"The Extremist" Debate

While me and another colleague were waiting for our driver, I had a conversation with my two suppliers, one is the designer who is around mid 30s (Name is Saeed) and another old folk who is 57 (name is Khurshid), we talked about the government (Chinese, Pakistani, Malaysian), economics, social, and politics. It came to a point that we talked about Muslim Extremist when I said that Pakistan is one of the breeding bed for terrorist besides Afganistan. We began on this topic when my colleague wrote his email, "JiaYingBin", and Khurshid told me "bin" in Arab means "Son". I gave a classical example, "'Osama Bin Laden", Bin is son, laden is the family name, Osama is the name.
Mr. Khurshid is a very sincere Muslim believer, he tried to pray on time every day, I bet he didn't miss more than 3 prayers everyday. After two months dealing with him, I felt that he is really a good example of True Muslim, he is honest and sincere; he gained respect from a lot of people who knew him, he also worked as a social worker during his free time. He commented that there is no such thing as "Muslim Extremist", he commented that it is some sort of propaganda that US used it against the Muslim world. So the conversation just began to heat up, I asked him what is his view point on September 11 where as the two planes crashed to the Word Trade Center and kill thousands.

The answer that the elder gave me was surprising...

Mr. Khurshid commented that the plane crash was just a conspiracy that was done by US government themselves, he told me that on that day, none of the Jews went to work because they know the plane is going to crash into the building (off course I disagree with him). He also mentioned that it is impossible that the plane will make the building collapse, I argue with him, from what I saw in the discovery channel, it is because the full tank of fuel that fired up, the heat is so intense and it melted the steel of the structure. Why in the hell that the government wanted to do this, what is the motive? The action had done a lot of lost which I don't think even there is benefits behind the conspiracy, the benifits will not offset the damage that the incident had brought to the people.
He also mentioned that there was a TV show about two Americans debating about this, one of the debater said that 9/11 was something that is created by the government for the sake of controlling the world, the oil, etc... (Mr. Saeed nod his head with support). He said the building was about to expired, that's why they have to collapse it just like they always did on demolishing old buildings, because it is cheaper to demolish it with explosives. I find it totally rediculous and I think it is the Muslim World that create such a propaganda against the United States (off course, I didn't tell him directly about this).
In some way, I do believe that in some case, the US government did creates hatred among the people and the local government which is not Pro-America, but I strongly believe the US government will not command the commercial planes to hit the World Trade Center, this is something that is pointless and non-benificial to the country! Khurshid argue that how come the flight is on the sky for four hours and they can't do something about it. I explained that this is because nobody ever imagined that the big plane has targeted to crash into the World Trade Center.I asked him back while the plane United 93 was hijacked, there were people on the plane that actually made a phone call to their family, telling them what it going on inside the plane, the person who hijacked the plane is the Muslim from Arab, not American Pilot, not a government servants. That is the act of the "Extremist"! I haven't got a chance to talk about extremist on Southern Thailand that beheaded some Buddist by creating socal unrest in the past two years, I want to tell him that most Thai people are peace loving people, only a Muslim extremist can invoke such a great hatred in them and do such a brutal thing to infidels. If these people are not fanatics or extremist, who are they?!
Well, we don't' have any hard feelings with our arguement, but I do hope that we look on both sides of the story and think about the issue with a fair judgement. However, I don't think his standpoint is strong enough to overthrow the "facts" that we learned from the media. Like I mentioned, there is no motive for the US government to have such act on its' home country. No point on doing such things.
During my dinner time with my female colleagues, I mentioned to her on how powerful that the media control how the public think on certain things, luckily we had internet nowadays and we can always get some "second opinion" or some "facts" that are not reported on mainstream media. That's why, I tell her, I am reading three different sources when it came to news, one is the mainstream paper, second is a non-government related/Opposition website, third is the news from freelance reporter or blogger.
On today' s conversation, it is really an eye opener for me, at least I get to listen from other side of the story and what the people see and think on certain thing and issue.