From the second I read the sentence, I knew there was something fishy about it. Many years' experience in reading and then looking into rightwing canards set off the usual alarm bells in my head. So I know how these things work. But even I was shocked after I looked into the truth of the matter.

My daily readings led me to an interview with Newt Gingrich in Christianity Today. The former speaker was asked whether opposition to tax increases was an adequate "uniting message" for his party. Gingrich replied that there had to be more to the party's story. For instance, he said:

You have Obama nominating Judge Hamilton, who said in her ruling that saying the words Jesus Christ in a prayer is a sign of inappropriate behavior, but saying Allah would be OK. You'll find most Republican senators voting against a judge who is confused about whether you can say Jesus Christ in a prayer, particularly one who is pro-Muslim being able to say Allah.

That seemed, frankly, ridiculous. I happened to know that the "Hamilton" in question was from Indiana and had a reputation as a moderate-to-liberal jurist. I also happened to know that "her" first name was David, so Gingrich could not get even this basic fact straight (obviously, he assumed, only some sort of Wiccan lesbian could deliver such a ruling!). So I wanted to know more.

I Googled around, and sure enough, a search returned thousands of rabid posts from the wing-o-sphere about this judge who thinks Indianans should be allowed to pray to Allah but not to Jesus. This one apparently set things going. And from there it was off to the races.

I had to slog my way through about four or five pages of this nonsense on the returned results, but eventually I found my way to the actual case, and I went and looked up Hamilton's actual decision. The case is captioned Hinrichs v Bosma. It was decided 30 November 2005, and you can read the 60-page decision in pdf form here.

Naturally, it's all a lie, but as I said, even I was shocked at how rancidly despicable a lie it was.

Here's the case. It involved ceremonial prayers to open the proceedings of the Indiana state legislature. Typically in America, clergy from around a given state are invited to the state capitol to deliver opening prayers during a legislative session. As it happened, a majority of these prayers – 29 out of 45 examined by the court – invoked Jesus Christ. Some who weren't of the Christian faith objected. Hinrichs is one of four Indiana taxpayers who filed suit requesting that ceremonial prayers refrain from appearing to prefer one religion to another.

Before I go any further let me say that I have my qualms about these kinds of lawsuits. I'd prefer that people sit down and work things out. Most American small towns are mostly Christian. If the town fathers place a crèche in the courthouse square, they're clearly doing something that would meet with the approval of the vast majority of the community. My preferred outcome would be not that the town have to remove it, but that the town's Jews and Muslims and others petition for some additional display to show respect for their faiths, and the Christian majority agree.

But sitting down and working things out requires that the majority respect the minority's feelings on the matter. In Indiana, this was not done. Bosma is Brian Bosma, the former speaker of Indiana's House. He opposed the suit and argued that clerics should be allowed to invoke the man from Nazareth in keeping with the beliefs and wishes of the larger community. So off to court they went.

Hamilton's decision is eminently calm and even-keeled. He finds, in sum, that Hinrichs's petition constitutes classic establishment clause stuff, as indeed it does. Interestingly, he relies on two decisions from the fourth judicial circuit to lay out his argument. Why is this interesting? Because the fourth circuit, based in Virginia, is the country's most conservative.

The fourth circuit heard a case called Wynn v Town of Great Falls. The town council opened its meetings with a prayer that regularly mentioned Jesus Christ. The fourth circuit – remember, the country's most conservative – ruled that Great Falls stood in clear violation of the establishment clause, and that the prayer "promoted one religion over all others".

Not only did Hamilton rely on the country's most conservative federal circuit court, he specifically cited an opinion written by one of the most conservative jurists on that court. Judge J Harvie Wilkinson is always on the short list when a US supreme court seat opens up during a Republican presidency. But even Wilkinson wrote, as Hamilton quotes him:

We cannot adopt a view of the tradition of legislative prayer that chops up American citizens on public occasions into representatives of one sect and one sect only, whether Christian, Jewish or Wiccan. In private observances, the faithful surely choose to express the unique aspects of their creeds. But in their civic faith, Americans have reached more broadly. Our civic faith seeks guidance that is not the property of any sect.

That's a deeply conservative jurist talking, and saying: no Jesus in governmental settings.

So here's where the lie comes in. Hamilton did indeed rule that Jesus Christ must not be mentioned in legislative prayers. But what did he say about Allah? It practically goes without saying that the decision doesn't so much as mention Allah. So this is what his wing-nut critics are doing: They're using the fact that he proscribes mentions of Jesus but does not specifically proscribe mentions of Allah to assert that he thinks mentions of Allah would be perfectly, as it were, kosher.

But in fact, he says exactly the opposite in the decision. Read this paragraph, from page 49:

The Speaker has also suggested that such an explicit caution about Christian references "would be the first known religious viewpoint discrimination in connection with the Indiana House invocation." ... The criticism is misguided. The decisive point of constitutional law is that a practice of sectarian prayer favouring any particular religion violates the establishment clause. From the evidence here, it is clear that the letters asking invited clerics to "strive for an ecumenical prayer" have not been sufficient to prevent many Christian speakers from using the prayer opportunity to advance and even to proselytise Christianity. The same strictures will apply to sectarian Jewish or Muslim prayers, for example. This record, however, shows no efforts by Jewish or Muslim clerics to use the prayer opportunity to advance their particular religions. At this juncture, there is no need to be more specific in the injunction as to what would amount to a sectarian prayer in those traditions.

The same strictures will apply! In other words, Hamilton wrote that he'd have said precisely the same thing if he'd been petitioned about Yahweh or Allah or any deity. You can see clearly that the wingers have taken the last sentence of this paragraph, yanked it completely out of context, and then taken the extra step (or two or three) of insinuating that of course, this kind of Godless heathen is exactly the sort of nominee you'd expect from a secret Muslim president who can't produce a birth certificate.

And let's not leave this subject without noting the revolting racism of the mention of Allah. It wasn't the possibility of people praying to Buddha that Gingrich and all the others were alarmed by, or Vishnu, or the Shinto God Kami. Only Allah. That millions of decent and patriotic Americans pray to Allah every day doesn't concern Gingrich and the others in the slightest.

What kind of person can say or write such blatant lies? And I'd like to report that this is unusual, but this kind of slippery illogic is standard operating procedure on today's right. Find something that might inflame opinion and stoke prejudice, and pump it. Doesn't matter that it isn't really true. By the time the other side explains that it isn't true, we'll already have won. They know that no one's going to read page 49 of a legal opinion. As it happens this time someone did, but often, alas, they're right.

These are sick, sick people. May their Jesus consign them to history's ash heap.