False rumours spread by text incite protest at Catholic Church

Link: >>> AsiaNews.it <<< Church besieged after false rumours about Muslim baptisms

There’s been quite a lot about this ‘on the wires’ over the weekend after an SMS message claimed that some Muslims were being baptized at a Church. There’s something officious about a text message that, if written in the right language, can both outrage and incite. I imagine that’s what happened here.

A related problem is that you’ve no way of verifying the credibility of a text message — if you received it from a good friend, you naturally assign a degree of credibility to the text commensurate with how your rate your friend. With an email, you can check the headers and see where it originated from — further, you can quickly pop on the web to check out facts. You can’t do this with a standard handset.

A Muslim protest outside the Catholic Church of Our Lady of Lourdes in Ipoh, 220km north of Kuala Lumpur, luckily ended without any harm done. The protest was prompted by false rumours about a baptism ceremony of a group of Muslims.

Yesterday, as a first Holy Communion service for 110 Catholic children was under way, 300 Muslims mounted a protest outside the church, instigated by SMS messages claiming that a group of Muslims was to be baptized there.

Despite the tense situation outside the church compound, the congregation of about 1,000 parishioners continued with the service, having been advised not to leave the church until the protesters had left.