To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (117277 ) 10/20/2003 11:11:38 AM From: carranza2 Respond to of 281500 He says the Muslims should stop making war, and concentrate on internal economic development, until their nations are: <stable and well administered,....economically and financially strong, industrially competent and technologically advanced> Jacob, your persistence in misreading the speech is truly puzzling. I'll quote some parts of the text that I think you should read carefully: Mahathir actually said:We are enjoined by our religion to prepare for the defence of the ummah. Unfortunately we stress not defence but the weapons of the time of the Prophet. Those weapons and horses cannot help to defend us any more. We need guns and rockets, bombs and warplanes, tanks and warships for our defence. But because we discouraged the learning of science and mathematics etc as giving no merit for the akhirat, today we have no capacity to produce our own weapons for our defence. We have to buy our weapons from our detractors and enemies. And the call for reform you myopically see as benevolent is not at all so. Read this part of the speech:We must build up our strength in every field, not just in armed might. Our countries must be stable and well administered, must be economically and financially strong, industrially competent and technologically advanced. This will take time, but it can be done and it will be time well spent. We are enjoined by our religion to be patient. Innallahamaasabirin. Obviously there is virtue in being patient. But the defence of the ummah, the counter-attack, need not start only after we have put our houses in order. Even today we have sufficient assets to deploy against our detractors. It remains for us to identify them and to work out how to make use of them to stop the carnage caused by the enemy. This is entirely possible if we stop to think, to plan, to strategise and to take the first few critical steps. Even these few steps can yield positive results.