It's the Illuminati, Stupid!

This afternoon, I was surfing through some of the popular blogs, and I came across a disturbing and disheartening post by Blackfive. In it, Blackfive describes how he lost a Pakistani Muslim friend, because the (ex)-friend, his Pakistani friends and his family all insisted that the Israelis and Jews were responsible for pretty much all of the world's ills. This even included insisting that Mossad (the Israeli intelligence service) actually carried out the airliner attack on the World Trade Center towers - even though Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack. The most disturbing part of Blackfive's account is that his (ex)-friend is well-educated at prestigious American universities and is a lawyer at a large law firm. Yet, the friend believes all sorts of weird conspiracy theories about Israel, Zionists and Jews, and how they are behind the problems of all Muslims, everywhere.

Why would a well-educated, seemingly rational person believe such nonsense?

Unfortunately, belief in these strange theories seems to be common in Muslim communities throughout the world. The prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohammed, in a display of incredible ignorance and blatant anti-Semitism, claimed that the "Jews rule the world by proxy" in a speech to the Organization of the Islamic Conference. If the leader of one of the world's nations openly proclaims this kind of bizarre ideation, it isn't surprising that other Muslims believe it as well.

And there is a lot more of this kind of stuff going around.

In one of the comments to Blackfive's article, reader F. Covington links to an editorial article on albawaba.com in which the author, Henry Makow, Ph.D., defends Mahathir Mohammed, but says he was mistaken, because it isn't the Jews that control the world, it is a Satan-worshipping, incredibly powerful, secret society called the Illuminati that does. (Yeah, you've probably heard of it before. The eye in the pyramid on the back of the U.S. dollar bill is supposedly one of their symbols and all that).

The statements and quotes that Makow uses to describe the Illuminati are so outrageous as to be laughable - but he's completely serious. For example:

• "...there are some very powerful Jewish people in this group. For instance, the Rothschild family literally runs the financial empire in Europe (and indirectly the States), and are a well-known Jewish family. I have also known people whose parents were Jewish diamond merchants in the group, and at every level. But to rise to power in the Illuminati, a Jewish person at night would be forced to renounce their faith, and to give their first allegiance to Lucifer and the beliefs of the Illuminati."
• "...the Illuminati is very 'Aryan' and racist in its outlook. Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels were members. German is spoken at the top."
• "...these leaders are heads in the financial world, OLD banking money. The Rothschild family in England, and in France, have ruling seats. A descendant of the Hapsburg dynasty has a generational seat. Descendants of the ruling families of England and France have a generational seat. The Rockefeller family in the US holds a seat.... The financiers, dating back to the bankers during the times of the Templar Knights who financed the early kings in Europe, created the Illuminati."
• "Most [Jews] would oppose this Illuminati scheme if they understood it. No wonder they think anti-Semitism is irrational and feel resentment. They don't appreciate that many Jewish leaders secretly play a dominant role in the Illuminati plan."
• "The purpose of the creation of Israel and the invasion of Iraq is to colonize the Muslim world and eradicate Islam. Islam is the biggest stumbling block to the Luciferian world religion, secular humanism."
• "The Illuminati operate on the secret society principle. They enlist people to fight for a cause but they don't reveal the ultimate purpose. People can't appreciate that a multigenerational conspiracy exists and dominates history."

Where to even start on this? If anything, it's even worse than the craziness that Mahathir Mohammed spouted.

Let's see - the Rothschild family, "very powerful Jewish people," have ruling seats in this supposed Illuminati secret society, yet "Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels were members." Yup, and pigs fly, too.

"The Rockefeller family in the US holds a seat." But in his interview with Tony Snow on Fox News (October 13, 2003), Senator Jay Rockefeller says, "...the situation turns out not to have been quite like either the intelligence community or the president indicated, and that would be a vote that I would probably not make today, based upon the revelations that there don't appear, at least at this point, to be any weapons of mass destruction." The senator, a member of the Rockefeller family, is now opposed to the U.S. war in Iraq and says that he wouldn't vote to authorize it today. How can this be, if "Islam is the biggest stumbling block to the Luciferian religion"? Wouldn't he support U.S. takeover of a Muslim nation if he were a member?

"The Illuminati operate on the secret society principle." For a secret society, they sure are lousy at keeping secrets. A quick Google search on "Illuminati society" returned over 46,000 hits!

I did just a minor bit of research, via some simple Google searches, on the Illuminati and Henry Makow. What I encountered was a whole pile of sites touting all kinds of conspiracy theories and extremist propaganda. Visiting the sites actually made me rather nervous. I had thoughts like, "These people are nuts. I hate to think of what they would do if they were angry at me." It turns out that the article carried by albawaba.com is actually from Henry Makow's site. I won't provide a link - it disgusts me too much. You can easily find it it you're interested by googling his name (but I wouldn't recommend it). I think I need a shower after reading all of this garbage.

What to make of all of this?

I think most people in the western democracies would recognize Makow's article (and most of his other writing) as extreme, conspiracy-theorist nonsense. Before today, I had never encountered any of his writing, despite the fact that he apparently was the inventor of the board game "Scruples." His work doesn't recommend the game to me, I must say. Mainstream media in the U.S. and Canada seems to ignore him.

However, a mid-east media company, Al Bawaba Group, published his article on its website (albawaba.com) and appears to take it seriously. Why? Are they so credulous that they'll believe anything? Is their fact-checking so poor that they can't even begin to separate fact from fiction? Do they think that the anti-Semitism in the article is somehow less offensive than that of Mahathir Mohammed?

From what I can gather, it appears that some Muslim organizations look to Makow as support from western "academia" for their anti-Semitic and misogynistic views. That Makow apparently has a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto gives him more credence in their eyes, despite that major media outlets in the U.S. and Canada pay him little-to-no attention. Makow's ideas on world domination by a secret cabal of financiers and his denunciations of feminism and homosexuality fit virtually hand-in-glove with extreme Islam.

In short, Muslim extremists have found a "legitimate" apologist, and Makow has found his perfect audience.

I would just say that they deserve each other, if it weren't such a dangerous combination. Muslims everywhere (and everyone else) should unequivocally condemn this kind of nonsense.

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