Snopes Carries Water for Muhammad

The self-proclaimed fact-checker Snopes.com has been harshly criticized for its Leftist bias, and as is so often the case, a tilt to the Left also means a willingness to foster ignorance and complacency about the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat. After a billboard went up in Indiana pointing out six unsavory aspects of the life of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, Snopes labeled the billboard’s charges “Mostly False” – but that label applies far more accurately to the Snopes report than to the billboard.

Snopes’ falsehoods begin with its initial assertion that the billboard’s title, “the perfect man,” “is poor translation from an Arabic phrase in the Koran, which describes the Prophet as an excellent example.” In reality, the appellation “perfect man” is not a poor translation of a Qur’anic phrase; it is not a Qur’anic phrase at all. The Qur’anic phrase “excellent example” (33:21) is uswa hasana, while “perfect man” is al-insan al-kamil, a title ascribed to Muhammad in Islamic tradition.

Snopes goes on to state that “none of the items listed on the billboard appear in the Koran — they are historical events, and the accuracy of details surrounding them remain contested by scholars.” This is true, but irrelevant, since Muhammad’s status as the “excellent example” for Muslims, as well as the “perfect man,” make him a model for emulation for Muslims: if Muhammad did it, it is good, and Muslims should do it.

A scholar that Snopes cites as an authority, Ayesha S. Chaudhry, Associate Professor of Islamic Studies and Gender Studies at the University of British Columbia, “told us that all accounts of the Prophet’s life, which occurred 1,400 years ago in 7th-century Arabia, were written at least 200 years after his death, and their reliability for accuracy is shaky.” This unreliability is something Islamic apologists acknowledge only when confronted with unsavory aspects of Muhammad’s career as recorded in the earliest Muslim sources. Chaudhry doesn’t mention the fact that when Islamic scholars deem a statement or action by Muhammad to be authentic, it is normative for Islamic law, and all the statements on the billboard come from Islamic sources that Muslims deem authentic.

Note the irony: Chaudhry disputes the number based on the fact that the source it comes from was written 200 years after the incident, but Snopes has no trouble citing other accounts that were written over 800 years after the fact to dispute the incident.

That sums up the apologetic nature of Snopes’ “fact-checking.” This isn’t fact-checking, this is Islamic apologetics.

(Spencer, "Snopes Carries Water for Muhammad," FrontPageMag Online, 6/28/17).