Newsweek fabricated Quran sentence counts to demonize Lindh via satanic numerology

Evidence

Narratives like this create imagery of a privileged white boy who forgoes all luxuries as a result of his conversion to Islam. In tracking Lindh’s transition from a “normal” American teenager to Muslim terrorist, Newsweek creates an implicit psychological profile for him, underscoring his “deviance” from normative (white, middle-class) masculinity. Through a curious numbercrunching process that cites Lindh’s devotion to the “6,666 sentences” of the Qur’an, the article evokes references to Satan’s sixes in the service of painting a damning portrait of Lindh, when there are in fact 6,346 verses, 114 chapters, and 57,152 sentences in the Qur’an. The blatant misinformation of such a narrative emphasizes difference: he was like us, and then he became something vaguely sinister, involved in a numerological scheme that evokes the greatest enemy of Christianity. In this narrative, converting to Islam involves a transformation from civilized to uncivilized, marked by religious compulsion and rigidity. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 918 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Media falsely cited the Quran as having 6,666 sentences to invoke Satanic imagery. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race…, 918; Medieval polemicists distorted Quranic verses to serve anti-Muslim arguments — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 2364; Medieval Christian writers distorted Islam where accuracy served polemic — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1367

Broader Connections

• Media falsely cited the Quran as having 6,666 sentences to invoke Satanic imagery. #expands (0.97) — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 918