It is no news that all is not well in the Arab world. In the latest, it has been reported that Pakistan has offered to mediate between Saudi Arabia and Iran, in order to avoid strained relationships with both countries.
The spread of fake news, however, is a ready-made recipe for straining bilateral relationships.
Tanveer Arain, journalist and political analyst with some of the leading publications in Pakistan, including The Dawn, took to Twitter to draw attention to a letter, allegedly written by Saudi Arabian Defence Minister Muhammad Bin Suleiman.
The letter allegedly quotes the defence minister calling Pakistan a “slave country” and that “it will remain Saudi Arabia’s slave” country.
Tanveer’s tweet was retweeted 679 times, and was liked 605 times by Twitter users. His tweet also prompted Postcard.news to swiftly pick up story.
The story was shared 33,000 times on Facebook, from the Postcard portal. The story elaborately describes how Saudi considers other Muslim countries to be of ‘converted’ status. The story reads:
Muhammad Bin Suleiman believes that Pakistanis are the slaves of the Arabs. This statement proves that Saudis looks at every other Muslim country with the ‘converted-Muslim’ perspective. Muslims from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are called ‘Hindu-Muslims’ in Saudi.
The story was also picked by Defence Tube, a YouTube channel which has 7,800-odd subscribers and by a Facebook page on Indian Defence, where it was widely shared.
What The Letter Actually Says
Senior journalist Abbas Nasir, who was a former editor of The Dawn and has also been associated with BBC, was quick to raise that a Tehran dateline was dodgy for a story related to Saudi.
Mustaqbil Pakistan party leader Nadeem M Qureshi also responded to Taveer’s tweet about the letter being “fake news”.
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