Conspiracy theories and blame games: South Sinai governor, Mohamed Abdul Fadil Shousha says Mossad could be behind Sharm el-Sheikh shark attacks

Last week, 'oceanic white tip sharks mauled three Russians and a Ukrainian tourist'² 'off the coast of Sharm el-Sheikh.'² 'In one of those attacks, a shark bit off an elderly woman's hand and tore off another woman's leg.'²

After those attacks authorities hunted down two sharks and reopened the beach deeming it safe.¹

'However, an Egyptian NGO warned on Saturday that at least one of the sharks behind the attacks was still at large.'¹

On Sunday an elderly³ German woman tourist snorkeler died after a shark 'mauled her thigh and arm'.¹

According to AFP, 'South Sinai governor Mohammed Shosha has said the sharks could have turned frenzied after a ship transporting livestock dumped dead sheep into the sea, while marine experts said overfishing may have forced them closer to shore.'¹

'Environmentalists warned that the string of recent attacks is likely a result of the Red Sea's declining ecosystem. Gabar, the head of the CDWS [Chamber of Diving and Water Sports], said he's seen a jump in the number of sharks off Egypt's Red Sea coast, which he said could be caused by overfishing, which could force sharks to swim closer to shore in search of food.'²

BBC reports that,

Conspiracy theories are always popular in the Middle East, with unlikely suggestions often made that troubles in Arab countries could be caused by Mossad agents.³

Rumours had circulated in Egypt that there could be an Israeli connection to this unusual spate of Red Sea shark attacks.³

An official Egyptian news site reported South Sinai governor, Mohamed Abdul Fadil Shousha, as saying³ 

"What is being said about the Mossad throwing the deadly shark [in the sea] to hit tourism in Egypt is not out of the question, but it needs time to confirm"³

Sources: 1. AFP, 2. AP, 3. BBC


Comments: Conspiracy theories and blame games in the Muslim world are nothing new and reaches up to the highest levels of society.

And as usual, such beliefs are followed by further beliefs of being persecuted (victim-card) and visions of the grandeur and supremacy of Islam.

This problem is made worse by politically correct censors who censor any attempt to expose it, while feeding the fire with politically correct lies that praise those in the wrong as being good, right and wonderful, and condemn legitimate criticisms as 'hate', 'bigotry' and 'Islamophobia' (worse things said and done by the other side are ignored). 

A few days ago this site reported the revelation from US embassy cables leaked by WikiLeaks that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was susceptible to Islamist conspiracy theories - some of them pulled from the web. The following quote is from that story.

AFP reports other cables as saying,

Erdogan lacks "vision" and "analytic depth", reads "minimally", ignores foreign ministry expertise and is guided by an "iron ring of sycophantic (but contemptuous) advisors... which partially explains... his susceptibility to Islamist theories."

He is said to rely on "his charisma, instincts, and the filterings of advisors who pull conspiracy theories off the Web or are lost in neo-Ottoman Islamist fantasies, e.g., Islamist foreign policy advisor... Ahmet Davutoglu."

A cable signed by the US ambassador in January 2010 says Davutoglu wants to reassert on the Balkans the influence the Ottoman empire used to exert on the region.

As for the blame game, here are some quotes from two previous articles which can be found here and here.

Walter Rodgers, a former senior international correspondent for CNN said,

Bernard Lewis, the renowned Princeton scholar of Islam, has called attention to the Arab tendency to play “the blame game.”

He notes Arabs traditionally blamed the Mongols, the Ottoman Turks, the colonial powers, and now the Jews and the Americans for everything that has gone awry

And Political science teacher Houchang Hassan-yari, of Canada's Royal Military College said,

it is Tehran's standard practice to finger "outside forces and outside enemies for everything bad that goes on inside the country."

Some previous similar or related stories:

Turky's Islamist PM Erdogan 'hates' Israel on religious grounds, Foreign Minister Davutoglu wants influence in Balkans like in Ottoman empire days

Deadly dysfunctional Muslim culture, past, present, future, and why democracy and modernization fail

(Bad) Muslim psychology: The blame game

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