I came across the meme above being circulated as evidence of what Muslims supposedly “really think” about America.The image attributes this statement to Islamic preacher Uthman Ibn Farooq:
“No one can stop Islam in America. This is NOT your country, this is OUR country. This is the land of Allah. If you want to live in a place with no Muslims, I suggest you go to hell.”
There is just one problem.
That is not what he said.
And this isn't a minor transcription error. The meme removes words, adds words that were never spoken, and eliminates the very context necessary to understand what Farooq was talking about.
The actual passage begins with Farooq discussing someone who wanted to ban Muslims from the United States.
His words were:
“He wants to ban Muslims. We will tell him, this isn't your country to ban.”
Notice what happened.
The meme changes:
“This isn't your country to ban.
”into:
“This is NOT your country, this is OUR country.”
Those are two radically different statements.
One says no individual politician owns America and therefore cannot simply declare that an entire religion doesn't belong here.
The other sounds like Muslims announcing that they have seized America from everyone else.
And the words “this is OUR country” do not appear in the actual quotation.
Even Blaze Media, which recently used Farooq's remarks while warning about an alleged Islamic “takeover” of Texas, reproduces the actual wording: “This isn't your country to ban.
”That changes the story considerably.
The “Land of Allah” Line Was Edited Too
The meme then gives us:
“This is the land of Allah.
”Farooq did say those words.
But once again, the meme stops the quotation precisely where the context becomes inconvenient.
What he actually said was:
“This is the land of Allah, as every land is the land of Allah.”
That isn't a declaration that the United States has become Muslim territory.
It is theology.
In Islamic belief, Allah is simply the Arabic word for God, the Creator of everything. The earth belongs ultimately to God. Farooq wasn't distinguishing America from France, Saudi Arabia, China or Antarctica. His next words explicitly universalized the statement: every land belongs to God. The longer transcript confirms exactly that wording.
You don't have to agree with his theology. You can even dislike how confrontationally he expressed it.
But if someone says, “Every country belongs to God,” and you edit that into “THIS country belongs to us,” you have changed the meaning.
Yes, He Really Said “Go to Hell”
Then there is the most inflammatory part.
Farooq really did suggest that someone wanting to live somewhere without Muslims should “go to hell.”
I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
But here's what the meme doesn't show.
Farooq had just argued that Muslims were already part of American society and were not disappearing. He then joked about where someone could possibly move if their requirement was living somewhere with no Muslims whatsoever.
Europe? Muslims.
Africa? Muslims.
South America? Muslims.
China? Muslims.
Malaysia? Obviously Muslims.
Japan? Muslims.
Even Antarctica, he joked, has Muslims.
Then comes the punch line: if you need someplace with absolutely no Muslims, he has one remaining suggestion....Hell.
It's deliberately provocative. You can think it's obnoxious. You can think an imam should speak differently.
But it is not remotely the same message presented by the meme.
The actual context is independently reproduced in current coverage of the controversy.
Bearing False Witness Has a Long History
And this is where I think Christians need to have an uncomfortable conversation.
This meme is a perfect modern example of something Christian polemicists have done for centuries: distort an opponent's beliefs because the distortion is more useful than the truth.
That doesn't mean every Christian lies about Islam. Of course not.
It means there is a long and well-documented Christian polemical tradition of inventing stories about religious opponents and then repeating those stories as fact.
Medieval Christian writers frequently portrayed Muslims as pagans and Muhammad as someone Muslims worshipped. Muhammad's name was transformed in European literature into “Mahound,” sometimes represented as a demon or pagan god.
There is a rather obvious problem with that picture.
Islam is fanatically opposed to worshipping Muhammad.
Muhammad repeatedly presented himself as a human messenger of God. Muslims do not pray to Muhammad, sacrifice to Muhammad or consider Muhammad divine.
Yet medieval European literature could describe Muslims as “Muhammad-worshippers” because that caricature fit the theological battle Europeans believed they were fighting. Scholarship on medieval Christian depictions documents portrayals of Muhammad as an idolater, magician, demonic figure, Antichrist and deliberate religious fraud.
Some stories claimed Muhammad secretly learned Christianity from a renegade Christian monk and then cobbled together Islam from Christian material.
Others portrayed his revelations as epileptic seizures, sorcery or demonic activity.
Some legends even invented bizarre deaths for Muhammad and then claimed Muslims prohibited pork or alcohol because of the circumstances surrounding his death.
These weren't careful theological disagreements.
They were propaganda.
And Christians didn't reserve this behavior for Muslims.
Consider the Donation of Constantine, a document purporting to show the Roman emperor Constantine granting enormous religious and political authority to the pope.
It was a forgery.
Yet it circulated for centuries and was used in medieval arguments about papal authority. In the fifteenth century, Lorenzo Valla famously demonstrated through textual and linguistic analysis that it could not have been written in Constantine's time. Even the Catholic Encyclopedia acknowledges unequivocally that the document was fabricated.
Then there were the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, a collection containing scores of fabricated papal letters presented as ancient documents. These forgeries became influential in medieval canon law and church governance.Human beings have always been capable of convincing themselves that deception becomes acceptable when the cause is sufficiently holy.Which brings us right back to Facebook.
The Technology Changed.
The Polemic Didn't.
Look again at what happened with this meme.
Don't let people hear: “This isn't your country to ban.”
Turn it into: “This is NOT your country. This is OUR country.”
Don't include: “as every land is the land of Allah.”
Just leave :“This is the land of Allah.”
Remove the discussion about banning Muslims.
Remove the joke leading to the hell remark.
Then place a frightening-looking Muslim preacher beneath enormous black letters and allow the audience to fill in the rest.
Suddenly you've manufactured an Islamic conquest speech that wasn't actually given.
And thousands of Christians will share it without spending sixty seconds asking whether the quotation is real.
That's the part that should trouble Christians most.
Because you don't get to claim that Christianity represents truth while knowingly spreading falsehoods about your religious neighbors.
You don't get to complain about taqiyya while circulating fabricated quotations.
You don't get to preach about Muslim deception while deleting words from a Muslim's sentence and inserting words he never said.
And Christians, of all people, shouldn't need a Muslim to remind them what their own Ninth Commandment says.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
This meme isn't defending Christianity.
It's bearing false witness with a meme generator.
