A Muslim religious thinker, Sheikh Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari who is the former Dean of the Faculty of Sharia at the University of Qatar, has had the courage and intellectual integrity to alert his co-religionists to the lies they have allowed themselves to believe. In an article in the London-based Arabic-language daily Al-Hayat, he refers to the fact that Muslims across the world believe that the 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by Mossad, or that the American right planned 9/11 as a pretext to invade Afghanistan, or that the Yugoslav Serbs carried out the attacks in revenge for American attacks on them. Any theory, in other words, however irrational and bizarre, to avoid the one truthful conclusion that 9/11 was perpetrated by Muslims.

Now Sheikh al Ansari says this:

'...one of our religious leaders claims that America is absolutely certain that bin Laden is innocent and he is being blamed because of their Crusader approach that hates Islam and Muslims. Does this sheikh and the others who held these conspiratorial theories and spread them - do they have the courage to apologize for their words, mistakes, and misleading of other people after all the facts have now been clarified, or are they going to continue with their arrogant stubbornness as if this whole matter doesn't relate to them?

'Do we have the courage to criticize ourselves, to admit to our fault, and to apologize as many people do, or is it one of our hidden qualities that we are a people that are incapable of apologizing? Why won't we take the opportunity of the appearance of the 9-11 Commission's report to ponder why destructive violence and a culture of destruction have taken root in our society? Why won't we take this opportunity to reconsider our educational system, our curricula, including the religious, media, and cultural discourse that causes our youth to live in a constant tension with the world?'

Brave man to tell the truth like this. And what he reminds us is that -- terrifyingly -- many, if not most, Muslims firmly believe truly demented conspiracy theories which have been assiduously promoted by their leaders and which have convinced them that they are the victims of attack rather than the co-religionists of its perpetrators. Hence the outraged sense of injustice fuelling a persecution complex; hence the inversion of victim and victimiser, truth and lies, which has so twisted public discourse. Until and unless the falsehoods behind all that are laid to rest, and Muslims come to realise that the west has no quarrel with them other than the attacks perpetrated in their name, this tragic error will continue to deepen, with incalculable consequences for all.