Al Madina newspaper

SPREADING rumors is an old game that has been going on for many years. It is done in different ways. You might underestimate the huge effect of these rumors but they could train your brain to treat lies as facts, confuse you brain between right and wrong and make you believe statements that are untrue.

People decide to believe or not believe rumors if they can relate to them, despite their level of accuracy. Thus, throughout history it has been the case that lies have been repeated to an extent that they have over time been considered to be facts.

We receive Whatsapp and Twitter messages on a daily basis; do we check the sources before passing these messages on to our friends or followers or do we just rush to share them with other people.

How did people deal with information in the past which they received through telephone calls or when someone whispered something to them? If we were to deal with information in the same old way, then does that mean we should react in the same way as before?

Rumors are called rumors because they have been spread by everyone and are meaningless. The Arabic language does not give credence to rumors. The word ‘rumor’ in Arabic does not refer to manipulated information; it just means that a certain piece of information has become viral, regardless of whether it is true or false and regardless of whether the information arrived to us through a reliable source of information.

Therefore, the onus of adding value to a rumor is on us. We are the ones who choose to allow a rumor to continue or end. We are the ones who choose the way we deal with information. We search, analyze and use our brain to think about the truthfulness of a piece of information. If we were to doubt the truthfulness of information, then this means that we are able to find the logic to it and criticize it. This is what we should aim for. We should be able to use our brains as human beings instead of taking in information that we encounter like a sponge.

Rumors such as sewing machines contain mercury, Indomie products cause cancer, poison can be derived from Vimto, etc., are all minor rumors that do not cause huge damage. These rumors cause huge damage when they end up ruining a whole nation, such as the US war on Iraq because of the rumor that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Additionally, there are the rumors that Al Jazeera is spreading to misguide people and which spread fear among people.

The next time we receive such messages, we need to awaken the sense of doubt inside us. We should check the source so we do not contribute to promoting lies. We should protect ourselves by not spreading everything we encounter no matter how luring the information might be. We should think, search and remember Ayat 16 from Al-Noor.