The people of Pakistan are great believers in conspiracies. Any incident that happens, even if there are witnesses to the event, is explained away as a conspiracy. A man might commit adultery and get caught in the act, but his relatives will say it's a conspiracy to defame him and his family. A rich but distant relative of mine, now dead for forty three years, was a great womanizer. He was in bed with his mistress when her husband barged in and shot the woman dead. My relative was lucky to escape. Soon, everyone got to know about it but his family members refused to believe that he was so immoral. The trial judge did not allow the defendant's lawyer to bring on record that a leading industrialist was in the house when the murder took place. Mind you, I don't blame my relative. When a man has too much money and his wife has the figure of an elephant, you can’t blame him for having a mistress.
Talking about conspiracy theories, there are people who refuse to believe that Muslims were responsible for the 9/11 attacks, it was the Americans themselves (so they could invade Iraq and Afghanistan). I know perfectly normal people who think suicide bombers are not Muslims, while most Pakistanis believe that it's the Americans themselves who arrange suicide bombings, to give them an excuse to kill innocent Muslims in Waziristan in drone attacks. The recent floods were at first blamed on India (for having released surplus water from overflowing dams into rivers flowing into Pakistan), then on the Americans (apparently Americans also arranged the earthquake of 2005).
Other conspiracy theories are that Pakistanis designed F-16 planes before anyone else, but the Americans stole the drawings and manufactured the planes themselves, and that we produce enough surplus electricity but the Americans store it in batteries and use it in their bases in Afghanistan. There are also theories about Saudi Arabia being defended by Pakistanis soldiers and that the late President Zia-ul-Haq saved Jordan's King Hussain from being killed by Palestinians.
I've often been told that Hitler was a secret Muslim (because he hated the Jews), that the man who dropped the atom bomb killed himself a few days later (he died in 2005) and that the first man on the moon converted to Islam because he heard the "azaan" or Islamic call to prayers when he emerged from the lunar capsule (the man-Neil Armstrong-himself says he's still a Christian). But when I tell such people the facts, they think I'm not "normal" and should be locked up!
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