The United States this week marked the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks on New York, Washington and Pennsylvania by radical Muslims, recalling the nearly 3,000 people who died on that day.
Hundreds more have died since then of related afflictions.
But now a Jordanian journalist is claiming that it is Muslims around the world who are the real victims of 9/11.
The Middle East Media Research Institute said it was Ismail Al-Sharif, previously the CEO and now a columnist for the Jordanian Al-Dustour publication, who said that “no fewer than 6 million Muslims” have been “killed in direct and indirect crimes and wars launched against Muslims by the West.”
MEMRI reported: “He explained that after the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. and the West needed a new enemy to fight and chose Islam, as they saw it as a threat to Western civilization, and that ever since, and in particular ever since 9/11, the West has provoked wars in various Arab countries – Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and others. It is fanning the flames of these wars to this very day, he added, thus allowing Muslim blood to continue to be shed as they are slaughtered in droves.”
Al-Sharif charged that while the U.S. is mourning those lost on 9/11, “in other parts of the world, mothers will weep for children who died in an attack in the springtime of their lives; people will be arrested for no reason; refugees will be expelled; and people will be tortured.”
“The common denominator of all these people is that they are Muslims – the greatest victims of the September 11 events.”
He claimed, “This is because the American empire always needs an enemy to provide it with a motive to act, to [allow it to] develop, and to exploit so that it can control both its own people and the resources and natural wealth of other peoples.”
Al-Sharif pointed to the fall of the Soviet Union at that time, which left arms dealers, politicians and others out of work “and a new enemy needed to be created in order to reactivate this machine.”
“This time, the enemy was Islam.”
He charged that Islam was chosen “because it is able to subsume other civilizations and ideologies.”
Al-Sharif claimed that “Islamophobia” has come to the point today that it amounts “to mass extermination.”