[A TRULY SHOCKING FORWARD: On Monday May 5, 2020, Simerg received numerous WhatsApp and email messages that stated “MHI has donated 250 million Euros towards the vaccine for COVID-19.” That misleading note was based on the wrong reading of a headline in the Portuguese newspaper noticiasaominuto  which said, “Imamat Ismaili dá 250 mil euros para o combate à Covid-19, and spread like fire around the world. Without even considering to do a (FREE!) google translate, the person(s) forwarding the note assumed that 250 mil euros in the headline represented 250 million euros! Utilizing Google translate would have informed the first sender(s) of the message that the amount is actually 250 thousand and not 250 million — mil denotes a thousand in Portuguese. Aniza Meghani in the following piece asks us to verify facts properly before rushing to accept and like everything that appears to look good on social media. The same care should be exercised with messaging applications. It becomes the duty of the recipient to conduct preliminary fact checking, through translations if necessary, before forwarding messages to their friends and group members. Once forwarded, the rippling effects are enormous, and almost impossible to reverse in a timely manner! A lot of time of precious time was lost in responding to individuals who sent out that error filled message. — Ed.]

By ANIZA MEGHANI

Social media is the most powerful tool in the world, one that can make you or break you! Gone are the days of hearing genuine news by physically buying the newspaper or researching material by visiting the good old fashion library. No more writing a letter and posting it before you patiently wait for a reply. THE WORLD IS YOUR OYSTER AT A TOUCH OF A BUTTON. That is the most dangerous part of it all. We simply access, copy, paste and distort leaving a trail of one’s data history. Data that others can still access. That is more worrying because if you are not careful, it will come back and haunt you when you least expect it. This is critical for students of today when applying for university places or jobs.

Be warned, in certain places as soon as you enter a building, your mobile will give them your history without you even knowing. Now that’s scary! So today, we have within our community, weblinks that allow us to access our Jamati activity and keep us informed. However, with so much misleading information and sites, let us protect ourselves and safeguard our community. To do so, I thought why not show examples of misleading sites that are harmful and painful.

Almost all Ismailis today, traversing through all age groups, from old to young, from those who are fully conversant in the English language to those who do not understand even basic words of English, everybody is on or wants to be on social media.

As Ismailis we are particularly drawn to those pages or sites which display beautiful photographs of our beloved Imam and members of his family, whom we respectfully refer as the Noorani family. Many of us immediately post a ‘like’ or reply with “Yam” wherever we see a photograph of Hazar Imam or his name.

Many of us even join these groups or sites or pages just because the name of Hazar Imam and his photograph are in the title.

I am writing this article because having just concluded reading the recently released Farman book containing the Jamati work Farmans from 2011-2013, it struck me as a matter of curiosity that Mawlana Hazar Imam, in these Farmans — as well as in the Lisbon Diamond Jubilee Darbar Farman — repeatedly stresses to us, his beloved children, to learn and understand English. My cocooned world is all about English, so it felt strange reading about the imperativeness of learning the global language of English.

It wasn’t until recently that I came across the danger of not knowing English well. Or perhaps even the dangers of not reading properly.

Social media is greatly to blame for this growing culture of posting likes to images and skimming through texts. Not really reading, not really absorbing the context of a post, just hitting the like or follow button on whatever pops up on the screen that catches your fancy, in this case, a photograph of Hazar Imam or his name.

t’s sad really. But something still needs to be done. Hence the purpose of this post.

There is a group, or maybe several groups, on social media that tend to post lovely photos of Mawlana Hazar Imam and the Noorani family. It’s heartening, I am sure, to see the glittering countenances of our Imam and the Noorani family, is it not? So, we click the like button and we follow that page or join that group – however, we are absolutely, intolerably clueless about the actual purpose of it. And then, bam! Out of the blue, the very same page posts a sacrilegious article about Hazar Imam, albeit coupled with a beatific photo of him.

Now, if you are a reader by nature, you would be highly scandalized. But if you’re a skimmer, or if you don’t understand English, or if you don’t bother to read the text and are just mesmerized by Mawla’s resplendent smile (I don’t blame you, but I do), you are treading on dangerous ground because you may inadvertently be joining a group that is anti-Imam, anti-Noorani family and anti-Ismaili.

My advice: whenever you see a photograph or name of Hazar Imam, refrain from putting a like or leaving a YAM reply or joining the group blindly. READ all the posts on that page — present and past — as well as read the website where the social media link takes you. And join or reply or like only if the page is in legitimate praise of Hazar Imam. Do the same for each quote, message and link that you receive, and don’t blindly re-forward a message that has been forwarded to you simply because it has come from a trustworthy or reliable source.

Because, as a murid of Hazar Imam, how can you — how can you approve of anything that mocks him, that belittles him, that spreads falsities and terrible lies about him and our faith? How can you be a part of that?

And do not forget that the administrators of these sites are very clever — they will post three very beautiful articles or photographs in praise of Hazar Imam, but then will slip in an article of hate speech against the Imam, the Noorani family and/or the Ismaili Community.

STOP THE ZOMBIE-LIKING BECAUSE IT HELPS SPUR THESE NEFARIOUS PEOPLE ON AND SUCH PAGES AND SITES TO FLOURISH! And please explain this to all of your friends and relatives who are on social media but who do not understand English. You have a duty to do this.

Date posted: May 4, 2020.
Last updated: May 5, 2020.

© Aniza Meghani / Simerg.

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Originally from Uganda, Aniza Meghani lives in London, England, and is an entrepreneur of textiles and couture fabrics.

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