Obama is a devil muslim! and my reply to that email...
So occasionally I receive these crazy half-baked emails from well-meaning people who apparently have never heard of Google, and mostly have email addresses that end in '.net'.
My usual response, is to do nothing. But after receiving a particularly alarming email last night I decided to reply... and not just to the original sender :)
Here is the timeline of events:
2:41 PM Nov. 4 - Election Day
I receive a [poorly formatted] email that has been forwarded 4 times to roughly 40ish people.
Feel free to read the tiny print, but the gist is:
Obama cancelled the 21st Annual National Prayer day (false)
...after saying that our nation was not a Christian nation (false)
...and then shambled over to the thousands of Muslims he had invited to his house and prayed with them (do you need another link?)
So obviously this is some poor writing and worse formatting, but typographical beef aside, it seemed to me on first reading that some facts were probably getting taken out of context. I was giving the author the benefit of the doubt.
So I decided to do some research.
A cursory google search of the term "21st annual prayer day cancelled" proves to return pages of articles debunking the article
So I choose the 4 sources that seem the least spammy, and I learn that the almost the entire article is a big fat lie.
Obama didn't cancel any prayer day. In fact he quietly and personally recognizes it every year. It turns out Obama handles the Annual Prayer day just like every other president before him... however the fuck he wants to! Because unlike many of the starched rituals of the office, this is one day the President can ignore. Though so far only two presidents have ignored it, proving their devil-worshipping communist roots:
Most presidents have issued annual or special occasion proclamations for a national day of prayer, with the notable exceptions of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson
Obama never prayed with muslims. He did however take of his shoes once in a mosque. May God, Jesus and Payton Manning forgive him.
Obama never said we aren't a christian Nation. He could have. But he more accurately said "We are no longer JUST a christian nation". Which it turns out is true! Since as a country we are trending towards "Meh" as our national religion. Source: http://religions.pewforum.org/reports
However, this little earworm of a misquote, is what lead me to a more interesting find. It turns out, before Obama was a rather lack-luster Commander in Chief, he was a fiery and eloquent orator with a penchant for the dramatic. And this quote was taken from a very interesting speech that he gave in 2006 addressing Faith and Politics.
So, armed with the 'word' and the 'truth' I decided to respond to this email, against my better judgement, and here's what I did.
I emailed everyone on the list.
Having been raised Christian myself I found this email very interesting so I did some basic research and to my surprise found that it is mostly inaccurate. One of the articles that thoroughly debunks this email myth is by the Christian Century. I've attached the article in full here.
And then I closed with a quote I found in that 2006 speech that Obama gave, in which he talks about the inherent mistrust between secular and religious people:
So we all have some work to do here. But I am hopeful that we can bridge the gaps that exist and overcome the prejudices each of us bring to this debate. And I have faith that millions of believing Americans want that to happen. No matter how religious they may or may not be, people are tired of seeing faith used as a tool of attack. They don't want faith used to belittle or to divide. They're tired of hearing folks deliver more screed than sermon. Because in the end, that's not how they think about faith in their own lives.
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