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War on terrorism a pretence for war against Islam, says Mahathir

AFP, Putrajaya
Terming the West's use of the war on terrorism a pretence for a war against Islam, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad told a major Islamic summit yesterday that Muslims were 'humiliated and oppressed' through it.
In a typically outspoken speech, Mahathir told the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) summit that Muslims could exploit what he termed the increasing arrogance of the Jewish people.
"The Europeans killed six million Jews out of 12 million. But today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them," said Mahathir, who is due to retire at FROM PAGE 1
the end of the month after leading this moderate Muslim country for 22 years.
"1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews."
He urged Muslims to emulate the Jewish response to oppression, however, saying the Jews had "survived 2000 years of pogroms not by hitting back, but by thinking".
"We cannot fight them through brawn alone, we must use our brains also," he said.
The Muslim people had become angry and the Jewish people had become arrogant, "and arrogant people like angry people will make mistakes, will forget to think," he said.
The summit is the biggest gathering of Islamic leaders since the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, drawing more than 30 heads of state and government from throughout the Muslim world.
In an apparent denunciation of terrorism, Mahathir -- who often criticises both sides in a dispute said "we find some of our people acting irrationally," killing themselves and others as they "lash back blindly in anger".
Muslims must seek another way to "counter-attack", he said, calling for them to build stable, economically strong and technologically
advanced countries along with military might.
Mahathir's speech, apart from its racially explicit attack on the Jewish people -- rather than the state of Israel, was in line with the general theme of the summit, which is that the Muslims feel besieged by the fallout from the terrorist attacks on the United States.
The Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, in a speech handing over the chairmanship of the 57-member organisation to Mahathir, said Islamic countries support the war against terror but reject attempts to link terrorism with their religion.
The other dominant issues at the summit are the crises in Iraq and the Middle East.
Iraq's US-appointed Governing Council, which is represented at the summit by its leader Ayad Allawi, has requested the scrapping of a draft resolution demanding a timetable for the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq and a central role for the United Nations.
The council had asked that the resolution be replaced by a simple statement saying that the OIC countries want Iraqi independence as soon as possible, said Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher.