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.