Understanding Islam

Allah or Jesus? This was the question posed in an e-mail I received a couple of weeks ago, apparently forwarded several times over, originating I know not where. It described an event (which allegedly happened in London) at which a Muslim imam had claimed that it was the solemn duty of all Muslims to kill all non-Muslims everywhere. A bit of research exposed the story as a hoax – but I don’t know how many people had read the e-mail without doing the research, and are using it as proof that Muslims are a dangerous threat to all of us.

I received another forwarded e-mail a few months ago – this one claiming that under pressure from Muslims, all mention of the Jewish holocaust was to be removed from the National Curriculum. This also turned out to be a hoax. 

We clearly live in a time when fear of Islam is rife. There are apparently some good reasons to be wary, when one sees some of the terrible acts which have been perpetrated in our country and elsewhere in the name of Islam. But when anonymous individuals deliberately circulate false rumours in order to besmirch the name of a major world religion and all its adherents, then we seem to have reached a level of hysteria which at least demands some proper investigation.