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"...even the wicked get worse than they deserve." - Willa Cather, One of Ours
Thursday, June 24, 2004
Beheadings and Conspiracy Theories
Healing Iraq (Sunni doctor from Baghdad)
'It was the Jews....the beheading was faked...the Mossad controls the Kurds...Iraqi prisoners are all being abused...it is a war against Islam...'. Self-delusion is a powerful thing. There is no end to this type of nonsense.
I look forward to see what the conspiracy theorists who were convinced that the Nicholas Berg video was staged are going to say about this one. Just a week after the beheading in Saudi Arabia by Al-Qaeda, Jama'at Al-Tawhid wa Al-Jihad which is believed to be the group led by Zarqawi beheaded a South Korean national who was kidnapped in Fallujah. They say his body was found near Baghdad which painfully shows the ease and confidence in which this group operates and moves around from place to place.The Arabs excessive romanticism makes them particularly susceptible to type of conspiracy theories. The inherent inaccuracy of the Arab media does not help in diffusing this situation. This allows the Araba public to blame 'others' for thier misfortunes, and prevents them from dealing with the murderers among holding a Quran in one hand and a bloody knife in another.
These are the same people that continue to pour in from the borders of our 'friendly neighbours' to wage their 7th century Jihad on Iraqi soil, they are the same people that pack vehicles with tons of explosives to relieve thousands of Iraqis of their existence, they are -I believe- the same people who continue to assassinate hundreds of Iraqi professionals and 'collaborators', they are the same people that run the Taliban-style Emirate of Fallujah, they are the same people who the Arab media insists are heroic 'resistance fighters'. Yet all we hear after such grisly scenes is... (croak).. (croak).. a maddening silence, and then a few obligatory half-hearted 'This is not the real Islam, you know', 'Noooo, it's really a religion of peace, you don't understand'. However, I don't think people are buying these lines any more.
What the media fails to realise, is that the logic of these groups can actually be turned against them. They claim they are here to drive the foreigners who have been killing Iraqis out of Iraq. Ironically, those Mujahideen are also foreigners who have been slaughtering thousands of Iraqis over the last year. I'm not sure we are going to see any of them beheaded on TV though.
Another barbaric incident yesterday which hasn't been given the media attention it deserves was the slaughter of Layla Abdullah, dean of Law College at Mosul University. She was found slaughtered and shot in the head together with her husband at her residence in Mosul. She has been getting death threats for a while according to her relatives.
I believe we are going to see more beheadings, the Mujahideen seem to appreciate the publicity and attention they receive with each new execution. Don't count on any public demonstrations of Muslim outrage though, there won't be any.
'It was the Jews....the beheading was faked...the Mossad controls the Kurds...Iraqi prisoners are all being abused...it is a war against Islam...'. Self-delusion is a powerful thing. There is no end to this type of nonsense.