We often get accused in the media of being in the pocket of government, the Jewish international community, the Masons, MI6. You name it, they are our taskmasters. We are not alone in being targeted as being part of a wider consipracy.
And the recent events have made many to accuse the police to have made it all up. Shiraz Maher, a journalist who worked with More4 recently on a piece about his life inside Hizb-ut-Tahrir, told this to us:
It’s already started. Just hours after the police made a series of anti-terror raids across the country some Muslims have begun denouncing the police operation as a sham.
“Another distraction, another theatrical saga to turn public opinion. Every time the government’s position looks untenable, they pull another plot out of the hat,” writes Saladin dismissively on an internet chat forum.
I’m often asked by friends why Muslims are so quick to interpret political events through a prism of conspiracy and intrigue.I have to be honest, I’m not entirely sure I know.
But it’s certainly not a recent phenomena.Days after 9/11, conspiracy theories were abound that the attack was orchestrated by Mossad and similar canards followed after 7/7.
This latest series of anti-terror raids is, I’m assured, part of a government plan to divert attention off the Middle East crisis.
It’s a dynamic of denial, part of which is borne out of the insularity of the Muslim community.
Governed by the biradri system, an unwritten law of social pressures revolving around communal honour means that few ever speak out, except, of course, against the easiest of targets – Bush and Blair.
Although the biradri system is informally run by community elders whose authority cannot be challenged, their insularity inadvertently serves the new generation of young Islamists best.
Discouraging integration allows extremists to polarise the debate, take leadership of Muslim youth and ferment a subculture of anti-western anger which breeds almost undetected. While there is still a bridge to be crossed from extremism to terrorism, those on the initial path have shorter to travel than the rest of us.
A Dispatches investigation for Channel 4 earlier this week suggested “immigrants have usually tended to become more secular and less religious than their parents by the second generation…[but] Muslims have gone in precisely the opposite direction.”
Solving this problem remains key, not just to achieving a better life – but to helping preserve it also.
The order of life:
1st and foremost you are a human being
2nd you belong to a group called family... son/daughter/father/mother/
brother/sister
3rd you belong to a group called society
4th ones personal beliefs/options like religion etc.
please tell the muslims
Posted by: P nascimento | Thursday, 17 August 2006 at 07:06 PM
One reason for Jews and Freemasons being pointed at as conspiring against Muslims and society worldwide is that many Muslims are unaware of the true origins of the book 'Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion', but take it at face value.
I have seen this book displayed in UK Islamic bookstores, and it is believed as authentic in Muslim countries all over the Middle East. In the 1950s, President Nasser of Egypt recommended it as giving insight into the ‘Jewish mind’. In 2002, Egyptian state TV ran a drama series based on it. In 2003, the book’s centennial was celebrated in Iran. President Ahmadinejad has clearly been a believer in the book.
The book was the fictional creation of Russian tzarist police, apparently based on various literary works familiar at the time (I can recommend the Encyclopaedia Britannica for an account of it). They presented Jews and Freemasons as conspiring together to overthrow Christendom through planting 'liberal' and 'socialist' values, in order to take over the world. Somehow, the writers seem to have mixed up Zionism (i.e aspiring to a national home for Jews, preferably in Palestine) with Communism. The former was no threat to Russian tzarism or Christianity, whereas the latter was.
Tzarism was somewhat on its last legs at the time the ‘Protocols’ was first published, but there is no evidence to suggest that Russian Jews were particularly accountable for this. However, the police wanted to turn the tide in favour of the tzar and may have tried to rally people against alternatives by decrying these as plots by Jews (anti-Semitism existed in Russia, as in much of the Christian world at the time, as a religious ideology).
I am not quite sure why the Freemasons would have been chosen by the ‘Protocols’ writers as ‘partners in crime’ except, being quite a ‘closed society’, Freemasons may have aroused suspicion. The real meeting in Basel, alluded to by the writers of ‘Protocols’, was about Zionism and never involved Freemasons. Zionism is about a localised national homeland for Jews, not world-takeover.
However, into the mix may come Karl Marx, who was born into a Jewish family (I don’t remember where, but not Russia). His father converted to Christianity (I am not clear if this was a genuine conversion or just to get by in the world), consequently Karl was brought up as a Christian, and seems to have been quite serious about it. However, in young adulthood he began to run into ideas challenging his religious view, and eventually dropped religion from his life altogether. Later, as a Communist, he indeed viewed the existence of Jews as an ethnic or religious group with no sympathy. Marx and his (also born Jewish) colleague Engels did not invent Communism, but Marx is of course one of its best-known thinkers. Perhaps the Russian police were thinking of him when preparing their libellous fiction. Communist thinkers did conceive of Communism taking over the world and ousting religion (and that includes Judaism, by the way).
I have recently written to a number of people concerning the role that belief in ‘Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion’ seems to play in creating a climate of extreme mistrust, and possibly terrorism. I have also recently sent details on the background of the book to such people as the Iranian ambassador in London (asking him to pass the information to President Ahmadinejad), the Iranian and Syrian representatives at the UN, Farooq Qureshi (Mayor of Waltham Forest, where I used to live and see the book in Islamic shop-windows), Margaret Beckett (Foreign Secretary), John Reid (Home Secretary).
Posted by: Deirdre Cripps | Thursday, 24 August 2006 at 12:56 PM
One reason for Jews and Freemasons being pointed at as conspiring against Muslims and society worldwide is that many Muslims are unaware of the true origins of the book 'Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion', but take it at face value.
I have seen this book displayed in UK Islamic bookstores, and it is believed as authentic in Muslim countries all over the Middle East. In the 1950s, President Nasser of Egypt recommended it as giving insight into the ‘Jewish mind’. In 2002, Egyptian state TV ran a drama series based on it. In 2003, the book’s centennial was celebrated in Iran. President Ahmadinejad has clearly been a believer in the book.
The book was the fictional creation of Russian tzarist police, apparently based on various literary works familiar at the time (I can recommend the Encyclopaedia Britannica for an account of it). They presented Jews and Freemasons as conspiring together to overthrow Christendom through planting 'liberal' and 'socialist' values, in order to take over the world. Somehow, the writers seem to have mixed up Zionism (i.e aspiring to a national home for Jews, preferably in Palestine) with Communism. The former was no threat to Russian tzarism or Christianity, whereas the latter was.
Tzarism was somewhat on its last legs at the time the ‘Protocols’ was first published, but there is no evidence to suggest that Russian Jews were particularly accountable for this. However, the police wanted to turn the tide in favour of the tzar and may have tried to rally people against alternatives by decrying these as plots by Jews (anti-Semitism existed in Russia, as in much of the Christian world at the time, as a religious ideology).
I am not quite sure why the Freemasons would have been chosen by the ‘Protocols’ writers as ‘partners in crime’ except, being quite a ‘closed society’, Freemasons may have aroused suspicion. The real meeting in Basel, alluded to by the writers of ‘Protocols’, was about Zionism and never involved Freemasons. Zionism is about a localised national homeland for Jews, not world-takeover.
However, into the mix may come Karl Marx, who was born into a Jewish family (I don’t remember where, but not Russia). His father converted to Christianity (I am not clear if this was a genuine conversion or just to get by in the world), consequently Karl was brought up as a Christian, and seems to have been serious about it. However, in young adulthood he began to run into ideas challenging his religious view, and eventually dropped religion from his life altogether. Later, as a Communist, he indeed viewed the existence of Jews as an ethnic or religious group with no sympathy. Marx and his (also born Jewish) colleague Engels did not invent Communism, but Marx is of course one of its best-known thinkers. Perhaps the Russian police were thinking of him when preparing their libellous fiction. Communist thinkers did conceive of Communism taking over the world and ousting religion (and that includes Judaism, by the way).
I have recently written to a number of people concerning the role that belief in ‘Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion’ seems to play in creating a climate of extreme mistrust, and possibly terrorism. I have also recently sent details on the background of the book to such people as the Iranian ambassador in London (asking him to pass the information to President Ahmadinejad), the Iranian and Syrian representatives at the UN, Farooq Qureshi (Mayor of Waltham Forest, where I used to live and see the book in Islamic shop-windows), Margaret Beckett (Foreign Secretary), John Reid (Home Secretary).
Posted by: Deirdre Cripps | Thursday, 24 August 2006 at 01:06 PM
Amendments to the above comment from Deirdre Cripps:
Karl Marx was born in Prussia, in what is now part of western Germany. His father converted to Christianity when Karl was six.
Marx's colleague Friedrich Engels was born into a Protestant (not Jewish) family, in Prussia.
Apologies for the above comment appearing twice; my error.
Posted by: Deirdre Cripps | Tuesday, 29 August 2006 at 01:10 PM