Toronto imam who was face of ‘completely false’ Harvey story calls out ‘industry of hate’

Good case study on fake news and some of the motives behind it:

Toronto imam Ibrahim Hindy set out to perform the hajj pilgrimage in Mecca in Saudi Arabia this week knowing it would be one of the most memorable experiences of his life, but he had no idea when he was away that he would become the face of a disturbing online story that would be shared thousands of times.

On Saturday, Hindy said he awoke to the sound of his phone buzzing incessantly and learned someone had put a photo of him front and centre in a story claiming that a mosque outside flood-ravaged Houston had refused help to hundreds displaced by tropical storm Harvey.

Screenshots of his face under the article titled “Hurricane victims storm and occupy Texas mosque who refused To help Christians” filled his social media feed. The problem, said Hindy, was he had never heard of the mosque or even been to Texas.

‘The whole thing was kind of surreal’

“The whole thing was kind of surreal,” Hindy told CBC News. “I’m in the middle of a desert, just minding my own business, and somehow I get dragged into this thing out of nowhere.”

At first, Hindy decided to ignore the article. It was so outlandish, he said, there’s no way anyone would believe it.

“But as I thought about it more, I thought this is the kind of thing that can actually be dangerous,” he said. “It’s going out there, it’s inflaming emotions, it’s getting people riled up on the basis of things that are completely false and completely made up. And frankly, someone could see my image there and think that I’m this terrible person and come after me.”

The article was posted on TheLastLineOfDefense.org, whose about section reads: “While everything on this site is a satirical work of fiction, we are proud to present it to those who will have called it real anyway.”

If the numbers are any indication, they did. By Sunday, the article had been shared over 1,800 times and picked up by at least two other sites, where it gained more than 2,500 more shares.

Staying power due to ’emotional content’

The story is a followup to one posted a day earlier claiming the “Ramashan Mosque” turned away hundreds of Harvey victims “because it’s against their religion.” A search on Google Maps turns up no such building.

TheLastLineofDefense told CBC News on Monday they sometime use “random images” that may be recognized. They say they won’t stop writing fake articles but are “taking even more steps to label it exactly as what it is.”

“We also file DMCA notices to the hosting companies of any sites that steal our material,” they wrote in an email.

The site say they’ve removed Hindy’s image as a courtesy and issued a personal apology to the imam.

But Hindy says he’s received no apology.

TheLastLineofDefense issued an article early Monday morning acknowledging the story was fake and accusing Canadian media of having inflated it into a bigger one.

“The site is fictitious and run by liberal trolls, who turn around and expose the people who respond as racists after they share the post,” it claimed, adding “the imam from Toronto is a fine man.”

“His religion is one of peace; his brothers and sisters opened their holy places and their homes before the storm,” the response said.

But real or not, Hindy said, the episode highlights how anti-Muslim sentiment, and hate in general, sells.

“People will read them and they’ll buy it because it exploits their fear of Muslims, it exploits their prejudice and so they’ll click their links and they’ll go to their websites and these people will make money off them — but in doing so, they’re really sowing discord,” he said. “This really shows you this industry of hatred and the way that it operates.”

Source: Toronto imam who was face of ‘completely false’ Harvey story calls out ‘industry of hate’ – Toronto – CBC News