When urban myths meet islamophobia
American journalist Liz Smith once said very aptly that gossip is just news in a red satin dress. Although there is indeed an intimate relationship between rumour and news, it is important to note that rumour can often be a form of fiction that dones the cloak of veracity. Over the past couple of weeks a story has been featured in social media and email inboxes about a burqa-clad woman chastising a supermarket cashier for supporting Western bombing of Iraq. The most recent posting that came to my attention reached my facebook timeline from a user based in Israel and situated the alleged incident in a small Canadian town. The story sounded suspicious as, since the eviction of the Iraqi army from Kuwait in the first Iraq war, Canada has not been involved in military operations in Iraq and I therefore did some investigation only to find that the story must have been circulating in the internet since as early as 2003, during the early days of the second Iraq war. This o...