When I read the story about the letters containing disagreeable language that were allegedly sent to mosques in California, my first thought was that this might be yet another fake ‘hate crime’. But rather than jump in and say so immediately, I thought I’d be cautious and sensible and wait and see what the police and the Federal Bureau of Investigations turned up once they’d got their teeth into the case.
Other groups, most notably the increasingly discredited British ‘Islamophobia’ monitor Tell Mama and the Hamas-linked Council for American Islamic Relations in the USA, were not so cautious. Tell Mama went big on this story, without checking it and without, as this blog has done, waiting for more confirmatory detail to emerge.
Now according to the FBI it is looking increasingly likely that these letters were sent as a prank and there is no credible threat behind them. Equally likely, they could have been sent from within the Muslim community by those with a vested interest in falsely making Muslims out to be victims of ‘Islamophobia’.
According to a story on Breitbart, which was also quoted by Jihad Watch, the FBI said that they ‘can’t confirm’ that the letters sent to the mosques came from outside the Islamic community. Oh what a surprise, not only is this looking like yet another fake ‘hate crime’ but it’s another one, like the Birmingham ‘hijab pulling’ case which Tell Mama are treating as being 100% true, even though there are grave doubts about the true nature of this California incident.
Brietbart said:
Law enforcement officials gathered with local Muslim leaders at the Islamic Center of Southern California to respond to threatening letters that had been sent to several mosques in the state.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) could not, however, confirm that the letters actually came from outside the community, or that they were not a prank. And the Los Angeles Police Department said that the letters were being investigated as a “hate incident,” not a “hate crime,” because there was no specific, immediate threat.
Stephen Woolery, FBI Special Agent in Charge of the Counterterrorism Division in Los Angeles, said that at least five letters were received by Islamic institutions in California. Letters were received in San Jose, Northridge, Claremont, Signal Hill, and Los Angeles. He added that there was possibly one more letter that had been received outside the state, possibly in Georgia.
One letter, widely circulated in the media, read, in part: “You Muslims are a vile and filthy people … There’s a new sheriff in town — President Donald Trump. He’s going to cleanse America … He’s going to do to you Muslims what Hitler did to the Jews.”
There is obviously no credible threat to Muslims in the California area because the FBI and others have downgraded this incident. Of course the FBI is having to play the politically correct card by making various mouth noises about having ‘strong partners in the community’, but as time goes on the claims of threats of violent ‘Islamophobia’ as this one is, are increasingly being revealed to be baseless or even fraudulent.
Breitbart added:
Woolery stressed that there was little risk of an actual attack by the author of the letters. “Typically, behavior like this never precedes an attack — they never give us warning,” he told Breitbart News. He added that such incidents of hate mail were typically under-reported.
Exactly! Also, hate mail where there is no specific and credible threat is considered by many to be protected speech in terms of the First Amendment to the US constitution. I’d also like to add at this point that maybe these incidents of poison pen letters are ‘under-reported’ because they are in reality small in number.
The way that Tell Mama have reported this incident and capitalised on it is yet more evidence why this group should not be trusted to monitor crime and should not be in receipt of the massive amounts of public money that they are getting at the moment. We the taxpayer should not be handing over upwards of £182,000 per annum to Tell Mama if they can’t even get their facts straight or can’t even wait for evidence that either proves or disproves a particular alleged incident of ‘Islamophobia’. Waiting until confirmatory evidence for a particular story or statement is in your possession is basic common sense. Basic fact checking is something that a person would probably learn in their first term of journalism school but it is something that Tell Mama continue to fail to learn.
There is a great danger in promulgating these fake hate crime stories and calling them true and that danger is this: One day they may really need the rest of us to believe them when they tell us of a genuine case of violence aimed at an innocent Muslim, but because of their record for constantly crying wolf, we just won’t believe them. If groups like CAIR and Tell Mama continue to promote stories that are obviously false or rely on information supplied by witnesses and activists that are or could be considered as unreliable, then they are causing problems for themselves in the future. ‘Islamophobia’ groups like Tell Mama have become so notoriously unreliable as sources of accurate information that if one of their staff told me it was raining outside, I’d feel that I would need to go outside and check to see if they were telling the truth.
If I could wait for a week before commenting on this story because I felt that it was ethically better to do so, why could these lavishly funded ‘Islamophobia’ monitors not do the same?
Links
Breitbart story of the possibly fraudulent ‘Islamophobic’ letters sent to California mosques
Jihad Watch treatment of this story
Tell Mama’s talking up of the alleged poison pen letter incident
http://tellmamauk.org/three-california-mosques-receive-hateful-letters-mentioning-trump/
Mainstream media buy into the Musilm victimhood narrative without waiting for any proper facts to emerge
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/28/us/mosques-receive-hate-letters
Fake ‘hijab pulling’ attack in Birmingham story from the Tell Mama site. This story although disproved in the courts is still being run by Tell Mama wihtout correction and is being treated as if it was true.
http://tellmamauk.org/early-morning-assault-in-birmingham-leaves-young-female-fearful/
The scandalous amount of taxpayer cash that is being granted by the Department of Communities and Local Government to the discredited and disgraced Tell Mama organisation.
They jump on the bandwagon at the first opportunity. There is a good article debunking their record on the New English Review website.
They do indeed jump on any available bandwagon. They will exploit everyone and everything for example: It turns my stomach to see them appropriating the image and memory of Elie Wiesel in order to promote their shitty group. I was also horrified to see how they exploited mercilessly a catastrophically mentally ill transsexual in order to gain sympathy and influence over the CPS. The sad thing is that although I hate and despise the ideology of Islam and believe that it needs controlling and have its influence removed, I do not wish harm to come to individual Muslims and one day this group’s lies will catch up on them and an innocent muslim may come to harm, Tell Mama may highlight it, and nobody will believe them because of their disgraceful record of mendacity.