Fiction means not true...once the story is properly sourced, then it becomes non-fiction and is considered to be true or based in reality.
=8-)
Somewhere in Europe did some moslem kill some non-moslem? Obviously yes (that's what moslems do).
Did that moslems mother complain about the punishment her son was getting? Also obviously yes (that's what moslems do)
So whether the letter is true or not the facts behind it are. The end result is that all moslems have to die (or be converted to Christianity even though that conversion can never be trusted. Moslems lie, its what they do.)
OK, so let me see if I get this. Fiction equals not true, and not true means false, so fiction equals false. Which, if the story is true and its only disability is we are not absolutely sure it’s true, calling it fiction is not true because the story is not false. Calling it plausible but unproven is more accurate. Accuracy matters. You’re leaving no intermediate category, as though the sole measure of truth or falsity is whatever has entered the field of public perception. That’s not realistic.
For example, my current work assignment involves legislative, technical, and business assessments of a system designed to discover radiological risk through various detection measures. If the equipment is known to be functioning correctly, and not delivering a signal of a radiological anomaly, I am entitled to believe that there is no radiological anomaly. However, if the equipment is NOT working correctly, then I am NOT entitled to dismiss the possibility that there is in fact a radiological risk, even though I am not being alerted to it by accepted means. More succinctly, in our line of work, we have to assume the worst is true unless we get proof it is false.
And that’s what I was getting at about standards of proof. If you want to believe that the Flemish mother is a total fabrication, that’s up to you, but even in law the standard of proof is often lower than what you have set. You seem to be applying a pure logic or math standard, where each premise must be absolutely certain before one proceeds to the conclusion. Yet even in math suspended judgment is possible, a belief that something might be true, as an intermediate state, as the long search for formal proof of Fermat’s Equation demonstrates.
But law and life are not like math. In law there is such a thing as circumstantial evidence, a set of claims for which there is some general support (Antwerp prison riots, fires, anarchist uprisings, etc.), and for which no counterproof exists. Any slight bias in favor of the proposition being tested may provide a jury with a reasonable basis for concluding some proposition is true, especially if the witnesses, testifying in person, evince personal credibility.
Think of it as probabilistic truth assessment. We all do it. When you swing your feet over the side of the bed in the morning you are acting on a definite but unproven proposition that the floor is still there and will support you when you attempt to stand on it. You are doing this because, given the totality of the circumstances, the probability is extremely high that you are correct.
Other circumstances have lower probabilities, and as the probability diminishes we shift from a bias of probably true to probably false. For different circumstances different thresholds apply. If you (mis)applied a mathematical standard of proof to getting out of bed in the morning, you would never do it, or you would do it with an irrational fear of falling through the floor. But if your internal “probability machine” is in sync with your peers, then, for any given set of circumstances, you will likely make a reasonable judgment as to the security of your bedroom floor.
And that’s the whole point of the jury system, and that’s why we do not use a math standard to evaluate a story delivered to us under conditions that amount to war, where the risk of serious injury and death changes the operating threshold by which we assess the truth or falsity of a given message. Arbitrarily labeling all anonymously sourced stories as “Fiction” simply does not account for the pragmatic realities of life under difficult conditions, and is therefore, in the final analysis, an unhelpful oversimplification in the quest to discover the truth of the matter.