Check Your Sources!

So, yesterday afternoon, after a day of  worry and finally having all my babies tucked away at home with me, I was flipping through some status updates on Facebook while I was waiting for my ladies to finish their homework.   This is not unusual for me, as it was too early to cook dinner, and too late to start another project, and I don’t like to leave the kitchen while homework is being done because, well, you know it wouldn’t get done if I wasn’t in the room.  (This being said when I am the only parent at home, when Khaled is here we tag team the homework!)

I came across the quote I posted about, pasted in a status update and it felt so right.  It felt like a true, honest response to the posts I had been reading all day commenting on the death of Bin Ladin.  From the earliest hours of the morning, my FB ‘friends’ were posting comments that were pro-violence, pro-military, pro-USA, anti-Obama, pro-Obama and anti-Muslim.  I read several comments about Osama getting his seven virgins now, or would he be getting them even though he was murdered.  I read comments that included the words “Towel Head.” 

All of these comments, and the reactions of people I thought I knew better, fed into my fears for my children, my husband and my friends.  I am afraid when people find out that my family is Muslim.  I know that even though I live in an area of the midwest where there is a dense population of Muslim families, the local University has a strong MSA, and you can’t drive anywhere in town without seeing a covered woman, there are those people who group radical Muslims with normal, mainstream Muslims, and think that we are all to blame for the actions of the radical. 

There have been instances over the last 10 years where our Masjids have been spray painted, windows broken, playground equipment vandalized. Over the last two years, my daughters have played on soccer teams with less team members than all the other teams because parents remove their children from the team once they find out that our coach is Muslim.  They came right out and said to the coach, “I don’t want my kid on the Muslim team.”  “I don’t want my kid playing with Stinking Muslims.”  I have seen people move seats once my hijabi friends arrive and sit with me to watch the team play.  It has happened to ME.

So, when something happens in the world that draws everyone’s attention, and it involves someone who is identified as Muslim, I am guarded and panicked. 

Today my FB friends list is a few people shorter and I have a few more followers on Twitter.  It was drawn to my attention that the quote I read and re-posted was not, in fact said by Martin Luther King  Jr.  Once I found that out, I started trying to verify any part of the quote.  I felt a bit stupid, kinda like when you get that e-mail hoax and hit the send trigger only to find out minutes later that it was, indeed, a hoax.

I’ve spent the better part of an hour and a half trying to find some verification of this quote, and the best I could come up was these two sources.  First, being another blog written by Jenna Elisa where she dissects the quotation and gives the corrected version, cited in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Stanford University MLK Archives in which they have the transcripts of King’s ‘Where Do We Go From Here’ speech.  In the transcripts I found this passage:

And the other thing is, I’m concerned about a better world. I’m concerned about justice; I’m concerned about brotherhood; I’m concerned about truth. (That’s right) And when one is concerned about that, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder. (Yes) Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can’t establish truth. (That’s right) Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate through violence. (All right, That’s right) Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that. [applause]

Now I still stand behind the idea of the statement, I still feel the same way.  I’ve learned that I must do more source checking before pushing the Publish button.