Friday, February 02, 2007

Plots and paranoia

reported To wander the streets of Sparkbrook yesterday, from shabby corner shop to proud, white-domed mosque, was to enter a world where conspiracy theories are the breath of life. Many ordinary Muslims did not believe that Wednesday’s arrests were an act to foil a terrorist plot aiming to visit unspeakable barbarity on a young British soldier.

Not just a young British soldier but a young Muslim who was also a British soldier.
Rather the entire operation was a giant con trick. This fits a growing perception of a post-9/11 world in which innocent Muslims are demonised, and the terror threat manufactured to suit the dark designs of the West’s Judaeo-Christian elite.
These people need to think for themselves, rather than listening to conspiracy stories told by clerics in their mosques.
The decision to distribute 5,000 multilingual leaflets, carefully setting out details of the anti-terrorist operation and the events leading up to it, may have sought to offer a well intentioned reassurance “that the police are not targeting communities or faiths, but suspected criminals”.
The next thing you know, those leaflets will be said to contain poison, as the ridiculous story that some ballons released by a Jewish bank that floated over to Lebanon were said to be poisoned ballons dropped from planes.
To many Muslims that message has fallen on deaf ears. That many seem not to believe police reassurances is at least in part because they are listening to a very different message from mosques across the city.
The authorities should really pay special attention to what is said in the mosques

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