Coming to grips with conspiracies
One of the reasons Muslims believe in conspiracy theories about terror attacks - particularly 9/11 and 7/7 - is because upon hearing the news, it is very difficult for a Muslim - especially back then - to swallow that a Muslim would possibly do such a heinous and evil act in the name of Islam. You just don’t want to believe it. This is a genuine feeling of contempt for such evil.
Then sadness sets in as you realize that there are lunatics that love to murder, rape and steal in the name of Islam. You see them constantly putting out videos praising such heinous activity. Some lunatic posts justifications for it backed by his “scholars”.
But some, even to this day, would rather remain in denial that this fringe actually exists. Sometimes you can get into a debate and a person will deny the existence of extremism. This is why is is useful to point out examples of lesser extremism right in front of their noses. (The fixation upon what people are eating, shouting people down and the REAL axis of evil: Israel, Starbucks and KFC)
Similarly, when Hamas came onto the scene in the late 1980s and began blowing up pizzerias, ice cream parlors, buses, and as many women and children as they could find, there were those Muslims who were shocked by this level of evil (relative to that time) and claimed that this group was started by the Massad. They just could not fathom a Muslim doing such an evil thing. Only the Jews could do such an evil thing! It MUST be them.
The fact that they deny that Muslims did it at least shows their disdain for the act itself and (sadly) the irrational hatred of those that they accuse. (The problem is that denial does not help solve any problems)
Keep this in mind while reading this by Zia Haider Rahman
Something is seriously wrong. A quarter of British Muslims believe the government and security services were involved in the July 7 suicide bombings in London, according to a poll for Channel 4 News.
One quarter cannot be dismissed as a lunatic fringe but constitutes a significant minority.
Yet this is not the first poll to show that many British Muslims harbour conspiracy fantasies: an NOP poll last August showed that 45 per cent of Muslims believed that the attacks of 9/11 were a conspiracy between the USA and Israel.
Last month, the Pew Research Center published findings consistent with this.
While we don’t have figures for comparison, it seems highly unlikely that anything approaching the same proportions of Britons generally entertain such preposterous fantasies. Something has gone seriously wrong within the Muslim community.
Ruth Kelly and the rest of the government have spoken much of winning the hearts and minds of British Muslims.
Hopes have been pinned on her commission on integration and cohesion, after the government rejected calls for a public inquiry into the July 7 bombings.
[...]
Conspiracy theories abound in the Muslim community, many of them piggy-backing on an underlying notion of an American-Israeli bogeyman. In themselves, these ideas might be regarded as mere folly, but they are terrifyingly dangerous because they fertilise the ground in which more hostile projects can take root.
Government and establishment rhetoric that continually presents our current difficulties as emanating from a “small extremist fringe” does not help. It only provides cover for pernicious ideas which have very much wider currency, as the polls show.
The expression of conspiracy fantasies and sundry other nonsense ideas, in madrassas, mosques and homes, goes unchallenged since very few Muslims are likely to regard themselves or their circle as part of the extremist fringe.
Quite logically, if an idea is commonly held, it cannot be exclusive to an extremist fringe.
In order not to cause offense, the government, and the establishment generally, are preventing the vigorous challenges and debates that must take place within Muslim communities and also within Britain as a whole. We must have greater conflict, of a healthy kind.
In the end, the stark reality is that chief among the agents of change are British Muslims themselves. Moderate Muslims must speak out and challenge the conspiracy theories and misrepresentations when they encounter them.
We should all do so, including our politicians, and we should not be afraid of causing offense.
I can understand why a person would feel that way in the beginning, but I can’t understand the desire to remain in denial after it is clear that there IS a problem that must be faced. There are quacks out there and they are - in many cases - mentally unstable
Filed under: Muslim Isolation, The Culture of Denial and Pretense
I am sure they are mentally unstable as well. Couple that with our communal inability to acknowledge mental illness as a legitamate aspect of health care and WHOAAAA! Watch out world!!!
Coming to grips with conspiracies
Why Muslims tend to believe conspiracies
“Cultural separatism” and the Islamic studies conference
Islamophobia Watch - David Cameron accuses Muslims of ‘cultural separatism’ David Cameron gave this speech at a conference on “Islam and Muslims in the World Today”, hosted in London by Cambridge university earlier this week, an event also attended…
Whereas I understand the desperation that drives groups like Hamas, I cannot condone their behaviour in this way.
Unless they fight in the way of Islam, with justice and protection for civilians, then they will continue to loose. As long as they view women and children as targets they cannot win.
A very interesting article, and interesting comments!
I came into this from the other side. As a non-Muslim, I was aghast at what I saw eminating from “the Islamic world”. Then I learned about Khawarij….
I also saw 9/11, and was firmly convinced that it had to be exclusively the work of Islamic terrorists, who I now understand are the Khawarij. However, as I keep investigating this, I find that this terrorist home-run that Al Qaeda hit on 9/11 would only have gotten them to first base (if that!) without help from corrupt elements in America’s government and business worlds.
While I have concerns regarding Islam, concerns that I feel are legitimate, I try not to indiscriminately “point the finger” — on occasion, I’m sure could do better. Certainly, as I am finding out, the non-Islamic world has its own version of Khawarij, and they are every bit as dangerous as their counterparts from the Islamic world.
May our Creator bless you all!
It’s fairly likely muslims will tend to believe in conspiracies, actually, as with christians. Both christianity and islam are conspiracy theories in many ways, with their followers as members of the open conspiracy- except that the conspiracies are, they believe, benign- and the most likely explanation for the failure of the good conspiracy is a wicked conspiracy.
As-salaamu ‘alaykum.
This reminds me of the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001. The “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” foresaw a cultural revolution similar to Iran. When the Taliban gained prominence throughout Afghanistan, they sought to extend their ultimate objectives. Everything deemed haraam was ruthlessly attacked. Music and bollywood street vendors were put out of business, televisions banned, posters with images stripped or painted black, and museums containing images and statues especially were ordered by decree by “clerics” to be destroyed. Even soccer stadiums had their fields renovated into courts for sharee’ah to be meted out. The ‘ulamaa, mullahs, imaams, scholars, and Taliban were quite honest and proud as to why they destroyed the statues across Afghanistan. Even the Supreme Court of the “Islamic Emirate,” backed by nationwide consensus, declared that the idols were against the people, against Islaam, and that only Allaah deserves to be worshipped.
Moderate Muslims couldn’t handle the reality of the situation and created this fantasy where Muslims were the victims of the statues. As the conspiracy goes, the Head Council of Scholars approached a stranger and begged for money to feed poor Afghan children. Supposedly, when that single individual hesitated, they made the decision based on this alone. But in actuality, foregin aid to Afghanistan was most generous. Over one billion ($US) dollars that year was sent to Afghanistan from America, and well over another one billion ($US) dollars the year before! The museums and statues were bringing in tourism and massive amounts of foreign aid from rich countries like Japan. The fact is that Afghanistan was receiving more aid than any damn country in the world!
The conspiracy deflects empthy for Buddhists who had their religious sites destroyed. People in the ummah did not want to believe the age-old stereotype of Muslims going around bashing idols in the name Allaah and for Islaam. But that is exactly what was going on. The Pashtun Taliban were destroying Buddhist statues across Afghanistan well before the supposed incident occurred. But even if the conspiracy holds true, why destroy the statues when It wasn’t a Buddhist from Asia but a Swedish monuments expert from Europe that was being inconsiderate of the poor Afghans?! Should they have blown up the nearest Swedish embassy or something instead? No. They wanted to eradicate any idolatry and possibly cover up their rampant genocide of Shee’ah Muslims and ethnic cleansing of minorities across Afghanistan to pave way for a pristine Sunni Islaamic state.
Enough with that horse crap about a massacre fo the Hazara Shia at the hands of Taliban!!! The Taliban caught Iranian officials in the city plotting something agains the Islamic Emirate of Afganistan (may Allah hasten its inevitable return), and they acted like every real government that respects itself (and its reilgion before) would act.
Say all you want, be you a Shia hater or an ignorant Sunni who is gullible enough to believe the Shia and Western propaganda about every Islamic Sunni movement or group trying to pave the way toward the inevitable Islamic Caliphate (as promised and prophesied by the Messenger of Allah himself), the Muslims who have access to more than your biased, Zionist- and Crusader-controlled media..or every Shia passerby..will not buy this horse crap from you. The Taliban don’t massacre innocents, never persecuted women (otherwise they’d have done so to Yvonne Ridhley, and perhaps “raped” her like Tariq Kneelson likes to spread about every “Khariji”), but no, Yvonne left the Taliban prison only to embrace the Taliban’s religion!!! What does this tell you, ignorants, about the information you’re being fed about the Taliban??? Did you say about the rapes in Iraq by your American soldiers??? I will search your archives, Tariq, and see how much you really felt for other Muslims, you and Umar Lee. And oh, of course I’ll come back to comment on your comments, you and others.
So sad, just how shallow one’s knowledge can be knowing only English and living in America. Everyone knows how ignorant Americans are about the world, the least that can be attributed to is lack of knowing more than one language, and being dependent on the stupidifying American media that keeps them brainwashed and fooled. Embracing Islam doesn’t mean you coming out of the ‘total darkness’ engulfing you, Americans. Extra efforts must be done, but you are too lazy to do them. Picking up the trashy articles from online, paid domain names credible to you..is what you’re good at.
There are men out there who are doing their part in establishing the Rule of Allah on the land of Allah. Any of you, Americans, know those hadiths about the next Caliphate inspired by the Prophet’s example near the End Times? Any of you knows the hadiths about those armies coming out of Khurasan (Afghanistan) with black banners, that won’t be stopped until they plant their Islamic flag on the hills of Palestine? Does this ring any bells? Look around you, where are they? Who is trying to defame them so that the lose Muslim support? The Jews and the Crusaders, and the apostate regimes, all of whom are political and religious rivals and enemies of the next Caliphate.
Do you “Sunni” Muslims want to see another Caliphate, or you like living in America more? Do you oppose an Islamic Caliphate?
If those you accuse of being bloodthirsty were really so, trust me..then there is no good left in this dunya, and the bottom of this earth is better than its surface. I guess you can link us to an article about Rumsfeld’s plan to establish a news office specializing in giving false news to deceive the masses? Do you have a blog entry about that, or NO, IT’S A CONSPIRACY of the imagination of (immigrant) Islam???
You know, quite honestly I have to break this to you: the majority of Arabs and Muslims don’t think like most of you, Western bloggers and commentators, believe me.
And with your ruling out of conspiracies against the Arab and Muslim world..you are accusing Arabs and Muslims of being inherently retarded, even though it was us who built the first real human civilization, and the whole world owes it all to us for where it is now.
I can’t force you to learn more than the inferior stupid English language I sadly have to write in to be able to communicate with you. I can’t force you to a library where you can read about all the consipracies against the ummah, starting from “Lawrence of Arabia” to just few minutes ago (the second bombing of the 2 Shia shrines at Samarra. The Americans are desperately trying to distract the Sunni freedom fighters from targetting the Americans, want them to scatter their efforts, perhaps to grow weaker, by keeping busy fighting the rabid Shia dogs who go nuts everytime they themselves, the Shia, blew up their own graves with the aid of American just to provide an excuse for targetting the innocent Sunnis (killing almost one million of them, you fake Sunni sellout bloogers, and forcing more than 4 millions to migrate).
Keep posting articles from the English web, and commenting on them. Wow, very mainstream, now I bet you are adding so much to our knowledge, busy Tariq!
How old are you? I ask again.
These two blogs have been like dirty coffee shops, full of backbiting the real believers, and keeping silent about the menace America is to Islam. Did you read about the American project to ‘translate’ the workds of South-east Asian Muslim ignorants (the Malay Muslims) to Arabic and English, so as to influence Islam away from the “extreme” Arab Islamic writers and thinkers? “Oh no, another conspiracy!” you must be thinking.
So what’s new on Oprah? (Exactly, that’s what you’re good at, that’s what you’re good for. Your likes won’t serve the ummah with more than briefing a handful of persons about what’s late on TV! You’re like the cheap TV Guide).
You will neither benefit the Western colonial powers with anything you do (or will do, including turning in any Muslim), nor will you harm the advance of the real Muslims to impose the Rule of Allah on the land of Allah. It was written long before we were all created..that Islam will rule the earth, that the kuffar will go down, and that sellouts don’t count and to them Allah prepares a worthy punishment). Not knowing more than the lousy English (while having all this time to surf the web) will not be a valid excuse.
Call me anything you want, but I know you’re all a gang of ignorants, I will continue to laugh at your shallow knowledge of what’s going on in this world, and your denial of who stands behind the backwardness of our ummah (afraid of it rising up again, because it can easily do so, just by being on Islam, which they now try to distort -and they succeeded with most of you already).
And by the way,
Aljazeera (which is banned from Saudia, Algeria, and is threatened in Iran not to handle the thorny issue of Iran’s Sunnis) has been airing for almost two years now a program hosted by Muhammad Hasanayn Haykal, the most famous, most influencial Arab journalist, now probably in his 80’s, the man whom Henry Kessenger (the Wise Man of the West) said about: “if there is any man in the Middle East who knows all that happened in the region, then it’s this man”, meaning Haykal.
What is Haykal talking about most of the time? The Western conspiracies against the Arab nation (him being a pan-Arabist, he talks from a nationalist perspective, and like the Arab saying goes: the truth is that to which the enemy testifies, and here we have Kessenger himself telling your likes, Mr. Kneelson, to believe Haykal.
If you really know Arabic, you can listen to his program here:
http://www.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/E4D82C64-8D87-4F3C-A0E1-9C18D90DE466.htm
Sometimes when I read for you people, I get the impression that you want to convince us you know everything in the books and in the world events. You always give your opinions as if you are experts and established in all the knowledge, temopral and religious. Little do you know that there is such an advanced fiqh you are yet to have translated for you. When you gang up together, you all sound eloquent and uptodate, but when someone else who has access to what you don’t..comes by, he will be APPALLED by your ignorance, and rather disgusted, esp. since Allah gave you all the faculties and the means needed to expand your knowledge, but look what you’re wasting it on, what the Western media is throwing at you and wants you to believe.
I’m shocked! Someone actually believes the American media which spread the hoax about Saddam’s WMD’s, and now about the racial tention in Darfur. Someone actually believes the francophone apostate regime of Algeria that the people of Allah (the Islamists) are killing their own sons and raping their own daughters in the areas that voted massively for the Islamic movement in Algeria in the early 1990’s!!!! Of course no body read when the destroyed former French president, Meterand, said: “we will not allow an Islamic state on our southern borders”, just like everybody thinks that actually no Israel and America and apostate Arab regimes are behind Fatah battling Hamas in the streets of Gaza.
Are you reading about the killings in Gaza of bearded men and niqabi women at the hands of the secular apostate forces of Abu Mazen (the “prez”
and Dahlan, or is your beloved Western news channels not sharing those bits of news with you? Is that why they banned Aljazeera from North America?
You people are jokes. How old are you again? All of you, Tariq’s crew.
I can’t work out, between abdul-Qudus’s belief that the Taliban were pure evil, ridiculous assertion that stone statues are worth more than children in refugee camps and ill-founded assertion that Afghanistan was being incredibly well funded before 2001 (facts and numbers, please? do you mean the pipeline company, for which the American cronies worked?)…
and the ridiculous knee-jerk defense of the Taliban as ‘all good’ and the English language and anyone who speaks it as being evil by Hussam - yet another Manichean dichotomy, and a ridiculous assertion. The Taliban were neither pure evil nor purely good, and they did have a positive beginning by restraining the warlords such as Dostum, but then they accepted Pakistan and Saudi funding and gradually the Arab fanatical elements gained power. They did slaughter Shia in Mazar-i-Sharif, and even Afghans sympathetic to the Taliban have told me that they were too repressive, as the Taliban have promised not to compel people ‘next time.’ This is not to depict them as angelic or demonic.
Hussam and abdul-Qudoos, you’re both writing as if you’re on crack cocaine… please realize that your arguments on webpages means very little to the world and to global opinion leaders - Hussam, you alienate muslims who might otherwise care about your concerns by insulting and degrading them, and people will laugh when they hear you’ve posted until you manage to think through what you’re saying and communicate with people politely, and it would help if you considered the advice of the Qur’an (”and argue with them by that which is better” or Allah’s message to Musa, alayhi Salaam, to speak to Fir’aun “with a gentle word” - and remember you are not Musa and we are not Fir’aun) and followed the adaab of the Sunnah.
as for abdul-Qudoos, you’ve already apostated (murtad) from your simple-minded ‘Wahabi’ literalism to a simple-minded ‘pro-American’ literalism, and perhaps think that by capitulating to power interests, you can get paid just Ayaan Hirsi Ali did, lie and complain about how muslims ‘oppressed’ you into deceiving everyone else, and work your way into a cushy job at the AEI. Do let us know how your kneeling to ’service’ the American powers goes, since you can’t have faith and a Hereafter, you might as well get paid in this world.
Good points Dawud
Hussam Hariri, your prejudice, racism, hatred, and supremacist slant is evident for all to find appauling. For the record, I’m not an American but a Canadian. The problem is with you and your supposed “just war” that none can adequately justify with a rational mind. But the dogmatist can. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan was founded on murder and theft, just like the United States of America.
Dawud, I have criticised the Taliban but please do not make assumptions. I applaud many of their endeavors (e.g., eradication of opium cultivation, curbing the distribution of alcohol, deterred public smoking, etc.) These were superb achievements that I have made many non-Muslims aware of them. But for the most part, they just sucked. Not every apostate of Islaam is pro-American but many do share similar interests, such as their opposition to Islaamic triumphalism and Arab imperialism. As for kneeling, my true interests are further elsewhere in lands and to an ideology that nobody has yet to mention here.
hey Aduwwul-Quddus (Enemy of al-Quddus, Allah),
You were never Muslim. No true Muslim ever leaves Islam. You can be lying (we don’t know you, so whatever you say about being ever a Muslim then leaving Islam doesn’t hold any weight in our eyes. Plus, even if you called yourself Muslim for whatever amount of time, you would leave it without the right and sufficient knowledge, that was never something we ruled out happening even to those born Muslims. No one leaves Islam but one who deserves the misguidance that’s all that’s left beyond Islam.
I’ll return to you and others when I have more extra time to waste on your likes.
Hussam Hariri, inform someone else know when you begin to address the subject matter. Quite honestly, I’ve become tired of you. Thanks for your version of da’wah. Ma’asalaamah.
no da’wah for your likes, only the sword.
La sallamak Allah. May Allah destroy you.
Hussam Hariri, wa ‘alaykum as-salaam.
This guy a raving lunatic also? Just trying to keep straight your list of crazies.
From http://www.tompaine.com
End Of The Road Map
Robert Dreyfuss (www.robertdreyfuss.com)
January 27, 2006
article excerpt:
“It’s important to note, as detailed in my book, Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam , that Israel has only itself to blame for the emergence of Hamas. After 1967, when Israel occupied Gaza and the West Bank, the Israeli authorities encouraged the growth of Islamism as a counter to Palestinian nationalism and the PLO. In 1967, Israel freed Ahmed Yassin, the Muslim Brotherhood leader who founded Hamas in 1978-88, and they encouraged the Islamic right and the Brotherhood to take control of mosques and student groups. In 1977-78, the Israeli government of Menachem Begin’s Likud officially licensed Yassin’s Islamic movement and gave it official Israeli blessing. Throughout the 1980s, the Muslim Brotherhood fought pitched battles against the PLO. In an interview not long before he died, Arafat said: “Hamas is a creature of Israel,” and he quoted slain Israeli Prime Minister Rabin as having told him that Israeli support for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood was a “fatal error.” Several U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials told me about Israel’s support for Yassin and the Brotherhood, and Chas Freeman, the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, told me bluntly: “Israel started Hamas.”