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There is no shortage of jihad misrepresentations on social media. In February 2019, a meme featuring a handful of distorted translations of Qur'anic verses (including verses about jihad) along…

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tagsja-picks, factual_claims, corroborated, xref, category/factual-claims
aliases@karipek_portrayals_2020, loc. 46

5 min read

There is no shortage of jihad misrepresentations on social media. In February 2019, a meme featuring a handful of distorted translations of Qur’anic verses (including verses about jihad) along with a picture of Muslim Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota began circulating on the internet. The writer of the meme took his translations from a post on a website called Islam Watch, started by six former Muslims who ‘felt it incumbent upon [them] to make the non-Muslim world aware of the reality of Islam, and undertake timely precautionary measures against this religion of terror, hatred and mayhem.’ Those translations are not from a scholar of Islam. They are not even translations. Rather, they are interpretations of the verses from the writer of that Islam Watch post, who describes himself as a freelance writer, not a scholar of religion.

Evidence

The creator of the meme did this for every verse in the meme. Despite these textual fallacies, this meme was shared more than 50,000 times on Facebook alone. — Asena Karipek, Portrayals of Jihad, 46 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

An example of a verse about jihad that was misrepresented by the meme is: “The Jews call ‘Uzair a son of Allah, and the Christians call Christ the son of Allah. That is a saying from their mouth; (in this) they but imitate what the unbelievers of old used to say. Allah’s curse be on them: how they are deluded away from the Truth!” 36 The writer of the Islam Watch post interpreted this verse to mean: “The Jews and the Christians are perverts; fight them.” The creator of the meme took this interpretation and represented it as a translation. In fact, the verse does not say anything about fighting, but the post writer’s interpretation makes it sound as if that is what is being expressed here. — Asena Karipek, Portrayals of Jihad, 46 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

  • corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim
  • XREF: connects to: A factually distorted anti-jihad meme spread over fifty thousand times online — Asena Karipek, Portrayals of Jihad: A Cause of…, 46; He then quotes a Palestinian fighter in Afghanistan to show his definition of jihad: holy war against the West and violence against ‘Jews and infidels.’ Such a simplistic and superficial definition of jihad causes him to blame all Muslims for the consequences of militant Islam. His book leaves readers with the idea that all Muslim immigrants are potential terrorists simply because they are Muslim. He completely ignores the identity of the American Muslim population, painting Islam as a ‘foreign’ and ‘terrorist’ ideology that has penetrated American society. In short, his book depicts any identification with Islam as a threat everyone, non-Muslims and Muslims alike because it cannot coexist with other religions due to its inherent nature of allowing Muslims to impose their faith on others. Furthermore, Emerson deliberately leaves the word ‘Allah’ untranslated in his book in order to give off the idea that the Muslims’ concept of God is different from the Judeo-Christian concept of God. He also uses terminology such as ‘holy jihad’ and ‘militant jihad’ in order to instill fear in his readers.; Among American Muslims who said it has become more difficult to be a Muslim in the U.S. in recent years, the second most-answered reason for this was ‘negative media portrayals.’ In addition, 53% of Americans think that coverage of Islam and Muslims by American news organizations is generally unfair to Muslims and Islam. However, it is not just the media that is guilty of this tainted image of jihad. Islamophobes also have a hand in the way jihad is portrayed to the American public. Prominent Islamophobes like Pamela Gellar, Robert Spencer, Daniel Pipes, Steven Emerson, and Frank Gaffney, as well as others, portray jihad as Muslims’ attempt to force non-Muslims to convert to Islam and eradicate those who refuse. They establish non-governmental organizations and carry out campaigns dedicated to the portrayal of Islam as a violent religion and use their own interpretation of jihad as proof. (+3 more)

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