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Nobody
doubts Mahathir's credentials as an opponent of terrorism
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KUALA
LUMPUR, October 15 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - While Western
leaders condemned what they called senseless murder in Bali, veteran
Southeast Asian Muslim leader Mahathir Mohamad said Tuesday, October 15,
that there were causes for terrorism, and the West can do something
about them.
It
is a theme Mahathir has hammered away at relentlessly since the
September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, when Washington
initially refused to consider there might be reason behind what it saw
as some kind of simple, mad, bloodlust.
Asked
by Agence France-Presse (AFP) Tuesday to list what he believed to be the
causes of terrorism, Mahathir said, "One, of course, is the
continued attacks on Palestine, the terror attacks against them and
their retaliation, and of course this idea of invading Iraq, and
generally their attitude towards Muslim countries."
He
said previously, "If terrorism is to be stopped, then the injustice
and the oppression of Israel against Palestine and its people must be
stopped quickly first."
But
Mahathir also criticizes Muslims for bringing many of their problems on
themselves through focusing only on religious learning at the expense of
keeping up with developments in the modern world, leaving their states
poor and weak and humiliated after what is seen as a glorious past.
Musing
on this recently, he noted the United States and its victorious allies
in World War II had not ground their former enemies in Germany and Japan
into the dirt but implemented economic programs to help them become
prosperous - and friendly.
He
has also said "the answer lies in justice and fair-play, in being
sensitive, in being willing to step back and to admit mistakes and
banish the idea that any one race has a monopoly of the right values,
the right systems and the right solutions to all the human
ailments."
Mahathir,
76, led Malaysia, a multicultural country with a Muslim majority, for 21
years and although he is known as a vocal scourge of western ways
including globalization, nobody doubts his credentials as an opponent of
terrorism.
He
has in the past year locked up without trial 63 alleged Islamic
militants linked to the Jemaah Islamiyah group, accused of involvement
in the Bali blast, and last week shipped home an American Muslim
studying at a university in Kuala Lumpur to face terrorism charges.
He
has emerged since the September 11 attacks as a spokesman for moderate
Islam, defending the faith while excoriating extremists who resort to
violence.
But
he says the West's inept handling of the war on terrorism is making
things worse -- and the U.S. plan to attack Iraq will simply promote
more terrorist outrages.
Commenting
on the Bali blast, he said it was not a surprise because "I believe
the level of hatred, the level of bitterness, frustration is greater
than immediately after September 11.
"That
is because no attempt is being made to trace the causes of the anger
which makes people willing to blow themselves up in order to carry out
acts of terrorism."
Australian
Prime Minister John Howard, whose country suffered the most losses in
the weekend Bali attacks that killed nearly 200 tourists, is now using
Bush's logic - and facing the same dissent.
"Terrorists
murdered Australians in Bali, nobody else. They had no right, no
justification, no possible moral explanation for what they did,"
Howard said in response to suggestions that Australia's strong support
for the United States and a possible attack on Iraq made it a target.
Bush,
however, with a year to reflect on the U.S. attacks, seems to have
accepted there may be a "cause" for terrorism.
"We
must together challenge and defeat the idea that the wanton killing of
innocents advances any cause or supports any aspirations," he said
Sunday.
But,
he continued: "We must call this despicable act by its rightful
name - murder," and the murderers should be "brought to
justice".
It
is a thesis Bush has repeated time and again, and time and again
Mahathir has repeated his own - Bush is barking up the wrong tree,
according to AFP.
