Did the Dearborn City Council force Christian schoolkids to sing "Muslamic" hymns? No, that's not true. The story was published by a liberal satire website that tries to educate gullible Trump supporters and Republicans about the need to actually click and read links before sharing or liking them in order to avoid being embarrassed by fans of the site later. All the events described in the article are not real and "Muslamic" isnt't even a real word, it is a term made up by the writers of the site in order to rile up people who get excited about the word "Islamic" but without being detectable by content filters etc.
The story originated from an article published by America's Last Line of Defense on December 16, 2018 titled "Dearborn City Council Forces Christian Schoolkids To Sing Muslamic Hymns" (archived here) which opened:
Saturday's annual "holiday pageant" at the City Council building in Dearborn, Michigan has Christian parents terrified. Parents who dropped their kid off at "closed set rehearsals" all month were shocked to learn that the reason they couldn't attend was that the pageant would not include any Christmas music. Instead, it was "100 percent Muslamic hymns," according to parents whose kids were in the show.
A total of 23 parents -- that's 61.4 percent of kids who were supposed to be in the show -- have been forced to furiously pull their precious young ones out of the pageant after learning that it was just a stunt to push the Muslamic faith on them.
Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail:
Dearborn City Council Forces Christian Schoolkids To Sing Muslamic Hymns
Saturday's annual "holiday pageant" at the City Council building in Dearborn, Michigan has Christian parents terrified. Parents who dropped their kid off at "closed set rehe...
There are several hints in the article the story is fake, such as the phrase "Information you probably shouldn't trust" in the header and the category the article was posted in ("As Real as the War on Christmas"). Also all the links in the story (even the one supposedly from the Dearborn Gazette, a long defunct newspaper) go to Vox.com articles criticizing Donald Trump.
The site comes with a clear satire disclaimer at the bottom of each article:
sat·ire ~ˈsaˌtī(ə)r
noun
the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, OR ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
If you disagree with the definition of satire or have decided it is synonymous with "comedy," you should really just move along.
The owner and main writer of the site is self-professed liberal troll Christopher Blair, a man from Maine who has made it his full time job to troll gullible conservatives and Trump supporters into liking and sharing his articles. He runs several other websites, including potatriotpost.us, dailyworldupdate.us and nofakenewsonline.us. Sometimes he is also known under his nickname "Busta Troll". A second man working on the sites is John Prager as revealed in this earlier story we wrote.
Articles from Blair's sites frequently get copied by "real" fake news sites who often omit the satire disclaimer and any other hints the stories are fake. Blair has tried to get these sites shut down in the past but new ones keep cropping up and he keeps knocking them down.
Blair and his operation were profiled by the Washington Post on November 17, 2018 by Eli Saslow:
'Nothing on this page is real': How lies become truth in online America
November 17 The only light in the house came from the glow of three computer monitors, and Christopher Blair, 46, sat down at a keyboard and started to type. His wife had left for work and his children were on their way to school, but waiting online was his other community, an unreality where nothing was exactly as it seemed.
If you are interested in learning more about Blair and the history of his sites, here is something to get you started:
The Ultimate Christopher Blair and America's Last Line of Defense Reading List | Lead Stories
STORY UPDATED: check for updates below. Yesterday Eli Saslow at the Washington Post wrote a fantastic article about Christopher Blair, a man from Maine who has been trolling conservatives and Trump supporters online for years and occasionally even made a living out of it.
If you see one of his stories on a site that does not contain a satire disclaimer, assume it is fake news. If you do see the satire disclaimer it is of course also fake news.
NewsGuard, a company that uses trained journalist to rank the reliability of websites, describes wearethellod.com as:
A site that publishes false stories and hoaxes that are often mistaken for real news, part of a network named America's Last Line of Defense run by hoax perpetrator Christopher Blair.
According to NewsGuard the site does not maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability. Read their full assessment here.
We wrote about wearethellod.com before, here are our most recent articles that mention the site:
- Fake News: James Woods Hit By Death Hoax, First Victim of New Christopher Blair Site
- Fake News: Trump Did NOT Step In by Executive Order to Restore Christmas to Dearborn (Because It Was Never Abolished)
- Fake News: Muslamic Fallah Did NOT Call Cops On Christian Carolers, Cops Did NOT Arrest Them And Take Their Kids
- Fake News: Dearborn Family NOT Evicted or Fined $100K For Christmas Lights
- Fake News: 13 ISIS Members NOT Arrested As Migrant Caravan Hits Santa Recto
