Muslims Credibility Problem: It’s a Conspiracy

[Yurt]

Our Credibility Problem: It’s a Conspiracy

Matthew: It’s a conspiracy.
Jack Bellicec: What’s a conspiracy?
Matthew: Everything.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1978

MUSLIMS HAVE a credibility problem. In the modern era, we have a tendency to believe and repeat wild theories, with our only criteria for accepting those theories being that they lend support to pre-existing attitudes. It takes an extremely sympathetic person to overlook such a deficiency, and sympathy for Muslims in a post 9/11 West is in short supply.

This is a deficiency that the clash-of-civilizations crowd has astutely begun to capitalize on. Pro-Israel groups like the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) play a perpetual game of “gotcha,” scouring the Arab press for the most egregious conspiracy-peddling, then forwarding it to a network of like-minded opinion writers as grist for the Islamophobia mill. MEMRI’s job isn’t difficult.

It seems so elementary: don’t repeat everything you hear as fact if you don’t have evidence for it. Test theories with investigation, and modify theories in light of results. That’s the scientific method that we all learned in sixth grade.

The lack of a grip on this basic principle is yet another proof of the extent of the Muslims’ drift from their Islamic roots. The man who introduced the scientific method to the world was Abu Rayhan ibn Ahmad al-Biruni, an 8th century scholar who, by the age of 17, had calculated his hometown’s latitude from the sun’s altitude. “His bent was strongly towards the study of observable phenomena, in nature and in man,” writes a Western admirer.

Observable phenomena seem quite irrelevant in the Muslim world’s public discourse today.

When Princess Diana died in September 1997, a number of Arab columnists warned that she was murdered by British intelligence because she was going to marry an Arab Muslim. Other Muslims opined that she had in fact already converted to Islam and that she had died as a shaheed (martyr). Such ideas gained currency in Muslim communities in the West and East, with the basis for such claims being nothing more solid than the journalistic equivalent of reading tea leaves.

When the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, some Arab commentators claimed it was all an elaborate “Jewish plot” to cause Clinton to be impeached and removed from office, in order to prevent him from eventually recognizing a Palestinian state.

The EgyptAir 990 crash in November 1999, was painted by some other columnists as having been the result of Mossad sabotage who, by destroying the plane along with its 271 passengers, hoped to destroy the Egyptian tourist industry.

Likewise, it was not long after September 11, before Arab columnists were pointing the fingers at the Jews. One such commentator, writing in Jordan’s ad-Dustour, pointed the finger at the “great Jewish Zionist mastermind that controls the world’s economy, media and politics.”

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Lastly and most importantly, conspiracy theories have led Muslims to ignore the most fundamental cause of our problems, whilst focusing on the machinations of the Freemasons or the Zionists. Subscribing to many of the contemporary conspiracy theories can breed feelings of helplessness and despondency. We sit, drinking coffee, lamenting, in hushed tones, our powerlessness against a Masonic conspiracy hatched by the Knights Templar in Medieval Europe; a plan now being executed through backmasked Michael Jackson songs and Madonna videos. In doing so, we are distracting ourselves from our own failings as Muslims which have more genuinely contributed to our condition.

There is so much more to this article. I recommend reading it in full.

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