Muslim opinion sees conspiracy

America's effort to enlist street-level support among Arabs and Muslims in the fight against international terrorism is running into a brick wall.

Although most people in the United States consider Osama bin Laden the prime suspect behind the Sept. 11 terror attacks, public opinion throughout the Arab and Islamic worlds is moving in a completely different direction. Most Muslims are entertaining alternative theories, and many are embracing one theory above all - that the attacks were carried out by Israel's clandestine intelligence service, the Mossad.

Such widespread skepticism about Mr. bin Laden's alleged involvement is the clearest proof yet that the US is badly losing the so-called PR war. Aware of the problem, the US and its Western allies are using more sophisticated methods to counteract bin Laden's exploitation of Muslim sentiment.

After bin Laden's latest statement was aired on Al Jazeera satellite news station Saturday, accusing the US of waging war against Islam and calling Arab leaders "infidels" for supporting the United Nations, a former US diplomat took to the same airwaves, watched by 35 million viewers, and provided a US government rebuttal in flawless Arabic.

While applauding the effort, Middle East experts say Muslims are looking for a substantive change in US policies (dealing with Israel, Iraq, and Afghanistan), rather than a more vigorous intellectual debate.

In the meantime, conspiracy theories proliferate, even among senior government officials of the Arab coalition partners.

"The level of conspiracy theories just makes you want to scream," says a Western diplomat based in Amman, who had just been lectured by a senior Jordanian official about the Mossad's "obvious" role.

The Syrian Defense Minister, Mustafa Tlass, shared the same view with a group of visiting academics from Britain last month.

Such suspicious attitudes and conspiracy theories are nothing new in the Middle East, where the Mossad is often seen as an evil force lurking behind otherwise inexplicable events. In the case of bin Laden, these attitudes have substantially undermined President Bush's attempt to translate worldwide sympathy for the 5,000 innocent victims of the attacks into a concerted international campaign against terrorism. "We are just not even in the ballpark here, and the Bush administration is aware of this," says Michael Hudson, director of the Arab studies program at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

The lack of direct evidence proving a bin Laden connection - combined with what many Arab and Muslim analysts see as a US rush to judgement - is spawning a flood of elaborate theories.

Among theories advanced by Arab newspaper columnists in Jordan, Syria, Egypt, London, the West Bank, and elsewhere:

• The attacks were the work of "the great Jewish Zionist mastermind that controls the world's economy, media, and politics."

• Bush ordered the hijackings and attacks as a means to solidify his hold on power in Washington and erase any memory of the election controversy in Florida.

• Japanese extremists carried out the terrorism in retribution for US nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

• Members of the American militia movement were behind the attacks in answer to the execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

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