False Prophets

THE BERNHARD PERSPECTIVE

Here’s how hatred works:

Kill a man, and you are a murderer;
Kill millions and you are a conqueror;
Kill them all, and you are a god.
Execute you, and I am a hero.
Why? Because you live across a river.
If you lived on my side, killing you would be murder;
But because of a line a king drew on a map,
killing you is a virtue.
Morality is merely a matter of geography
— Al-Ghazáli (c.1058-1111)

The above quote showed up in my Facebook feed from another site. When I checked with AI, I found that it has been variously attributed to Al-Ghazali, Voltaire and Napoleon. One program attributed it to George Bernard Shaw, another said there is no accurate attribution. A third agreed with the second.

This is most likely what is called an “internet orphan.” Someone made it up, posted it, and it made the rounds until it became accepted as real. One AI program said it would take a deep search to see if the true author of this quotation could be identified, and another program said even that may not be possible.

The truth is that someone wanted to give Islam a bad name by putting morally indefensible words into the mouth of an influential Moslem theologian, jurist and historian. So they either made this up or took it from somewhere else and posted it with an invented attribution. Either way, it is a lie.

The moral, don’t believe anything you see on the web just because it’s there. Don’t be a sucker.

Know your source. Verify everything.