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  • 2016-04-13 (xsd:date)
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  • Obama Encouraging Schools to Teach Quran for Extra Credit (en)
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  • Some of the most prolific rumors are the most ambiguous, as is the case with one claiming that President Barack Obama was encouraging schools to teach the Quran for extra credit. The rumor rarely contained a source or even a link, but instead came from various text-only updates on social media: The ambiguous status updates circulated for years. A February 2016 version included a link to what looked to be corroboration, but led instead to the following content on dailytea.us: That page pointed to an entirely unrelated rumor about teaching Islam in public schools in La Plata, Maryland. That controversy was not about studying the Quran for extra credit, but instead a parent's objection to a curriculum for covering world religions. The school district said in a statement: In the comments section of the dailytea.us page, the article's author added a mea culpa, writing that the information on the page was not accurate. However, people who only read the page and skipped the comments would not have seen that update: Most threads involving the rumor led to dead ends, and no one seemed to know how or why they came to believe President Obama implemented a program by which students could study the Quran for extra credit. In September 2013, there was an outcry over a nonexistent Muslim Appreciation Month, purportedly created by President Obama, but which originated from a satire and fake news site. That fictional piece did not mention teachings of the Quran for extra credit, but it was often cited alongside another fictional item from the same outlet. Blogger Pat Dollard published (then deleted) such an entry. Versions of the fake news site's original article remained around the web, which reported: The Quran for extra credit article was as fabricated as the National Muslim Outreach Month story, and both originated from the same fake news web site. However, the source material was deleted some time after it was originally published, obscuring its origins. Cached pages definitively showed that there was no truth to either claim at any point, and no initiative was in place to allow students to study the Quran for extra credit. (en)
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