Interesting dual-sided view from a Muslim leader:
Islamic countries impotent on Iraq crisis: Malaysian PM admits OIC's weakness to solve Iraq crisis, urges Muslim countries to focus more on science, economics.
Islamic nations have called a last-ditch meeting on the Iraq crisis but their impotence in the face of United States power - and thus the threat of increased terrorism - has been brought into sharp focus by an influential Muslim leader.
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, whose country takes over the chairmanship of the 57-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in October, was characteristically undiplomatic in his assessment of such a meeting.
He said that apart from the fact that some member countries supported the United States, the OIC realised that it was weak and nobody would pay any attention to its opinion.
Mahathir, who has led Malaysia for the past 21 years, was equally scathing about a call for jihad or holy war in defence of Iraq in a broadcast purportedly by terror mastermind Osama bin Laden.
He said it was "a stupid idea".
"We want to fight a holy war if we can win. If we go in just to be killed, that's not jihad.
"If we want to go to a war, we must have the strategy and strength."
That comment highlights one of the planks of Mahathir's policy on Islam: Muslim countries pay too much attention to religion at the expense of developing their nations and are therefore no match for those in the West.
They should spend more energy on science and economics, he says, rather than blame their weak position in the world on religious oppression by more powerful states.
Mahathir says regularly it is that perceived oppression, and the feeling of helplessness in Islamic countries, which gave rise to the Muslim terrorism which culminated in the September 11 2001 attacks on the United States.
An attack on Iraq, he says, will simply add fuel to the fire rather than achieve US President George W. Bush's avowed aim of reducing the terrorist threat.
"There was a time when Muslim countries were in agreement over the need to stop Iraqi aggressiveness.
"Today that unity of purpose has disappeared. Muslims see the stance taken against Iraq as another act of discrimination against Muslims," Mahathir told the annual meeting of the Asia Pacific Parliamentary Forum here last month.
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middle-east-online.com |
