/jO20n[/caption]

My response took about an hour to research and draft but there is so much factual evidence available to refute the absurd claims made in the “An Eye Opener” email that you could do a thesis on it. In other words, the little bit of work I did here is just the tip of the iceberg.

Here’s the full text of the email, followed by my reply.

Introduction

This is the exact text of an email I received recently from a very intelligent relative:

AN EYE-OPENER

Charity Hospital run by the Sisters of Charity in New Orleans, along with the Upjohn company developed the plasma system in the1930’s that saved so many lives in WWII, Korea, Vietnam and in the Middle East now.

During the Civil War most of the nurses were nuns.

Even if you are not Catholic, this is eye opening:

When the Catholic Church was founded in the United States, there were no hospitals.

Today, one out of five persons in this country receive their medical care at a Catholic hospital.

When the Catholic Church was founded, there were no schools. Today, the Catholic Church teaches 3 million students a day, in its more than 250 Catholic Colleges and Universities, in its more than 1200 Catholic High Schools and its more than 5000 Catholic grade schools.

Every day, the Catholic Church feeds, clothes, shelter and educates more people than any other organization in the world.

The new Obama Health Mandate could end all this and the tax payers would have to make up the loss.

Also, all Catholic adoption services will come to an end… a human disaster.

There are more than 77 million Catholics in this country. It takes an estimated 50 million Catholic votes to elect a president.

I am asking all of you to go to the polls in 2016 and be united in replacing all Senators, Congress and the president with someone who will respect the Catholic Church, all Christians Churches of every denomination, the Jewish Synagogues and all other Religions and Temples with perhaps the exception of Islam.

Mr. President, you said in a speech, “The USA is not a Christian Nation”. You are wrong - we are a Christian Nation founded on Judeo-Christian values allowing all religions in America to worship and practice freely… something that Islam will never do.

Oh, by the way Mr. President, on your MUSLIM HERITAGE in America ….

Have you ever been to a Muslim hospital, heard a Muslim orchestra, seen a Muslim band march in a parade, know of a Muslim charity, ever seen Muslims shaking hands with a Muslim Girl Scout, or ever seen a Muslim Candy Striper volunteering in a hospital?

Have you ever seen a Muslim do much of anything that contributes positively to the American way of life?

One more note….. in every church or synagogue, I have ever been in, in the United States, I have always seen an American flag. No mosques in the United States carriers or flies an American flag.

Let’s circulate this to as many as possible.

Remember the elections are coming up in November 2016!

Response

Now, we will simply examine the facts:

There are no Muslim hospitals in the U.S. that I know of. However, any successful businessperson can appreciate the difficulty of running an operation which, in today’s political climate, may only have about 1% of the U.S. population as potential customers.

The American Blues has roots in Muslim music, probably because about 30% of American Slaves were Muslim. That is, until they were brutally enslaved and often forcibly converted to Christianity by Christian slaveholders.

Islamic influences on Medieval Europe are also well-documented, including with regard to music (there’s even a 13th century miniature depicting a Muslim and a Christian jamming on their lutes together).

It appears Muslims influenced a great many other areas of European history, which of course trickled down to U.S. history. Even Saint Thomas Aquinas “made a study of the Islamic writers and admitted his indebtedness to them."

New York Public Radio affiliate WQXR has a great story on historically significant orchestral tours, including the following section:

A product of Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim and the late Palestine activist Edward Said, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra was founded in 1999 to bridge the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and bring young musicians of Jewish and Arab descent together to make music. The orchestra is based in Seville, Spain, a city chosen for having both Jewish and Muslim legacies. And its performances are better received outside the musicians' homelands. However, the group traveled to Ramallah in 2005 for a concert. The visit is considered one of the first non-militaristic encounters between Israelis and residents of the Occupied Territories.

See also: National Arab Orhestra and New York Arabic Orchestra

Muslims ‘Give Most To Charity’, Ahead Of Christians, Jews And Atheists, Poll Finds: I admit, this article is three years old and relates only to British citizens, but it is data nonetheless.

Directory of 1,271 Islamic charities: Yes, there are 4 times as many Jewish charities and 84 times as many Christian charities, but the data suggest that if we don’t know of any Muslim charities it isn’t because they don’t exist.

As for marching bands in parades, I could find none in the U.S. but I did notice that marching bands are most likely an import from Ottoman military history, as seen here.

Muslims do have parades, but a quick Google search and some careful reading will show many of the marchers are more focused on the geopolitical turmoil in their home countries rather than their religion, and many U.S. commentators, pro- as well as anti-Islam, are ignorant of that fact.

As for Girl Scouts, where do we begin? Here are few links:

As for volunteering:

Muslims have done much of anything that contributes positively to the American way of life. Like football, and basketball, and boxing, and many other things. While the roughly 5,900 Muslim-American military members of the U.S. Armed Forces make up only a bit more than a quarter of one percent of the Armed Forces, their contribution to the American way of life surely cannot be denied.

Some Mosques do actually have American flags, like this one, and this one, and this one, and this one, and even ones who receive bomb threats.

Conclusion

If there is any doubt left as to the absurdity and ignorance of the claims made about Islam in the email this post destroys I will address them with a future article on the well-documented history of Christian bloodlust throughout the centuries. #justsayin

#Articles #Islam #Islamophobia #extremism #Muslim Americans #xenophobia