Does the organiser of the Women’s March have links to Islamic terrorist groups?

The day after Trump’s inauguration, there were massive protest marches against him. The biggest must be the Women’s March.

Image from NBC News

Almost immediately, there were people spreading “news” that the organiser of the Women’s March, Linda Sarsour, has ties with Hamas. The thing is, this “news” came from WorldPolitcus.com. That’s one of many websites set up by Macedonian youths that post articles that twists facts, and often spews outright lies. These websites’ main aim is to  get as many people to click on them. Through that, the youths who started it profit incredibly from Google AdSense.

So what’s WorldPoliticus’ evidence that Linda has links with Hamas? This paragraph:

“She is extremely insistent and stubborn about sharing her support for Palestine,and her aversion of Israel. She has been recently spotted with an alleged financier of Hamas at a Muslim convention in Chicago.”

Erm… just because she was spotted talking to an alleged financier of Hamas and that means she has links with Hamas? PM Lee was spotted talking to WP MPs, does that mean that PM Lee has links to WP? And she is of Palestinian descent. She probably still has relatives in Palestine who may have suffered from Israel’s treatment of Palestine. Is it a wonder that she supports the Palestinian cause and is against the way Israel is treating Palestine?

And even if she has links with Hamas, so what? Is Hamas really a terrorist organisation? Perhaps, if you are Israeli. They are militants fighting for a free and independent Palestine. Their actions are violent. But to Palestinians, Mossad (Israeli intelligence agency) and CIA are terrorists for what they have done in Palestine. The issue is complicated, and not something we can easily explain as black and white with a simple article.

One thing is for certain, Linda is against Islamic terrorism. She has tweets like this:

ISIS are a cancer of this earth. They need to be deleted. Doesn't excuse Bashar or his regime. https://t.co/D1J9J0w616

— Linda Sarsour (@lsarsour) August 23, 2015

Then there are accusations that she is a strident promoter of the Sharia Law. Yes. She does have tweets that extolled virtues of certain parts of Sharia Law. And she has spoken up against the ban on Sharia law in USA. Does that count as insisting that Sharia Law replaces all forms of legislation in USA?

Consider this. In Singapore, we have a Sharia (spelt Syariah) Court, which makes judgement based on certain aspects of the Syariah Law for Muslims. Imagine someone proposing a ban on Sharia Law in Singapore. The ISD would descend upon this person like the plague of locust on Pharaoh’s Egypt. So what Linda is promoting is for Muslims in USA to be subject to certain parts of the Sharia law, just like what’s happening in Singapore. Is that really wrong?

What gets me riled up is that there are Singaporeans sharing the stupid article from WorldPoliticus without trying to find out more about Linda, Hamas, and the Sharia Law ban. I think the default with any articles from websites like WorldPoliticus is that we should look for other sources of information regarding the claims in the article. And unless we can find multiple independent and credible sources of information that corroborate what’s in the article, we shouldn’t share it.

Because this is a post-truth era of alternative facts, we really need to do more research, and be more critical before we share any articles on social media.

[Featured image from SeekersHub]