Plague of Madness
In the Islamic world, which perceives itself under attack by Jews and Christians at every turn, conspiracy theories are as common, and dangerous, as any wild-eyed mullah.
Certainly, there is no shortage of conspiracy theorists in this country, and with the advent of personal web pages even the most obsessed recluse can disseminate freely and to thousands of equally obsessive readers. Even mainstream culture has produced wild speculation on everything from Oliver Stone's ridiculous "JFK" to the nearly heretical "The Da Vinci Code". Currently, there are hundreds of sites dedicated to the belief that the airliners we all saw crash into the Twin Towers were actually holographic illusions, projected by specialized "pods" slung from the bottom of cruise missiles.
Usually, these ideas are relegated to where they most deservedly belong: fringe acceptance by a small core of very strange people.
But no where does the conspiracy theory reach greater hysterical proportions, or greater mainstream acceptance, than in the Moslem world. Since Islam is a "religion" of submission that actually punishes rational creativity and discourse, and is often led and practiced by individuals who demonstrate severe feelings of inadequacy and alienation, this fever-swamp of twisted minds is the perfect incubator for crazy thinking.
In Palestinian controlled areas of Israel, there have been riots and violence over rumors that Jews were kidnapping and killing young Palestinian children in order to drain their blood into Jewish bread. Universally, the Jews are held responsible for a staggering array of crimes, including the recent death of Yassar Arafat, when supposedly responsible Palestinian leaders charged that Israeli poison could not be ruled out.
In the past, Moslem imams have accused Western countries of polluting exported food-stuffs with pork fat, in an effort to humiliate the Islamic populace. They have blamed the Jews for the recent destruction of the Columbia space shuttle, which killed Israel's first astronaut. They have denied that the Holocaust even occurred, ironically accusing the Jews of making up a conspiracy themselves to gain world sympathy and support. They have promoted the idea that the American government is actively involved in a conspiracy to spread hedonism around the world through the media, with the intent of undermining good, old fashioned Islamic values. In Egypt, a respected, mainstream newspaper claimed that the recent tsunami was the result of a combined Indian-American-Israeli nuclear test. In the Moslem world, it is almost common knowledge that all Jews were forewarned prior to the attack on the Twin Towers, because it was an Israeli Mossad operation concocted to bring America into the war against Islam.
Most recently, Islamic scholars from around the world have claimed that the Iraqi terrorist groups are simply machinations of American CIA operatives. The prominent Egyptian Islamist Mohamed Selim El-Awwa, Secretary General of the International Association of Muslim Scholars wrote in the December, 2004 issue of the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram that the Iraqi "resistance" had in fact been infiltrated and was being led by "Zionist and international intelligence services" and that no Muslim would actually decapitate innocent hostages. Going one step better, the deputy editor of Egypt' government daily Al-Gumhouriyya wrote a March 18, 2004 editorial accusing the Jews of perpetrating virtually every major terrorist attack throughout the world for which Moslems were blamed.
The pinnacle of Islamic paranoia, however, centers around a fictional book supposedly written by Jewish plotters called the"Protocols of the Elders of Zion", which reportedly details a complex and evolving plot between Communism, Freemasonry, Zionism, and the State of Israel to relentlessly destroy Islam in an effort to achieve world domination, all with the help and financial assistance of the United States, of course.
While similar theories in this country might warrant a few hours on the Art Bell radio program, or provide headlines for the Weekly World News, these Islamic conspiracies are embraced by most Moslems, and boldly proclaimed and asserted in some of the most mainstream Islamic publications in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, and all throughout the Moslem world.
But most disturbingly, and ironically, some conspiracies have led to the death or illness of thousands of Moslems.
A recent outbreak of polio in the Moslem world is a direct result of Islam's pervasive paranoid hysteria. Imams in Africa issued religious decrees, or fatwahs, forbidding Moslems from receiving polio vaccinations, since the inoculation was a Jewish Zionist plot to render Muslim girls infertile, and spread SARS and AIDS to the Moslem populace. This led to an 11-month halt of vaccinations in Nigeria, a hotbed of radical Islamic fervor. Consequently, a strain of the disease spread to other primarily Moslem nations, and vaccinations did not resume until health officials could convince local religious leaders that the vaccine was from Indonesia, another Moslem country. As it stands, 16 Moslem countries have been reinfected by polio, according to the World Health Organization.
Apparently, it is not enough that the modern world must struggle with fanatical Islamic destruction, bent on eradicating all other religions and political systems at the end of a sword or the barrel of a rifle.
When will the world wake up and realize that the sickness of Islam, like polio, must be stopped before we are all infected.
Certainly, there is no shortage of conspiracy theorists in this country, and with the advent of personal web pages even the most obsessed recluse can disseminate freely and to thousands of equally obsessive readers. Even mainstream culture has produced wild speculation on everything from Oliver Stone's ridiculous "JFK" to the nearly heretical "The Da Vinci Code". Currently, there are hundreds of sites dedicated to the belief that the airliners we all saw crash into the Twin Towers were actually holographic illusions, projected by specialized "pods" slung from the bottom of cruise missiles.
Usually, these ideas are relegated to where they most deservedly belong: fringe acceptance by a small core of very strange people.
But no where does the conspiracy theory reach greater hysterical proportions, or greater mainstream acceptance, than in the Moslem world. Since Islam is a "religion" of submission that actually punishes rational creativity and discourse, and is often led and practiced by individuals who demonstrate severe feelings of inadequacy and alienation, this fever-swamp of twisted minds is the perfect incubator for crazy thinking.
In Palestinian controlled areas of Israel, there have been riots and violence over rumors that Jews were kidnapping and killing young Palestinian children in order to drain their blood into Jewish bread. Universally, the Jews are held responsible for a staggering array of crimes, including the recent death of Yassar Arafat, when supposedly responsible Palestinian leaders charged that Israeli poison could not be ruled out.
In the past, Moslem imams have accused Western countries of polluting exported food-stuffs with pork fat, in an effort to humiliate the Islamic populace. They have blamed the Jews for the recent destruction of the Columbia space shuttle, which killed Israel's first astronaut. They have denied that the Holocaust even occurred, ironically accusing the Jews of making up a conspiracy themselves to gain world sympathy and support. They have promoted the idea that the American government is actively involved in a conspiracy to spread hedonism around the world through the media, with the intent of undermining good, old fashioned Islamic values. In Egypt, a respected, mainstream newspaper claimed that the recent tsunami was the result of a combined Indian-American-Israeli nuclear test. In the Moslem world, it is almost common knowledge that all Jews were forewarned prior to the attack on the Twin Towers, because it was an Israeli Mossad operation concocted to bring America into the war against Islam.
Most recently, Islamic scholars from around the world have claimed that the Iraqi terrorist groups are simply machinations of American CIA operatives. The prominent Egyptian Islamist Mohamed Selim El-Awwa, Secretary General of the International Association of Muslim Scholars wrote in the December, 2004 issue of the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram that the Iraqi "resistance" had in fact been infiltrated and was being led by "Zionist and international intelligence services" and that no Muslim would actually decapitate innocent hostages. Going one step better, the deputy editor of Egypt' government daily Al-Gumhouriyya wrote a March 18, 2004 editorial accusing the Jews of perpetrating virtually every major terrorist attack throughout the world for which Moslems were blamed.
The pinnacle of Islamic paranoia, however, centers around a fictional book supposedly written by Jewish plotters called the"Protocols of the Elders of Zion", which reportedly details a complex and evolving plot between Communism, Freemasonry, Zionism, and the State of Israel to relentlessly destroy Islam in an effort to achieve world domination, all with the help and financial assistance of the United States, of course.
While similar theories in this country might warrant a few hours on the Art Bell radio program, or provide headlines for the Weekly World News, these Islamic conspiracies are embraced by most Moslems, and boldly proclaimed and asserted in some of the most mainstream Islamic publications in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, and all throughout the Moslem world.
But most disturbingly, and ironically, some conspiracies have led to the death or illness of thousands of Moslems.
A recent outbreak of polio in the Moslem world is a direct result of Islam's pervasive paranoid hysteria. Imams in Africa issued religious decrees, or fatwahs, forbidding Moslems from receiving polio vaccinations, since the inoculation was a Jewish Zionist plot to render Muslim girls infertile, and spread SARS and AIDS to the Moslem populace. This led to an 11-month halt of vaccinations in Nigeria, a hotbed of radical Islamic fervor. Consequently, a strain of the disease spread to other primarily Moslem nations, and vaccinations did not resume until health officials could convince local religious leaders that the vaccine was from Indonesia, another Moslem country. As it stands, 16 Moslem countries have been reinfected by polio, according to the World Health Organization.
Apparently, it is not enough that the modern world must struggle with fanatical Islamic destruction, bent on eradicating all other religions and political systems at the end of a sword or the barrel of a rifle.
When will the world wake up and realize that the sickness of Islam, like polio, must be stopped before we are all infected.
posted by Mark Outland at 3:45 PM
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