Don't alienate Muslims, Mahathir tells West
KUALA LUMPUR -- Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad urged Western powers on Sunday to treat Muslims better, warning that attacks and sanctions on Muslim nations would create endless 'recruits to terrorism'.
Speaking to a gathering of business leaders on Pangkor, a resort island 200 km north of Kuala Lumpur, Dr Mahathir said: 'It may be coincidental, but the fact is that most of the targets of oppression and attacks are Muslims and Muslim countries.
'Is it any wonder that Muslims everywhere feel oppressed, feel angry, bitter and frustrated?'
He added that issues such as Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory and Western sanctions against Iraq, Iran, Libya and Sudan have forced some Muslims to 'retaliate... through acts of terror, hitting out blindly at the innocents as well as the guilty'.
'Unfortunately, short of total genocide, the terrorists cannot be militarily defeated,' he said.
'The West refuses to acknowledge this and will continue this costly war against terrorism without end.
'There is practically no effort to win the hearts and minds of the Muslims,' the Malaysian PM noted.
'In fact, everything is being done to alienate them further, to anger and frustrate them, and to ensure there will be a constant and probably increasing supply of recruits to terrorism... And so, there will be no end to Muslim terrorism.' -- AP |
