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Never-ending Islamic Conspiracies

By: Vernon Richards

2005/01/20     

Pragmatism and candor are prerequisites enabling an individual or culture to grow and progress. If an individual consciousness is unaware of its own short-comings, then he/she is unlikely to choose a path different from the one repeated as a matter of habit or tradition. Healthy human beings are thinking entities inherently capable of both knowledge acquisition and cognitive development. However pride and/or apathy are known to be personal attitudes which can interfere with normal cognitive growth. On a social, cultural, or national level, there are other ‘group think’ errors that can and do prevent normal growth and development. Clever local or regional propagandists, to serve their own interests, can cause or propagate certain attitudes or feelings to stymie rational thought, which might otherwise result in good judgment contributing to social advancement. Our attitudes and emotional state either prepare us for learning and growth, or preclude advancement.

            The capacity to feel fear is an inherent human emotion deep within the psyche of all of us. This primal instinct is normally dormant, but relatively easy to evoke and quickly bring to the surface. This basic emotion has served our species well to insure behavior that guaranties survival, but this powerful instinct also renders us all susceptible to emotional manipulation. Unreasonable fear is called paranoia. Unjustified paranoia usually results in poor choices in behavior, sometimes with egregious harmful or hurtful effects. While the correct perception of a true threat is critical to survival, the perception of a threat which does not exist wastes energy and effort and also prevents any focus on personal, economic, or cultural development. On the other hand, having no perception of a threat, when an actual threat is present, …is just plain stupid. The world is a dangerous place for mortal man, and diligent attention to it dangers is wise, while excessive focus on distant unlikely threats is not. Then there is the old saying, one of my favorites to mention to those preoccupied with slaying windmills: ”Just because your paranoid, doesn’t mean they are not really after you…”

            In case you have not yet noticed, Muslim peoples and nations seem very prone to a wide range of illogical and irrational 'conspiracy theories'. By their own words and actions, it seems vast numbers of the Muslim ‘Ummah’ (community) are preoccupied with various perceived conspiracies, and are thus perpetually locked into a cycle of fear and overreaction. Often, to distract their populace from the realities of their own shortcomings or failures, governments/dictatorships permit or perpetuate misinformation. In the Islamic world, social or cultural fears are also flamed by rumor, by news and editorial content, by TV and radio productions, by internet and satellite broadcasts, and most importantly by their religious leaders. It is no accident that all these arms of communication support this dynamic for deception. To understand the mindset that creates and feeds these endless theories, one needs to look more deeply at the philosophy and doctrine of Islam, and its history in relationship with non-Muslims. Many works are now emerging to assist non-Muslims understand the way Islam emotionally and psychologically affects and limits its adherents. Such books are critical to gaining true perspective on Islamic psychology and culture, as the concepts and dynamics involved are outside typical western patterns of experience. Before enlightenment can occur, one has to study unusual concepts and think ‘outside of the box’. To help gain that perspective, might I suggest you obtain my work “Islam Undressed” (available free upon request; [email protected]).

            The most recent rumor gaining legs in the Islamic world, is that the Dec 26th “Black Sunday” tsunamis, which killed almost a hundred thousand Muslims, was triggered by a combined Indian-American nuclear experiment in the ‘belt of fire’ region, or possibly by massive American bombing in Afghanistan. A respected Egyptian newspaper has just rendered support to this concept by repeating the claim in a recent article. Whereas most humans can easily recognize a natural disaster based on an act of nature, apparently it is impossible for Muslims to accept that their Allah could permit such barbarity against the worlds ‘best people’, which is how they have been taught from birth to view themselves. As such any natural catastrophe simply can not be an ‘act of God’. Instead, pressure builds to find some other rational to explain the calamity. The easy target these days are the vile Hindus, the evil Christians, and/or the dirty Jews. This latest in a long string of conspiracy theories is pitiable. One might feel inclined to laugh at and mock such simple mindedness, were it not for the sad implications to us of the many people trapped in this kind of Islamic ‘groupthink’.

            In another instance, since 9/11 rumors quickly surfaced in the Middle East that thousands of Jews were forewarned and did not go to work at the World Trade Center that morning. Despite the absence of any evidence supporting such outlandish claims, those rumors have now become facts in the minds of vast numbers of Muslims. Notwithstanding we are now 3 ½ years since 9/11, and despite tactic and actual acknowledgment by al-Qaeda of responsibility, vast numbers of Muslims in the Middle East, including the most educated, actually believe that Mossad (Israel's intelligence service) carried out the September 11 attacks on America. This suggestion remains laughable to westerners, and an insult to the intelligence of anyone with a basic grasp of the facts. But while no-one in the West believes such absurdity, Westerners still fail to grasp an important reality; It is not just a handful of wackos who are swallowing such rubbish in other lands. It is possible that hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world largely believe it, convinced that that Mossad was behind the attacks in a design to provoke an American response against Muslims. Their truth manifest, …Islamic lands and Islamic militants have been targeted in response.
            For some reason, Muslims seem incapable of facing the reality of their co-brothers culpability. The reason for that denial is both simple and foreboding, and is based firmly in Islamic doctrine and mindsets. The malady is both systemic, and intractable, because it is based on a core Muslim belief that Muslims are Gods ‘best people’, far superior to non-believers whom the Islamic God ‘does not love’. As such, whatever goes wrong, …simply has to be the fault of non-believers. To believe otherwise shakes the very foundation of an individuals Islamic identity. If you take away a Muslims sense of superiority, there is usually very little left (in terms of family, culture, or economic quality of life) to support the poor creature. To a good Muslim completely lost in Islam, there is nothing else to fall back on, because such an individual has already ‘broken all ties’ in his efforts to win carnal paradise in Islamic heaven with 72 virgins, ‘boys like pearls’, gluttony, and endless mansions and riches.

            African Muslims regularly accusing "Zionists" of spreading AIDS. Last year Imams in Africa issued a fatwa telling the poor African Muslims not to go for polio vaccinations because Western doctors were conspiring to cause them harm thereby. They were told that the 'Jews' were behind the contamination of the vaccine which might cause Aids or infertility, …and they believed it. Of course, the claims were outlandish with no basis in fact, yet they still served to successfully manipulate the behavior of the entire Muslim populace. Only after some small outbreaks of polio threatened to become wider, did the clerics permit vaccinations to resume. Despite all kinds of logical and scientific evidence available to everyone, it was only the very ‘real’ fear of polio epidemics which could overcome the false fear from their religious leaders. In this case the paranoia proved to be harmful to the paranoid, but unfortunately in most other cases paranoia usually harms others. There are innumerable examples of excessive violent overreaction by Muslims, but point to any subset of historical data showing such harm caused and be prepared for the usual reaction; “Lies, lies!”, they will scream, claiming victimization and/or conspiracy. Insecure followers of Islam learn early in life how to react to shield themselves from all blame and humiliation. In a typical display of ‘transference’, anyone pointing out Islamic paranoia is quickly vilified as ‘paranoid’ (i.e. Islamophobic).

            A book long since exposed as pure fiction, Protocols of the Elders of Zion was initially spread by the intelligence services of the Russian czar in 1895 to provide support and justification for its anti-Jew policies. Leaders and lay alike in the Muslim world actually still believe the work contains actual minutes of conspiratorial meetings among Jewish leaders, who were plotting to take over the world. The Protocols book provides a complete conspiracy theory of history in which satanic Jews relentlessly strive for world domination. It claims that even Communism, Freemasonry, Zionism, and the State of Israel itself are all deemed to be instruments in this diabolical scheme of Jewry. Its attraction to gullible Muslims has grows with each successive Muslim defeat by Israel. The book is gospel truth to these people, and no amount of logic or rational argument can steer those who believe this type of nonsense away from it. There can only be one purpose to continue the otherwise pointless propagation of the lies within the document, …to justify any and all means to defeat and kill all Jewish conspirators.

            Monsieur Meysson wrote a bestseller in France that claims that no airplane crashed into the Pentagon, because allegedly no debris from the ill-fated aircraft were recovered at the crash site. To his mind, and readily accepted by Muslims, it was all a plot by the CIA and the U.S. military, who used an U.S. Air Force cruise missile to murder Americans in a conspiracy to justify a new Middle East war. One Islamist site states: “Our analysis indicates that in reality, sophisticated shaped-charge explosive technology was used to create a scene comporting with the appearance of an jetliner crash, while simultaneously a 757 over-flew the area and landed at nearby Reagan National Airport”.

            Arab countries also regularly host conferences where Holocaust deniers masquerading as historians claim to be able to "prove" there was no massacre of Jews by the Nazis during World War II. Whereas many Muslims worldwide praise Hitler for his services, yet almost in the same breath they deny the Holocaust as "a big illusion of the Jews". Muslim revisionists, normally happy at reports of Jewish defeats and deaths, seem angry about the effect of the Holocaust on world opinion, and would rather the world felt no sympathy for Jewish victims. The claim that Jews control American government, Hollywood, western media, and most global banks have long since been accepted as obvious truths. The oft repeated claim that Israel poisons candy, food and water delivered to the Palestinians has been repeated in all regional Arab news papers and TV. The ridiculous conspiracy theories about Jews and Freemasons advanced by Muslims are on about the same level as believing that Elvis was abducted by aliens.

            In Iraq today, conspiracy theories are spreading fast and easy. Many even claim that Al-Zarwaqi is an invention of the American propaganda machine. The prominent Egyptian Islamist Mohamed Selim El-Awwa,  Secretary-General of the International Association of Muslim Scholars (IAMS), wrote in the Al-Ahram Egyptian daily Dec 2 2004 that the Iraqi resistance had been infiltrated by "Zionist and international intelligence services". El-Awwa explained that Muslims would not decapitate hostages stating; “It is no coincidence that decapitations or the brutal killing of innocent hostages always occur just after a scandal exposing the violations of the occupation forces.” In fact many claim that Mossad have personnel in Iraq to organize terrorist activities to guarantee that Iraq remains unstable so that Americans need to stay. Theories that Israeli forces have joined the Americans serve to incite more volunteers to join the ‘resistance’, as hatred of Jews is the single common denominator that unites all Muslims of all creeds. Of course, there is always the firmly established theory that the Americans are only in Iraq to steal Arab oil. On Dec 12, columnist George Haddad in Al-Hayat repeated another popular conspiracy noting; “During a few weeks only, a third wave of outrageous bombing of Christian churches occurred in Iraq… If we look at these crimes from a criminal investigation point of view, and ask who is benefiting from these attacks, it would not be difficult to discover that the American occupation, international Zionism, and Israel get the real benefits from such attacks”. Thus the CIA and Mossad receives the blame for the carnage, and Muslim fighters retain their Teflon coating. After all, evil cannot possibly come from the worlds best religion and its people. It has also been claimed, and apparently widely accepted, that U.S. soldiers cannibalized Iraqi civilians, and the U.S. was responsible for the car bomb that killed Iraqi Shia leader Muhammad Bakir Al-Hakim.

            Some popular theories gain credence no matter how far-fetched they seem, like conspiracy theories in the Arab world that claim Jews were behind the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia, and the U.S. is behind the SARS virus. Columnists in prominent Arab newspapers, including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, blamed the Madrid Spain bombings on the Jews. Indeed, the deputy editor of the Egyptian government daily Al-Gumhouriyya, wrote a March 18 2004 article accusing the Jews of perpetrating virtually every major terrorist attack throughout the world which westerners blame on Islamic extremists. Some have gone as far as to claim the CIA controls Osama bin Laden.

            More recently, a 75 year old aged Palestinian man in ill health died in a French hospital. Never mind that the life expectancy of Palestinians is in the 50’s, many believe that Israel conspired to poison and kill Mr. Yasser Arafat. Of course, no one in the world expected anything less than yet another claim of an Israeli conspiracy, along with more calls for vengeance, …and so no one was disappointed. Even if the man was 100 years old, its quite probable that a scenario does not exist which would have saved Israelis from responsibility for Arafat’s death.

            Meanwhile, back in the real world, the only ‘real’ global conspiracy worthy of attention is the one being acted out by Islamic extremists to force the whole world into Islam, or destroy any part of it which refuses to cooperate. As opposed to all examples previously cited, that is not paranoia, that is a reasonable fear based on 1400+ years of history, up to and including today. Studying the Quran and Hadith, one can read of the conspiracies which Muhammad saw all around himself, and which he used to justify several offensive campaigns to kill, plunder, or subjugate those he perceived as a threat. What we see today is the natural extension of that example. No doubt all those earliest victims of Islamic conspiracy theories also thought the unjustified concerns would be settled by means other than Jihad. They were probably concerned, but undoubtedly all hoped for reason and logic to prevail. They all probably thought pretty much like we do today, counting on mans better nature to prevail. As they faced their last moments of life, undoubtedly they all regretted not taking the threat more seriously. It’s too late for them, but what lesson should we be taking from them?

            Islamophobia is defined as; “an unreasonable fear of the people and philosophy Islam and all it represents”. But that definition contains a huge contradiction, as all concerns and fears relating to the behavior of Islamic adherents toward non-believers have a firm foundation in historical fact. Today and in all ages, when a individual, society, or culture finds itself in proximity to Islam, then it also finds itself in opposition to the expansion and goals of that philosophy. The act of not ‘believing’, or opposing sharia, constitutes behavior worthy of Islamic reprisals. So being concerned or fearful of the designs of Islamic followers is both a reasonable and rational state of mind. It’s just silly, if not stupid, to criticize a practical mindset which is likely essential for continued survival. What is more important, to appear politically correct, or to survive as individuals, societies and cultures? Do we want to appear ‘cool’, ‘PC’, and ‘sophisticated’, or are we willing to shed that image and act to preserve ourselves, our families, our neighborhoods, our towns, and our country. For the sake of both Muslims and non-Muslims alike, we all hope that the ‘Ummah’ can overcome its own grandiose sense of superiority, which is at the root of a dangerous psychosis evident in rampant denial and the ever growing body of perceived conspiracies. We hope for this because when a madman sees ghosts and lashes out at the creature, it is the physical world which suffers from the blows.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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