The Muslim world and conspiracy theories/Hoaxes

[Bornubus]

Creating this thread for highlighting,how Muslim world in general and Indian subcontinent in particular are susceptible to hoaxes and C.T,which they concoct to hide their failures and incompetence.

According to Mehdi Hasan "I once asked the Pakistani politician Imran Khan why his fellow citizens were so keen on conspiracy theories. “They’re lied to all the time by their leaders,” he replied. “If a society is used to listening to lies all the time . . . everything becomes a conspiracy.”

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Inside jobs and Israeli stooges: why is the Muslim world in thrall to conspiracy theories?
The “We’ve been lied to” argument goes only so far. Scepticism may be evidence of a healthy and independent mindset; but conspiracism is a virus that feeds off insecurity and bitterness.

MEHDI HASAN
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Did you know that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Isis, was trained by Mossad and the CIA? Were you aware that his real name isn’t Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai but Simon Elliot? Or that he’s a Jewish actor who was recruited by the Israelis to play the part of the world’s most wanted terrorist?

If the messages in my email in-box and my Twitter timeline and on my Facebook page are anything to go by, plenty of Muslims are not only willing to believe this nonsensical drivel but are super-keen to share it with their friends. The bizarre claim that NSA documents released by Edward Snowden “prove” the US and Israel are behind al-Baghdadi’s actions has gone viral.

There’s only one problem. “It’s utter BS,” Glenn Greenwald, the investigative journalist who helped break the NSA story, told me. “Snowden never said anything like that and no [NSA] documents suggest it.” Snowden’s lawyer, Ben Wizner, has called the story a hoax.

But millions of Muslims across the globe have a soft spot for such hoaxes. Conspiracy theories are rife in both Muslim-majority countries and Muslim communities here in the west. The events of 9/11 and the subsequent “war on terror” unleashed a vast array of hoaxers, hucksters and fantasists from Birmingham to Beirut.

On a visit to Iraq in 2002, I met a senior Islamic cleric who told me that Jews, not Arabs, had been responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He loudly repeated the Middle East’s most popular and pernicious 9/11 conspiracy theory: that 4,000 Jews didn’t turn up for work on 11 September 2001 because they had been forewarned about the attacks.

There is, of course, no evidence for this outlandish and offensive claim. The truth is that more than 200 Jews, including several Israeli citizens, were killed in the attacks on the twin towers. I guess they must have missed the memo from Mossad.

Yet the denialism persists. A Pew poll in 2011, a decade after 9/11, found that a majority of respondents in countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon refused to believe that the attacks were carried out by Arab members of al-Qaeda. “There is no Muslim public in which even 30 per cent accept that Arabs conducted the attacks,” the Pew researchers noted.

This blindness isn’t peculiar to the Arab world or the Middle East. Consider Pakistan, home to many of the world’s weirdest and wackiest conspiracy theories. Some Pakistanis say the schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai is a CIA agent. Others think that the heavy floods of 2010, which killed 2,000 Pakistanis, were caused by secret US military technology. And two out of three don’t believe Osama Bin Laden was killed by US navy Seals on Pakistani soil on 2 May 2011.

Consider also Nigeria, where there was a polio outbreak in 2003 after local people boycotted the vaccine, claiming it was a western plot to infect Muslims with HIV. Then there is Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, where leading politicians and journalists blamed the 2002 Bali bombings on US agents.

Why are so many of my fellow Muslims so gullible and so quick to believe bonkers conspiracy theories? How have the pedlars of paranoia amassed such influence within Muslim communities?

First, we should be fair: it’s worth noting that Muslim-majority nations have been on the receiving end of various actual conspiracies. France and Britain did secretly conspire to carve up the Middle East between them with the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. They also conspired to attack Egypt, with Israel’s help, and thereby provoked the Suez crisis of 1956. Oh, and it turned out there weren’t any WMDs in Iraq in 2003 despite what the dossiers claimed.

I once asked the Pakistani politician Imran Khan why his fellow citizens were so keen on conspiracy theories. “They’re lied to all the time by their leaders,” he replied. “If a society is used to listening to lies all the time . . . everything becomes a conspiracy.”

The “We’ve been lied to” argument goes only so far. Scepticism may be evidence of a healthy and independent mindset; but conspiracism is a virus that feeds off insecurity and bitterness. As the former Pakistani diplomat Husain Haqqani has admitted, “the contemporary Muslim fascination for conspiracy theories” is a convenient way of “explaining the powerlessness of a community that was at one time the world’s economic, scientific, political and military leader”.

Nor is this about ignorance or illiteracy. Those who promulgate a paranoid, conspiratorial world-view within Muslim communities include the highly educated and highly qualified, the rulers as well as the ruled. A recent conspiracy theory blaming the rise of Islamic State on the US government, based on fabricated quotes from Hillary Clinton’s new memoir, was publicly endorsed by Lebanon’s foreign minister and Egypt’s culture minister.

Where will it end? When will credulous Muslims stop leaning on the conspiracy crutch? We blame sinister outside powers for all our problems – extremism, despotism, corruption and the rest – and paint ourselves as helpless victims rather than independent agents. After all, why take responsibility for our actions when it’s far easier to point the finger at the CIA/Mossad/the Jews/the Hindus/fill-in-your-villain-of-choice?

As the Egyptian intellectual Abd al-Munim Said once observed, “The biggest problem with conspiracy theories is that they keep us not only from the truth, but also from confronting our faults and problems.” They also make us look like loons. Can we give it a rest, please?

Mehdi Hasan is an New Statesman contributing writer, and works for al-Jazeera English and the Huffington Post UK where this column is crossposted

http://www.newstatesman.com/politic...s-why-muslim-world-thrall-conspiracy-theories

 

[Bornubus]

Why are Conspiracy Theories embraced at “truth” within the Muslim world?
This entry was posted in Critical Thinkingeducationreligion and tagged conspiraciesMehdi Hasan on September 8, 2014 by Dave

Trying to grasp why specific ideas that are complete and utter bullshit are embraced as truth is always an interesting question to ponder over, in fact I was doing exactly that a few days ago, so when I came across an article by Mehdi Hasan (a Muslim) it caught my eye. Mr Hasan, is one of those chaps who at times can come out with rather sensible stuff (for example his support for secularism), and also at the same time say some truly weird and daft things (such as his assertion that Atheists are like cattle), so it was interesting to see what somebody who truly believes (FYI, he is a Shia Muslim) would have to say about such thinking.

It starts off well, he does indeed recognise that there is a very serious detachment from reality …

Did you know that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Isis, was trained by Mossad and the CIA? Were you aware that his real name isn’t Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai but Simon Elliot? Or that he’s a Jewish actor who was recruited by the Israelis to play the part of the world’s most wanted terrorist?

If the messages in my email in-box and my Twitter timeline and on my Facebook page are anything to go by, plenty of Muslims are not only willing to believe this nonsensical drivel but are super-keen to share it with their friends. The bizarre claim that NSA documents released by Edward Snowden “prove” the US and Israel are behind al-Baghdadi’s actions has gone viral.

There’s only one problem. “It’s utter BS,” Glenn Greenwald, the investigative journalist who helped break the NSA story, told me. “Snowden never said anything like that and no [NSA] documents suggest it.” Snowden’s lawyer, Ben Wizner, has called the story a hoax.

But millions of Muslims across the globe have a soft spot for such hoaxes.

Well yes, I’ve seen rather a lot of similar stuff myself and my reaction has been exactly the same … it’s all BS.

Now here is a very scary observation he makes regarding the scope of such ideas, they are truly very very popular …

A Pew poll in 2011, a decade after 9/11, found that a majority of respondents in countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon refused to believe that the attacks were carried out by Arab members of al-Qaeda. “There is no Muslim public in which even 30 per cent accept that Arabs conducted the attacks,” the Pew researchers noted.

This blindness isn’t peculiar to the Arab world or the Middle East. Consider Pakistan, home to many of the world’s weirdest and wackiest conspiracy theories. Some Pakistanis say the schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai is a CIA agent. Others think that the heavy floods of 2010, which killed 2,000 Pakistanis, were caused by secret US military technology. And two out of three don’t believe Osama Bin Laden was killed by US navy Seals on Pakistani soil on 2 May 2011.

Consider also Nigeria, where there was a polio outbreak in 2003 after local people boycotted the vaccine, claiming it was a western plot to infect Muslims with HIV. Then there is Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, where leading politicians and journalists blamed the 2002 Bali bombings on US agents.

Why are so many of my fellow Muslims so gullible and so quick to believe bonkers conspiracy theories?

And that last line there, the question he is pondering over, is the key one to ask. It’s fine to rant about this utter insanity, but it is far more important to not just vent in frustration about such stupidity, but instead to consider what drives and motivates such thinking, so I applaud him for doing exactly this.

I should also perhaps add the observation that the human capacity for embracing conspiracy theories is not specifically an Islamic thing, but rather is universal. However, what is of concern here is the scale of it all – so what thoughts does Mr Hasan offer to explain it?

He makes some good observations.

There is a history of actual conspiracies …

Muslim-majority nations have been on the receiving end of various actual conspiracies. France and Britain did secretly conspire to carve up the Middle East between them with the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. They also conspired to attack Egypt, with Israel’s help, and thereby provoked the Suez crisis of 1956.

A stream of lies is common …

I once asked the Pakistani politician Imran Khan why his fellow citizens were so keen on conspiracy theories. “They’re lied to all the time by their leaders,” he replied. “If a society is used to listening to lies all the time.. everything becomes a conspiracy.”

Insecurity …

As the former Pakistani diplomat Husain Haqqani has admitted, “the contemporary Muslim fascination for conspiracy theories” is a convenient way of “explaining the powerlessness of a community that was at one time the world’s economic, scientific, political and military leader”

Avoidance of any responsibility …

As the Egyptian intellectual Abd al-Munim Said once observed, “The biggest problem with conspiracy theories is that they keep us not only from the truth, but also from confronting our faults and problems.”

It is of course tempting to identify one simple root cause (pick your favourite from the above), but things are never that simple, and often the degree of complexity and psychology at play is truly vast.

I do however have two additional observations to add.

The first is that Mr Hasan has missed one additional motivation for the embrace of crazy ideas, but as a believer that is perhaps understandable. To be specific – how can anyone with an unwavering belief in jinn, the moon splitting in two, magical flying horses, and an unseen supernatural power that writes books and sends down messengers possibly ever believe in conspiracy theories? In other words, if your entire life is built upon a complete fantasy, then that will perhaps seriously scupper your ability to think critically and work out what is and is not real.

Secondly, there is a feedback loop in play here. The promotion of wild conspiracy beliefs makes those that do this look like complete loons. That in turn creates an even greater degree of insecurity when this is pointed out to them.

http://www.skeptical-science.com/religion/conspiracy-theories-embraced-truth-muslim-world/

 

[Bornubus]

What is the wildest conspiracy theory pertaining to Pakistan?
Herald
Updated Jun 19, 2015 06:35pm
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Osama bin Laden was a US agent, who perished long before the raid in Abbottabad three years ago. Malala Yousafzai is also an American agent. Most of the country’s troubles and travails are, in fact, not homegrown, but the result of an omnipotent Jewish lobby — also known as a yahoodi saazish. And if it’s not the Jews stirring up trouble, it must be the Indians.

Here in Pakistan, we love our conspiracy theories. Bored of mundane explanations for the country’s problems, such as mismanagement, poor governance and political instability, we eagerly come up with alternative theories to keep things exciting — and, more often than not, the media also joins the conspiracy chorus.

What has been the wildest conspiracy theory pertaining to Pakistan? Herald invited a number of writers, commentators and intellectuals to sound off on the question.

The almighty USA had bombed the area between Kaghan and Kashmir to capture Osama Bin Laden, causing an earthquake in the process

Supporters of Jamiat Ulama-e-Islam burn an American flag to condemn the killing of Osama bin Laden, in Kuchlak | AP
I heard the mother of all conspiracy theories in November 2005, a month after the earthquake. I was forced into visiting a family, where the husband worked for the government in some mid-level job. While the women got talking, the man leaned over, sly smile and jogging eyebrows, to conspiratorially ask me what I thought of the earthquake. “Bhonchal baray ki khyal ae fer?”

The demeanour left me reeling. Why, a hundred thousand innocent souls had perished, property worth billions destroyed and he thought it was some trivial absurdity. Seeing my reaction, he condescendingly informed me that he knew the reality from a ‘respectable’ Urdu paper.

The story was OBL’s extermination in his hideout somewhere between Kashmir and Kaghan. Why, I had to be stupid and ignorant if I did not know that almighty USA had bombed the area to get the man! The bomb was one humongous meanie that bored deep into the ground before blowing itself up. Hence the earthquake.

But here was the twist. The Indians said they would only permit the scheme to go through if no damage was caused on their side of the border. That was a cinch for almighty USA. Why, they had just the kind of bombs that could guide destruction in any programmed direction and the Indians had nothing to worry about.

The Americans sent their invisible fleet of jets with their gopher arsenal that burrowed right under the mountains and detonated under OBL’s bed, even as the man was preparing to rise for the dawn prayer. For good measure and in order to teach Pakistan a sound lesson for harbouring a terrorist even as we pretended to be a US ally, it was ensured that a goodly portion of the rest of the country got plastered as well.

The man who believed this story was 59. I think he also believed in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.

By Salman Rashid, travel writer and fellow of Royal Geographical Society

The US is behind all terror attacks in Pakistan

Supporters of Jamaat-e-Islami chant slogans during an anti American rally in Abbottabad | AP
Sunshine bores the daylights out of folk in Pakistan, particularly our quaint Islamabad — city of the faithful, where faith means believing in things even when common sense suggests otherwise. In this capital of rumors and allusions, we’ve learned to understand political phenomena mostly in terms of conspiracy. And sure, a little intrigue never hurt anyone. But can we afford to chase after shadows when real monsters haunt the land?

My favourite theory: The Taliban are secretly working for the US; or another version of the same theory: That the US is behind all terror attacks in Pakistan.

This theory makes me feel sorry for the conspiracy theorist and even more so for the Taliban. A majority of those who defend this theory – that the Taliban are in cahoots with the US – are also the same people you will hear championing the Taliban as the great guardians of Islam each time they execute a successful attack against a US target. Which also makes the US – this so-called sponsor of attacks on itself – a champion of Islam.

It’s a shame because I don’t think the conspiracy theorists intended to make this point. It’s our fault for making the connection.

The worst part is that this theory completely undermines the hard work and planning the Taliban put into each attack. How frustrated must they feel when they carry out spectacular assaults and everyone turns around and says the US must be behind them? It’s unfair, dammit.

On a serious note, I have my own conspiracy theory about why Pakistanis love conspiracies: When secrecy is part of the very system of government, when all you have are the shreds of ‘truth’ that you get from your elected representatives, military officials and the media, sometimes you can’t help but buy the cuckoo explanation or reach the wacky conclusion. Simply put, rationality is much more likely to thrive in a space of better information.

By Mehreen Zahra-Malik, Pakistan correspondent for Reuters

The real Ajmal Kasab, despite a public hanging, is still alive

A man reads a newspaper about the legal process over the Mumbai attacks, in Kolkata | AFP
I came across a Facebook page one day stating that a certain Ajmal Kasab was an entirely different person to the one shown in captivity by Indian law enforcement. It also said that the real Kasab, despite an unfortunate public hanging, was very much alive and well.

This wasn’t overly surprising, after all, there used to be a Facebook page dedicated to the idea that Hitler was still living in some Italian monastery as a nun.

But this page claimed to have proof.

There were photos. It was hard to tell from them whether the man’s name was Ajmal Kasab or not, as it was hard to tell whether the man was from Faridkot, Okara, or even Pakistan. But, at least, there were photos, which bore no resemblance to the alleged Kasab who died in India, just like the other seven billion or so people on this earth that bore no resemblance to him.

But wait! There was more. The page, lovingly devoted to exposing the treacheries of ‘Jew TV’, also claimed that the entire drama had been staged by RAW agents, on the payroll of CIA, who had bribed Pakistani news channels to create a false background for Kasab, and had paid then interior minister Rehman Malik to allege that he had received training from Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Kasab I mean, not the minister, who sounds like he’s never received any kind of training in his life. Well I read the page, had a good chuckle, left the obligatory ‘Helo brothers, myself am actually Ajmal Kasab but have to change the name becaus RAW is behind me’ comment, and moved on with my life. Fast forward to earlier this May when I read about a school teacher from Okara claiming, in a court of law, to have met the real and presumably still living Ajmal Kasab only a few days prior to giving his testimony. He was providing testimony in the trial of the nine Lashkar-e-Taiba members allegedly involved in planning the Mumbai attacks, and had previously testified to not knowing Kasab at all, in addition to saying he’d been threatened for siding with the prosecution.

Still, one spark is all that’s needed to rekindle a fire. I think I’ll stop browsing Facebook for a while.

By Haseeb Asif, Lahore-based writer

Believing that there are no conspiracies

US national and CIA contractor Raymond Davis | AP
Worse than the conspiracy theories themselves is how many of them have actually been proven (even partially) correct. Take the whole ‘polio vaccinators are spies’ one for example. Well, guess what? It turned out that the CIA, true to form, actually were using such covers for its extensive spying program. It has now promised not to do so again, which means that they’ll probably move onto bigger and better cover identities.

Then there’s Blackwater, reports of which were initially considered rabid fear mongering. Once again, the claims, even if some were completely wild, were not too far off the mark. And as for reports of omnipresent CIA agents roaming around Pakistan, armed and up to no good? Well, Raymond Davis is exhibit A here. The same could be said of the early claims that drones were in fact operated from Pakistani territory; they were. And what about the oft-repeated belief that the TTP et al are ‘foreign agents’? Well, there is certainly evidence of facilitation from across the borders, and there is the small matter of Mullah Fazlullah being located in Kunar. Add the CIA’s Penny Lane facility to the mix, which aimed to ‘turn’ jihadis into double agents, factor in Abdullah Mehsud’s post-Guantanamo attacks on the Chinese in Pakistan and you have what seem to be the dots of a rather vast conspiracy.

And here’s where the theorists tend to overreach: They keep drawing lines even when the dots run out, connecting to the Rockefellers, the Illuminati with a dose of Dajjal thrown in. That then makes their claims wild-eyed and implausible to most thinking people. Over-indulgence in these theories does of course effectively absolve one of national responsibility for the mess we find ourselves in, but to believe that there are no conspiracies may well be the greatest conspiracy theory of all.

By Zarrar Khuhro, Assistant Editor, Dawn

The HAARP Conspiracy
That cold day in Alaska, the air was thick with tension as HAARP director Dr Abraham Yehud, watched by other white-coated scientists, unlocked the control panel and pressed the red button. A powerful burst of electromagnetic waves from HAARP’s 180 VHF transmitters smashed into the earth’s ionosphere, creating plasma hot spots that merrily danced in the sky. Years of patient physics research, aimed at coupling the earth’s mantle to charged atmospheric ions, was now at stake. All eyes went to the global seismograph monitors fixed on the walls. For a while nothing showed. Then wild cheering broke out — Northern Pakistan was bucking like a bronco. When it was all over, there were 90,000 dead under the rubble.

Fast forward five years to 2010. The ambitious Dr Hanood, though distrusted by some because of his dual nationality, had ousted Dr Yehud. Widely respected in the CIA for his expertise in weather change, he was a patient man. A decade-long study of monsoon patterns in South Asia had convinced Hanood that now was the time to act. Enhanced solar activity meant that HAARP’s pulses could go unnoticed if emitted at moderate intensity. But they could still do the job if turned on for at least nine days. He was right. By July, a flood of biblical proportions left a fifth of Pakistan under water.

This fictionalised story is not pure fiction. In the October 17, 2010 issue of Dawn, Pakistan’s premier scientist, a Fellow of the Royal Society and former head of the Higher Education Commission, wrote an eye-popping article entitled “HAARP”. He suggested that many disasters which Pakistanis normally assume to be natural were, in fact, deliberately engineered by the United States. The good doctor has subsequently retreated somewhat from his position that HAARP caused the 2005 earthquake, but still insists that it could cause floods and weather change. A good course in high school physics could disabuse him of even this possibility. Meanwhile his article makes it understandable why, in spite of the billions pumped into it, Pakistan’s higher education system progressed so little in his tenure.

By Pervez Hoodbhoy, nuclear physicist, essayist and peace activist

http://herald.dawn.com/news/1153068

 

[Bornubus]

Why is the Muslim world rife with conspiracy theories?
Tuesday, 9 September 2014

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Dr. Azeem Ibrahim
In the West there is a saying: “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” But stupidity, ignorance, incompetence and corruption in ourselves are much more difficult to accept than the evil of others who we regard, for whatever reason, as enemies. And when all is said and done, in the game of Us vs. Them, evidence counts for little. We already know that we are good and virtuous and deserve good lives. And we already know that our enemies are evil, and would like nothing better than to deprive us of what we deserve. That is why they are our enemies, after all.

And so, here we are: in the Muslim world, the cultures are rife with conspiracy theories. We are good, decent people and yet our lives are not often as fulfilled as we think they should be. We are often politically dominated by our governments, as they are by foreign powers. Economic opportunity is often something mythical, from far-away Western lands. And we often feel that we do not have much control over our destinies at all.



Is it not possible that we have our fair share of responsibility for not standing up and defending the Islam of peace more vigorously in the last few decades?

Dr. Azeem Ibrahim
And just like primitive peoples who saw evil spirits in thunder, sandstorms and drought, everything that is wrong in our countries must surely be animated by some evil spirit behind the illusory veil of politics and the media. These evil spirits bear many frightful names: the West / the CIA / MI6/ Israel / Mossad, or just old Hindu India. But we seem to think that what they want is clear; they want to steal our resources and undermine our way of life.

Imaginative interpretation of the facts
Now this is not to say that Western powers do not have a huge historic responsibility for a lot of our current condition. Britain and France partitioned the Levant and Iraq after WW1 in a way that could only ever have ended in blood and tears. The only surprise is that it took so long for the region to erupt into a crisis like the one we now have with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Britain and America removed democratically elected Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran and created a subsequent regime run by Fazlollah Zahedi that had the worst human rights track record in the world throughout the 1970s. And surely by now there should be no doubt that Iraqi oil was at least a major consideration in the U.S./British decision to invade Iraq in 2003 – what with all those tax concessions and billion-dollar contracts for U.S. firms to “aid the reconstruction.”

But to go from that to maintaining that 9/11 was an inside job by the U.S. government so that they could launch a new crusade on the Middle East, or that the leader of ISIS is a Mossad agent and the “Caliphate’s” purpose is to further destabilise the region, requires quite an imaginative interpretation of the facts.

Still, this creative approach means that we do not have to face some rather difficult possibilities. One of these possibilities is that in much of the Muslim world, we have abided, if not outright encouraged, the spread of puritanical and divisive strands of Islam. Is it not possible that we have our fair share of responsibility for not standing up and defending the Islam of peace more vigorously in the last few decades?

And now, since it is “obvious” that our old enemies, Israel, the West and India are to blame for the turmoil, we are also conveniently absolved of making a stand for our Islam of peace. After all, what can we, the little people, do when all the world is against us? At least the Islamists are standing up for the Muslim world, no? And thus, with no actual conspiracy, and to everyone’s despair, hundreds of Muslims die every day at the hands of Muslims. But at least we can sleep well at night. We bear no responsibility for any of this.

_______________________

Dr. Azeem Ibrahim is a Research Professor at the Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College and Lecturer in International Security at the University of Chicago. He completed his PhD from the University of Cambridge and served as an International Security Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and a World Fellow at Yale. Over the years he has met and advised numerous world leaders on policy development and was ranked as a Top 100 Global Thinker by the European Social Think Tank in 2010 and a Young Global Leader by the

 

[Nuvneet Kundu]

Not to say that Pakistan is not a land of conspiracy factories but in the interest of objectivity, let us concede that some of their claims have turned out to be true. For example the claim that the US was using polio vaccination drives as a spy network to collect HUMINT on high value targets in Pakistan turned out to be true and has been since corroborated by the multiple documentaries that the US made about Op Neptune Spear. There are some others too, but I'm not going to go into those details. All I am saying is that let's not discredit everything by default just because the source of the information happens to be Pakistan. The US has waged a 4th gen war on all non-Christian nations; In that context, it is important for us to learn about the means that the US is employing in Pakistan to counter their use against India.

 

[Bornubus]

The New York Times News Blog


A Grand Conspiracy Theory From Pakistan
By ROBERT MACKEY MAY 12, 2009 5:38 PMMay 12, 2009 5:38 pm


The Web site Pakistan Daily is an Islamabad-based hub for Pakistani citizen journalism, promising Pakistani readers: “Your News. Powered by You.” It is also an excellent place to turn if you want to read in on the latest conspiracy theories making the rounds in that country. Or just get very scared.

Somewhat disturbingly, the source for the “top story” on Pakistan Daily today is Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari. As an anonymous article on the site reports accurately, in an interview with NBC News which aired on Sunday, Mr. Zardari claimed that he “knew” that Osama bin Laden was an American “operator” during the 1980s.

Mr. Zardari told David Gregory, in the part of the interview embedded below, that this knowledge dates from 1989, when, he said, his late wife, Benazir Bhutto, who was then Pakistan’s prime minister, had called the first President Bush to complain about Mr. bin Laden’s efforts to destabilize Pakistan, presumably on behalf of the government of the United States.



Since Mr. Gregory made no effort to follow up on this statement by Mr. Zardari, we have no idea what information his belief about Mr. bin Laden is based on, but his statement does closely echo one he made in an interview with Fox News last September. In that earlier interview, Mr. Zardari displayed a shaky grasp of where exactly the line between fact and fiction lies, since he also recounted a story about Oliver North having supposedly warned Congress about the dangers posed by Mr. bin Laden in 1987 — a story that, as my colleague Brian Stelter pointed out, is based on a hoax e-mail message that circulated widely after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

While most of the conspiracy theories posted on Pakistan Daily seem easy to debunk — like allegations that “Osama bin Laden may be Jewish” or that Islamist militants in Pakistan’s Swat Valley areIndian intelligence agents — it is not hard to understand why some Pakistanis are so willing to believe that unseen forces are behind their current troubles. After all, during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, the United States did in fact work closely, and secretly, with Pakistan’s spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, to destabilize that country’s government by supporting Islamic extremists like Mr. bin Laden.

Elements of Pakistan’s government have also obviously played on the fears of the population to win their cooperation at certain times. In fact, they have done it as recently as last week. As my colleagueDexter Filkins pointed out, the prominent Pakistani newspaperDawn reported last Friday reported that Pakistani soldiers were using the threat of shadowy foreign forces to encourage citizens to support their current battle with the Taliban. According to Dawn:

The security forces also distributed pamphlets in various areas accusing the Taliban of playing in the hands of anti-Pakistan elements. ‘They are the same as Jewish forces who are against the existence and security of the country and wanted to create disturbance in the region,’ read a leaflet.

But one of the most interesting conspiracy theories posted recently on Pakistan Daily is the grand, unified theory in a signed essay by a Pakistani blogger and journalist named Ahmed Quraishi, headlined “Barack Obama Is Lying About Pakistan.” In his essay Mr. Quraishi, who has worked as a television journalist for PTV, Pakistan’s state broadcaster, outlines a supposed plot against Pakistan by the American government and media.

According to Mr. Quraishi, the entire battle against militants in Pakistan is nothing less than a huge “American psy-ops” campaign to distract from the failures of the United States in Afghanistan. Mr. Quraishi writes:

In less than two years, the United States has successfully managed to drop from news headlines its failure to pacify Afghanistan. The focus of the Anglo-American media – American and British – has been locked on Pakistan. In order to justify this shift, multiple insurgencies and endless supply of money and weapons has trickled from U.S.-occupied Afghanistan into Pakistan to sustain a number of warlords inside Pakistan whom the American media calls ‘Taliban’ but they are actually nothing but hired mercenaries with sophisticated weapons who mostly did not even exist as recently as the year 2005.

Mr. Quraishi’s reading of events hinges on the idea that a statement by President Obama, during the news conference on his 100th day in office, that he was concerned that Pakistan’s “civilian government right now is very fragile,” was a veiled call for a military coup and “essentially amounts to a declaration of war against another country.” Mr. Quraishi also claims that “academic programs are being launched in the U.S. that advocate the breakup of Pakistan and the creation of smaller entities.”

How you might ask, has Mr. Obama been able to get away with this huge psy-ops campaign against Pakistan? That’s where we come in. In Mr. Quraishi’s view, alarming reports on the progress of Taliban militants in Pakistan are all part of the plot, in which, he says, “the U.S. media and officials are single-handedly tarnishing Pakistan’s image worldwide to justify a military intervention.” According to Mr. Quraishi:

The most spectacular, anti-Pakistan media campaign ever against our country has been launched by the U.S. media and continues unabated, with the purpose of softening the international opinion for a possible military action against Pakistan. And there is no question that this campaign has some backing from official U.S. quarters as was the case in the propaganda that preceded the invasion of Iraq.

Your Lede blogger can only say that if there is a plot like this someone forgot to send us the memo. That said, we have seen signs that some readers of this blog seem to agree with Mr. Quraishi that the fix is in. Here, for instance, is a recent comment from a reader named Chithra KarunaKaran, explaining the purpose of my work, and that of my colleagues Dexter Filkins and Alan Cowell:

It is disturbing but predictable that Mackey, Filkins and Cowell would file articles and blog posts that hide the US hand in the vast internal displacement of Pakistanis within their own homeland. Despite their claims of objectivity, their job is in accordance with the diktat of the Obama administration and Congress.

Clear evidence that the Pakistani public is not buying the Western media’s explanation of recent events is also offered by the results ofa recent poll conducted in Pakistan of 3,500 adult men and women by the International Republican Institute, a nonprofit group based in Washington that is affiliated with the Republican Party and promotes democracy abroad. Despite strong indications that the attacks in Mumbai last November were the work of a militant group based in Pakistan, Pakistanis surveyed overwhelmingly said that they did not believe the media reports:

International Republican Institute Results from a survey of Pakistan public opinion conducted in March, 2009.
Asked, by the same pollsters, to say who they believed was behind the attacks in Mumbai, the largest number of Pakistanis pointed the finger at the Research and Analysis Wing, India’s intelligence service. Just one per cent of the sample said that terrorists were responsible, while 20 times that many Pakistanis blamed America:

International Republican Institute Results from a survey of Pakistan public opinion conducted in March, 2009.
Update: A reader notes that Mr. Quraishi’s biography on his Web site says that since 2003 he has worked for FurmaanRealpolitik, Inc., which is a political consulting firm that designs media campaigns. Mr. Quraishi says on his site that he “tailored and executed government-assigned public outreach projects,” for that firm. The firm’s Web site brags of “practical experience of using the internet as a campaign-management and issue-advocacy tool.”

In 2007 the blog MicroPakistan cast some doubt on another elaborate theory of Mr. Quraishi’s. Reader comments on that blog post echoed some posted here by readers who suggest that there may be some connection between Mr. Quraishi’s “government-assigned public outreach projects” and his writing online.

 

[Bornubus]

Abdul Al-Okullah May 14, 2009 · 2:47 pm
Yes, Harry, Zaid Hamid is indeed scary. He lays out lies with such conviction that they begin to penetrate even the most cynical of minds. Pakistani elite love that show. I suspect that you have seen him on Al Jazeera where he appears occasionally and comments in English. However, to get his true flavor you have to hear him in Urdu — YouTube is full of his videos.

The amazing thing here is not that someone like Hamid exists, but that the elite of Pakistan (the educated minority) lap it up! The grandiose illusions and webs of conspiracy are interconnected. n fact one leads to the other … you see, “we are such a great race of people, citadel of Islam, owners of nuclear bombs, painters of missiles, etc, how can we be wrong about anything? So, if someone is proving us to be wrong, it must be a western plot to defame us”

Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

Now, you may ask why the educated are fooled so easily. The answer is simple. The so-called “education” is also full of lies. Pakistani history texts are replete with errors, concoctions and half-truths. The system turns the meaning of “education” on its head by producing masses of ignorance.

I don’t think Pakistan needs helicopters or guns. What Pakistan needs very badly is new text books. A $10B program of re-educating Pakistanis will pay more dividends for all donor countries.

 

[Razor]

Not to say that Pakistan is not a land of conspiracy factories but in the interest of objectivity, let us concede that some of their claims have turned out to be true. For example the claim that the US was using polio vaccination drives as a spy network to collect HUMINT on high value targets in Pakistan turned out to be true and has been since corroborated by the multiple documentaries that the US made about Op Neptune Spear. There are some others too, but I'm not going to go into those details. All I am saying is that let's not discredit everything by default just because the source of the information happens to be Pakistan. The US has waged a 4th gen war on all non-Christian nations; In that context, it is important for us to learn about the means that the US is employing in Pakistan to counter their use against India.

From your posts I'm getting the feeling that three states PAK, PHN, UKR having radicalized extremists tendencies and them being bff with USA, isn't coincidental.

Also w/ regards to OBL; It is now clear that the Mujahadeen received financial, intel and arms support from the USA (to destabilize USSR)
It isn't inconceivable at all to think OBL and his AQ received western aid for that.

"There are some others too, but I'm not going to go into those details."
Interesting.... pm me if you can, when you can etc.

 

[Bornubus]

Not to say that Pakistan is not a land of conspiracy factories but in the interest of objectivity, let us concede that some of their claims have turned out to be true. For example the claim that the US was using polio vaccination drives as a spy network to collect HUMINT on high value targets in Pakistan turned out to be true and has been since corroborated by the multiple documentaries that the US made about Op Neptune Spear. There are some others too, but I'm not going to go into those details. All I am saying is that let's not discredit everything by default just because the source of the information happens to be Pakistan. The US has waged a 4th gen war on all non-Christian nations; In that context, it is important for us to learn about the means that the US is employing in Pakistan to counter their use against India.

This is recent developments, Polio vaccine has regarded as a plot against musalman long before OBL raids, even in India it was considered a Hindu conspiracy to sterile musalman that's why majority of the cases were Muslims as the workers were afraid of going Muslim areas.

At times Muslim clerics had to clear the misconceptions.

 

[Alien]

@Bornubus , Thanks for creating this thread

I had read some of the conspiracy theories before but not all of them. I am gonna bookmark this thread

 

[Nuvneet Kundu]

This is recent developments, Polio vaccine has regarded as a plot against musalman long before OBL raids, even in India it was considered a Hindu conspiracy to sterile musalman that's why majority of the cases were Muslims as the workers were afraid of going Muslim areas.

At times Muslim clerics had to clear the misconceptions.

Sure. I am not denying your claim that muslim regimes use conspiracy theories to keep their population in a spell of confusion. This is deliberately done to make sure that any information that is thrown at muslims gets spun around in a way that benefits their regime. That is why these civilizations don't have enlightenment or pursuit of knowledge as core building blocks like Sikhism, Hinduism, Buddhism have. The whole purpose of a muslim's existence is to ensure the survival of the regime.

 

[Kshatriya87]

Why articles and newspapers? Bakistani school text books themselves are full of conspiracy theories.

 

[Nuvneet Kundu]

Why articles and newspapers? Bakistani school text books themselves are full of conspiracy theories.

Islam itself is a conspiracy against humanity.

 

[HariPrasad-1]

Islam itself is a conspiracy against humanity.

Islam is not a religion of ethics and enlightenment but an ideology of dirty politics. God was created to Justify rapes and looting and beheading and tortures. Mohammad did that very successfully through out his life.

 

[Nuvneet Kundu]

Islam is not a religion of ethics and enlightenment but an ideology of dirty politics. God was created to Justify rapes and looting and beheading and tortures. Mohammad did that very successfully through out his life.

It's a shame that our history textbooks hide those gory details about Islamic invasions in India for the sake of political correctness.

They hide all the good achievements of our Hindu kingdoms and then they also hide all the bad deeds of Muslim invaders. Sabh kuch hide kar diya toh phir history padhne ka kya matlab hai?

If those had been included in our history then every muslim would think a thousand times before uttering the word 'intolerance'. Everyone should know what kind of filthy civilization they are related to before pointing fingers at Hindus at the drop of a hat. This is how the religion of peace was spread :

 

[Bornubus]

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[Bornubus]

http://www.firstpost.com/entertainm...pak-tv-anchors-conspiracy-theory-3195074.html