Recently a friend forwarded a lengthy anonymous treatise on Islam titled A Call to Muslims. The authors called themselves “Humanist former Muslims” and were identified only by a first name Roya in Australia. Roya‘ s piece interested us because we have found the Internet overflowing with similar material since Day911, some of it arriving within hours of the suicide bombing, and it does not stop coming. Roya claims to be Muslims who are calling for some kind of reform. Roya quoted no less than 20 passages represented to be from the Koran (Qur’an) which Roya gives as evidence of why reform is needed from within Islam. Several of these quotes are provided here, and all of them will be posted to our website for your comments. In examining the quotes, it appears there is considerable distortion which seems to be intentional.
Some of these unsolicited advisory warnings about Islam are more balanced and subtle than others, but most stories seem to be bent on convincing us Islam is equated to terrorism and war. As an organization, We Hold These tries to judge the veracity of popular themes that are going around and influencing large numbers, including our own friends and readers be they religious or secular. We try to examine any extraordinarily popular delusion as best we can, looking at what is being promoted, by whom and why. Backtracking of propaganda is the best way to find out who wants you to believe what.
The most overt example of what may be engineered anti-Islam propaganda was the carefully leaked story of the note inside an Anthrax letter, which the mainline news slyly reportedly bear Islamic identification, a sort of unsigned confession. But it seems, no one has a clue as to who are the senders. The identity of the writers of those letters is even more anonymous than Roya. Clearly, the leakage of anything purposefully written within such letters is nothing less than destructive malicious hearsay, and everybody knows it. Whoever sent the letter(s) might certainly want to make it appear someone else did it. The story and the note have the appearance of a
