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A viral email purportedly relaying a message from Australian entrepreneur Dick Smith, the founder of Dick Smith Foods, in which the grocer denigrates the Muslim religion and speaks of a conspiracy of extortion, has been circulating since at least 2014. While the email starts with an actual quote from Dick Smith regarding Halal certification, the bulk of this viral message was penned by an unknown party. The portion written by Smith starts with We have received a number of letters... and ends with this money would be better spent continuing to support important charitable causes where assistance is greatly needed. Smith's statement does not include any derogatory comments about Muslims. Instead, the grocer simply states that they would rather avoid unnecessarily increasing their costs in order to pay for Halal certification. Shortly after Smith posted his message regarding Halal certification to his web site, the message started circulating via email along with an additional segment that was not written by the grocer: The section quoted above was not written by Dick Smith, and was not included in any original messages from either the company or the entrepreneur himself. On 19 December 2014, Dick Smith Foods responded to the message which had been incorrectly attributed to them: Dick Smith did post a message explaining that the grocery store was not adding halal-certified labels in 2014, but for financial reasons rather than ideological ones. A rant about Islam was later attached to this statement, then incorrectly attributed to the Australian grocer.
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