It's said that a majority of Muslims have been hijacked by a tiny percentage of Islamic extremists. But it's also true that many Muslims consider the incidents of September 11, 2001, to have been staged by the Bush administration, the CIA, Jews, etc.
The question arises as to why a majority of Muslims would assume that nothing bad could be delivered by Muslims? And why have many Muslims related all bad things to the United States, other western countries and Israel?
Some of the answers by many Muslims to such questions:
- The West and Israel did it to undermine the name of Islam
- Muslims are not that high tech that they could have created such a catastrophe
- The Bush administration did so to gain more control over Middle East resources, etc.
In order to justify such answers, they present Michael Moore's or Robert Fisk's conspiracy theories, or Noam Chomsky's political philosophies.
So as some Muslims seem to conclude that bad acts are not done by al-Qaeda, they further confuse their own conclusions by calling it a Zionist plan, or declaring that 9/11 was an outcome of the U.S. support for Israel. What does this conclusion mean? If it's a conspiracy, then how can it also be an outcome of U.S. foreign policy? Of course, there is no logic there.
At a recent community gathering in Mississauga, I heard comments by some of my fellow Muslims on 9/11. A Pakistani poet said, "The CIA planned the whole game and blamed its own agent, Osama bin Laden, whom they later killed in order to hide the reality."
The poet would have gone on to give a full lecture if he hadn't been interrupted by an Arab Canadian lawyer, who added, "Brother, it's all about blaming Islam. Also if you don't solve (the) Palestine issue, you don't expect anything good."
I could not understand what logic relates to what.
The notion of majority Muslims being silent is difficult to grasp. They are, in fact, quite vocal, just not very clear. And if they are hijacked or distracted by the tiny extremist class, why is it so? Why are they so helpless in raising their voices? Do they even have their own voices? It doesn't seem so, since they are distracted by that small percentage of Islamic extremists. There is a fear that Islamist points of view on various issues are close to their hearts.
Today on the eve of 11th anniversary of 911, someone from the same "silent majority" has written on Facebook, "Happy 11th anniversary of 9/11 attacks everyone... may Allah swt bring many more attacks on those coward terrorist American kuffar and other kuffar and their lapdog apostate allies around the world. May Allah swt help the Muslims, release our Prisoners... and give us victory. Ameen."
This is not a good sign for this so-called silent majority. The silent majority is not supposed to be on the side of such hostile and violent views. It doesn't matter if they agree with the West on each and every issue. What matters is they need to clear their thinking and rid their minds of conventional rivalry plans with the rest of the world.
They should learn from India and China, huge nations with big challenges, but countries that are on the right track toward progress and prosperity. Those countries are not caught up in a situation of blaming others for their own miseries.
Majority Muslims in the West should open their eyes and minds and get beyond the conspiracy theories.
Tahir Aslam Gora is a Pakistani-Canadian writer living in Burlington, Ontario.