May 10, 2008 — If it were possible to photograph cyberspace, what would it look like? Although there is a mind-numbing amount of excellent information out there, some days I suspect those virtual nether regions are an enormous garbage dump.
During a recent daily deluge of emails, one entitled "In the Name of Religion?" caught my attention.
It is a series of photographs, like individual frames in an amateur video, showing the wheel of a vehicle rolling over the arm of a small boy being held in place on the pavement by an adult male. The child’s face contorts in terror and agony. There is no sound track but viewers can almost hear his screams. It’s awful, a stomach-churning portrayal of the most depraved behavior imaginable.
The location is a street scene somewhere in Iran. An eight-year-old boy is supposedly being punished for stealing bread from a market. Under Sharia, Muslim religious law, his punishment is to have the thieving arm crushed beyond repair so it can never again be employed in theft.
The purpose of the piece is to provide a vivid visual example of the bestial behavior of Muslims who live in obedience to Sharia. The printed legend, in English and Hebrew, declares: "In the name of Islam this child is punished. Is this a religion of peace and love?"
The only conceivable answer from persons of any nationality or religious persuasion who possess even a modicum of decency is an outraged, angry, screaming "NO!"
But hold your bile — it’s a fake!
A sham, a hoax, a clumsily cobbled-together creation of photographic cut-and-paste, employing intentional deception to provide "evidence" that Muslims are cruel, heartless, barbaric beasts, made that way by their religion.
A quick check of a couple of Internet verification sites reveals that the photos, first published on an Iranian web site, are authentic, but they have nothing to do with religion.
The boy whose arm was run over was not being punished for a crime. He and the man with him, probably his father or uncle, were putting on a kind of amateur on-the-street theatrics common in that part of the world. The performers, of course, hoped the audience would be sufficiently entertained to cough up a few coins.
The last few frames in the original series, showing the child waving an uninjured, fully functioning arm, were expunged from the anti-Muslim email flyer. The omission could not have been accidental. The compiler was purporting to provide irrefutable photographic proof of the cruel depravity of Islam and its’ adherents.
The languages of the superscripted legend show that the target audience is persons predisposed to hate Muslims: Americans and Jews. Like mindless vulgarities scratched on toilet stalls, this is not an impressive piece of propaganda.
Dumb, naive, unthinking, bigoted Americans and Jews have a feeding frenzy over stuff like this, and they’re the ones who pick up this garbage and set it adrift in cyberspace.
I’m surprised this one is just now getting to me; it has apparently been clogging email inboxes for about three years. Most folks get them several times, like the perennial Madalyn Murray O'Hair thing claiming, falsely, that atheists are getting religious broadcasting thrown off the airways.
If the botched propaganda were accurate, truly an example of Sharia, what would that prove? That there are some pretty nasty Muslims out there? We already knew that!
Someday a Muslim operative may film the disgusting, deranged antics of the Westboro Baptist Church in the Kansas capital: the Topeka Taliban. They could make a CD, distribute it to every home and movie house in Muslim territory.
And rational, reasonable Muslims will say, "What does that prove: that there are some pretty nasty Christians out there? We already knew that."
The simplistic thinking of little minds and shallow spirits keeps the garbage circulating through cyberspace, hoping to turn up a few converts to the hate-Islam sickness.
Editor's note: W. Jackson "Jack" Wilson is a psychologist, an Episcopal priest, a sometime academic and a writer living in Colorado.
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