Omar Salahuddin, Special to Arab News

PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia, 17 October 2003 — Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad yesterday called on Muslims the world over to unite in the face of an attack orchestrated by Jews. He told a summit of Islamic leaders that “Jews rule the world by proxy” and the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims should use nonviolent means for a “final victory.”

Mahathir criticized the Jewish domination of the world and the Muslim nation’s inability to adequately respond to it as he opened the meeting of Islamic leaders from 57 nations.

“The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million, but today the Jews rule the world by proxy,” Mahathir said. “They get others to fight and die for them.”

“We are up against a people who think. They survived 2,000 years of pogroms not by hitting back but by thinking,” Mahathir said.

“For well over half a century we have fought over Palestine,” he said. “What have we achieved? Nothing. We are worse off than before. If we had paused to think, then we could have devised a plan, a strategy to win us final victory.”

The Malaysian prime minister said that “1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews,” but suggested using political and economic tactics instead of violence.

The leaders gave Mahathir a standing ovation after his speech. Asked their general reaction, they said they found Mahathir’s analysis on target.

Other Muslim heads of state called for correcting the distorted image of Islam.

Jordan’s King Abdallah said: “The more serious challenge... facing Muslims is continuous efforts to link Islam and Muslims with terrorism.”

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan said the OIC “has to tell the world that terrorism does not represent Islam, that terrorism is the enemy of Islam.”

Syrian President Bashar Assad said there was an “urgent need” for Islamic countries to explain Islam at home and abroad, as well as combat distortions by some Western institutions.

Eradicating violence carried out in the name of Islam cannot be achieved by military action alone, but also through cultural and intellectual education.

This should start with educating those who carry out such acts because of a misunderstanding of the religion, he said.

“Such practices directly harm Islam and provide ill-intentioned people with the pretext and justification to attribute to Islam various negative inhuman characteristics,” Bashar said.

Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri said terrorist acts “have not only caused loss in human life and property but also have created false perceptions about Islam as a religion of violence and aggression.”

Megawati’s country has suffered two devastating car bomb attacks in the past year, blamed on the Al-Qaeda-linked Southeast Asian extremist group Jemaah Islamiah.

Sheikh Hamad ibn Khalifa Al-Thani, the emir of Qatar, noted that Muslim countries also have rejected acts of terrorism. “In this respect, we declare our support of, and backing to, all measures taken to put an end to this phenomenon, and our resolve to positively contribute to the international efforts to this end.”

OIC Secretary-General Abdelouahed Belkeziz said “smear campaigns and blatant discrimination” against Muslims in some countries had intensified after the Sept. 11 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in a message to the conference delivered by an aide, warned that “extremist dogmas are gaining ground, impeding the progress of the entire (Muslim) community and threatening the security of the people all over the world.”