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Sheik stirs anger

Sheik stirs anger

Author: Liam Houlihan
Publication: Herald Sun
Date: September 10, 2005
URL: http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,16550062%5E2862,00.html

As fury erupted over fresh September 11 conspiracy claims by radical cleric Sheik Omran, the sheik's diehard supporters compared their critics with Nazis.

Serial provocateur Mohammed Omran has sparked a new row by distributing newsletters to 10,000 Muslim readers claiming September 11 was a US conspiracy and that a plane never hit the Pentagon.

The extraordinary claims coincide with tomorrow's fourth anniversary of the September 11 terror raids.

But members of Mr Omran's fringe Muslim group, Ahlus Sunnah wal-Jamaah, have rallied behind their firebrand leader.

"We have witnessed extreme ideological attacks from those who prefer blind following (of the official version of September 11) to reasonable debate," supporter Abir Abu Maryem wrote in the sheik's controversial Mecca News.

"Are we today becoming like (the German people under Hitler) who could not do anything, not even speak in the face of unjust wars and laws?

"Adolf was hiding behind democracy too. Will this attitude become the new Australian way of doing things?"

Mecca News discusses the "questions" and "puzzles" of the official version of the attacks.

It focuses on the "omissions and distortions" of the 9/11 Commission investigation of the attack on the Pentagon and promises in future editions to uncover "the rest of the questions which surround 9/11".

The two-page special feature on September 11 asked why the Pentagon's anti-missile system didn't strike the approaching aircraft and why windows near the location of the crash remained unbroken.

It said the resulting hole in the building was too small for a 757 airliner to fit through and no pieces of the plane were visible in photos of the disaster.

Conspiracy theories about the Pentagon attack have flourished because cameras only caught the smoky aftermath but no footage of the plane during collision.

Some theories claim Israel's spy agency, Mossad, was involved with the US in the conspiracy and it was a missile not a plane that hit the Pentagon.

"My question here is, who are really putting their heads in the sand by ignoring what is happening? Is it . . . the one who is naive and acts as if he never heard of a covert operation before and therefore judges the book by its cover only," the Mecca News article said.

Muslim leaders yesterday dismissed the significance of the claims.

But Sheik Fehmi Naji El-Imam, secretary of the Board of Imams, defended Sheik Omran's right to voice his views.

Waleed Aly, from the Islamic Council of Victoria, said the view expressed in Mecca News was "pretty marginal".

A separate article in the publication predicts the fall of the West if it does not swap its secular values for Islamic ones.

Mr Omran had previously said US Government figures -- not Osama bin Laden -- were behind September 11.


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