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| International |
| Muslim Leaders Defend Mahathir |
| 2003-10-20 |
| Muslim leaders closed ranks around Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad yesterday after his attack on Jews caused a firestorm of protest and overshadowed their bid for unity on Iraq at a summit meeting here. My thesis âIslam itself is the problem and Secularism is the solutionâ looks better and better. Western nations condemned the speech as outrageous and offensive. But Muslim officials gathered for the OIC meeting said Mahathirâs comments had been taken out of context and were aimed at rallying the Muslim world. âMahthirâs comments were taken out of context.â Well then, could you kindly explain what the proper context is? Yemenâs Foreign Minister Abu Bakr Al-Qurbi said he supported Mahathir â100 percentâ. Yemen, the same country that claims it cannot control its tribal areas, (Pakistan, take note!) When a government claims it cannot control its sovereign territory, they are in fact renouncing sovereignty over said territory. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said he did not think much attention should be paid to the âclamor and accusationsâ from Western countries. âThose who are commenting on the speech have not read it in its entirety,â Maher said. âNobody felt it was inflammatory. We thought it was a very, very wise assessment. It was addressed to the Muslims, it was an appeal for them to wake up.â Egypt, a country that receives over two billion dollars annually in US Aid. We still have this nasty habit of feeding our enemies. Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai said Mahathir was just âtalking about issues confronting the Muslim world and what Muslims should do. Muslims must educate themselves, must begin to be progressive to develop themselves. Karzai boy shows his true colors. We cannot even keep our pet president quiet. |
| Posted by:Sorge |
| #9 The Muslims see India and China moving ahead in the passing lane, and they are jealous. The OIC meeting theme - "Knowledge and Morality for the Progress of the Ummah" - is a challenge to incorporate the West's technology in order to increase Islamic jihad potential. The Muslims seek military domination through infiltration of the West through immigration, while using technological transfer. In the interests of self-preservation, the West should adopt a keep-them-stupid approach, after we bomb the jihad out of the enemy. |
| Posted by: Imam Hotep Bejesus 2003-10-20 9:10:54 PM |
| #8 Look, time to stop acting shocked, just shocked and outraged at Mahathir's speech. I've read about other Muslims calling for the end to the Intifada in similar terms. Fact: this is the level of dialogue in the Muslim world. And yes it is comparatively moderate (moderately insane, as opposed to froth-mouthed, eyerolling). He made an appeal to stop blowing things up and to be a little more open-minded. But his target audience is not going to listen to an appeal for peace and political reform on humanitarian grounds. Anybody preaching a cessation to the Intifada and marginalization ofthe radical Imams is not going to have success if they sound like they're capitulating in defeat. It has to be couched in terms of 1) a new & smarter strategy against "the (infidel) enemy" and, more importantly, it has to be spun as 2) properly Islamic. I don't like it but that's reality. Karzai knows this. Such discussions are inevitably going to contain some garbage about the Jooooooos. This new tack could lead to more reform, espiecially now that they'll have to compete with a free Iraq. There is also the danger that they could follow through on what they're saying and come back and reignite the conflicts at a more advantageous time, in a more unified manner. But if we keep our eyes open and remember what we're dealing with, I think we should accept such calls for peace and reform. The Jihadis are not going to listen but the Governments are desperately looking for a way to start reform without losing (more) face, prestige, and power. This is going to be their selling point to the Islamic public, the average Mahmoud Q. public, the everyday Tariq, Darkahn, and Hamid. |
| Posted by: Tokyo Taro 2003-10-20 6:28:13 PM |
| #7 Class...today's assignment: compare and contrast the respective remarks made by M. Chirac and President Bush in response to the anti-semtic speech made by Mahathir this past weekend. Whose remarks were those of a coward and whose remarks were those of a courageous political leader. Explain and discuss.Extra credit will be given for the appropriate usage of the phrase "cheese eating surrender monkey". |
| Posted by: Mark 2003-10-20 5:00:09 PM |
| #6 I give Karzai a pass on this one. He chose to hear only the "lets modernize" part of the speech, not the Anti-semitic part. and given his troubles at home, I cant blame him for not calling Mathahir on this - alot of the muslims already see him as a US puppet, and he also supported the US on Iraq - which most muslim leaders (and Mathahir) didnt do. Why go out on a limb by himself? |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2003-10-20 3:48:29 PM |
| #5 thanks to Sarge for posting the speech; the allusions to events in Muslim history probably make this difficult for Westerners to understand but for Muslims themselves the message seems to be 'play nicey nice for awhile, build up your military and then murder the infidels' and this is, I suppose actually moderate compared to the 'murder as many as possible right away' faction of Islam. |
| Posted by: mhw 2003-10-20 1:38:16 PM |
| #4 mhw; I've now posted the full text of Mahathir's speech on my website. You can go judge by yourself. |
| Posted by: Sorge 2003-10-20 11:54:55 AM |
| #3 These people are all full of crap. This conference was a good thing though - the world gets to see these jerks at their ugliest. |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2003-10-20 10:32:13 AM |
| #2 As Sullivan and others have pointed out, the Mahathir quotes published in the West were not the most disgusting ones in his speech. The key to understanding things is that the Islam mainstream seems to think that murder by itself is extreme but murder combined with conspiracy is moderation. |
| Posted by: mhw 2003-10-20 10:08:42 AM |
| #1 Karzai boy shows his true colors. We cannot even keep our pet president quiet. Karzai is no friend of the US. But if you look at some of his past statements, this should come as no surprise. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2003-10-20 9:32:57 AM |