Terrorism, Part 2

What can be more frustrating than the thought that your coreligionists might be using your faith to justify killing civilians? Answer: The reaction of some members of your faith to such acts.

The conspiracy theories going around about who was behind the 9/11 attacks (among both Muslims and non-Muslims I should add) would fill volumes. And now the same kind of stuff about the London bombings. Excerpt from a BBC story about the response in South Asia:

'A senior leader from a coalition of radical Islamic political parties [in Pakistan], the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) suggested that the attacks might have been orchestrated by the West as a strategy to turn public opinion against Muslims.

"This is very tragic," said Liaqat Baluch, a prominent lawmaker from MMA.

"But this could also be a strategy by Europe and America to line up against Muslims. They are directly saying that Muslim groups or al-Qaeda are behind these bombings. Then how can it be ruled out that these are not engineered blasts?" he asked.

The BBC's Aamer Ahmed Khan says that Mr Baloch's comments reflect a widely held belief among Pakistan's religious organisations and their supporters that the war on terror is "a creation of the West" to bludgeon Islam and Muslims.

Our correspondent says that while most Pakistanis reacted with horror to the news, religious organisations believe that the 11 September attacks in Washington and New York were "a conspiracy hatched by the Jews to turn the West against the Muslim world".'

The best part about conspiracy theories, as I remember someone on the radio saying a few weeks ago, is that any evidence presented to the contrary only goes to strengthen these theories. Recall the Osama bin Laden tape a few years ago that showed him effectively admitting responsibility for the 9/11 incidents. Why, it was doctored of course! Surely it is very easy for the American government to create false tapes like that.

I'm not saying it's always a cut and dried case against Islamist groups (what does "Islamist" mean anyway?). I'm not even discounting that there is likely more than meets the eye and is made known to the public in the aftermath of such attacks. My problem is with the refusal of many Muslims to admit that there is a serious problem in the Muslim nation and that responding each time with mere speculation about conspiracies and intricately engineered plots against Islam and Muslims is not going to make that problem go away.