Claim: President Obama has proclaimed August 2014 to be 'International Muslim Awareness Month.'
Example: [Collected via e-mail, June 2014]
Obama Proclaims August International Muslim Awareness Month
A friend of my mother's shared this on Facebook and we're not sure if
there's any truth to it.
Origins: On 26 June 2014, the National Report published an article positing that President Obama had proclaimed August 2014 to be 'International Muslim Awareness Month':
In a proclamation issued today, President Obama has designated August as 'International Muslim Awareness Month'. "The Muslim community around the world deserves our full acceptance, respect, apologies and most importantly, our awareness," Obama told reporters. "The world has done horrible things to the Muslim people since the beginning of time. Americans have killed millions of Muslims overseas since the
President Barack Obama held a press conference to announce that he is declaring the month of November 'National Muslim Appreciation Month'.
By the following day links and excerpts referencing this article were being circulated via social media, with many of those who encountered the item mistaking it for a genuine news article. However, the article was just another bit of fake news from the National Report, a web site that publishes outrageous fictional stories such as "IRS Plans to Target Leprechauns Next," "Boy Scouts Announce Boobs Merit Badge," and "New CDC Study Indicates Pets of Gay Couples Worse at Sports, Better at Fashion Than Pets of Straight Couples."
(In this case the phony story wasn't even original: it was just a retread of a September 2013 article from the same site positing that President Obama had declared November 2013 to be 'National Muslim Appreciation Month.')
The National Report's (since removed) disclaimer page noted that all of the site's articles are fiction:
National Report is a news and political satire web publication, which may or may not use real names, often in semi-real or mostly fictitious ways. All news articles contained within National Report are fiction, and presumably fake news. Any resemblance to the truth is purely coincidental.
Last updated: 1 July 2014