Blogs and social media has been abuzz with talk of a supposed “German news report” indicating that Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot of Germanwings flight 9525, was a Muslim convert. In fact, there is no such report. The rumor that Lubitz converted to Islam got started on the German site Politically Incorrect. In the American blogosphere, Politically Incorrect is being cited as a “German news website.” It is not a news site, however, but rather is an overtly anti-Islamic blog/forum. The confusion apparently arose from the site’s url: www.pi-news.net.

Given the orientation of the site and reports that Germanwings 9525 was intentionally crashed by the co-pilot, it is hardly surprising that commentators on Politically Incorrect would speculate about whether Lubitz was a Muslim. Reference was made in particular to a blog post by a site regular named Michael Mannheimer. Mannheimer’s post contains no evidence that Lubitz was a Muslim convert, but just more speculation. Mannheimer’s conjecture is based on such apparently suspicious details as the fact that Lubitz did flight training in Bremen and Bremen is also home to a mosque known for its radicalism. In fairness to Politically Incorrect, it should be noted that several commentators on the site have themselves rejected the speculations in Mannheimer’s post as unfounded, including one who remarked that he “must have been very drunk” when he wrote it.