A relative of mine who happens to be a staunch Hillary Clinton supporter forwarded me an e-mail yesterday. Perhaps you’ve seen it, as it’s making the Internet rounds far and wide: With the subject line “Who is OBAMA/fact or fiction?,” it purports to expose Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama as a radical Muslim who refuses to pledge allegiance to the U.S. flag.

“The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the US from the inside out, what better way to start than at the highest level – through the President of the United States, one of their own!!!!,” it says. “We checked this out on ‘snopes.com’. It is factual. Check for yourself.”

Well, I did exactly that, and confirmed my suspicion: This e-mail is an utter load of crap.

Snopes — a Web site dedicated to debunking urban legends, common fallacies, misinformation, old wives’ tales and so on — thoroughly debunks all of this bit by bit, even noting that some of these chain e-mails invite readers to check Snopes anyway: “It’s our guess that whoever included that bit was counting on folks to not check, as our article says the opposite: that the polemic is not factual but rather is false.”

Now, the relative who forwarded this e-mail to me is among the most kind and honorable people I know, and I love her dearly. I don’t believe she would’ve sent this on had she known it was patently false. I’m hoping she didn’t read it closely enough, that she trusted the judgment of whoever had forwarded it to her, just as I would often trust hers.

That’s what the author had hoped for — that trusting recipients would take it at face value, accept its bogus protestation of truth and then continue to propagate it. Perhaps the author is an anti-Muslim or anti-Obama ideologue, perhaps not. Frankly, I’d think the author is a cynical prankster with no particular allegiance, as even cursory investigation exposes this diatribe as an underhanded pack of lies; for any serious critic to pen such a thing would be to that person’s shame, discrediting his or her own cause.

For myself, I read an e-mail like this and am struck not only by the whoppers it tells about Obama, but also by how close it slides to the sickeningly persistent trope that all “the Muslims” are bent on harming our nation. Our true enemies are a specific brand of extremist representing a small fraction of Muslims; most American Muslims love peace, and this nation, as truly and deeply as any Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Wiccan or atheist. Equating them to those who sully Islam with a bloody greed for power is the same kind of knee-jerk xenophobic ignorance which sent 110,000 Japanese-Americans to internment camps during World War II, to our nation’s everlasting shame.

Should we shun “the Christians” based on the actions of a cross-burning white supremacist, or an abortion-clinic bomber, or a so-called pastor who pickets soldiers’ funerals with “God Hates Fags” signs? Should we fear “the Jews” based on the actions of a deranged “doctor” who massacres and maims scores of people on ground hallowed by Christians, Jews and Muslims alike? Of course not. I think it’s un-American, even traitorous.

There are issues in this presidential election — judge the candidates on their positions. And if you believe the policy differences between Clinton and Obama are relatively small, and that it’s more a race between conflicting styles and personalities, so be it — judge the candidates on those criteria.

But don’t judge anyone based on fear, especially when that fear is built on a foundation of lies. And never trust a single e-mail, a single blog or even — dare I say — a single newspaper as gospel. We are blessed with access to information unprecedented in human history. Go find the real facts, and don’t let anyone make a fool of you.