[يتيم الشعر]

Bush proclaimed that "the establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution."

It is such arrogance that alienates the world from the US government, with its insinuations that Arabs and the Muslim world need the west to teach them democracy and human rights.

Bush is probably unaware that from the 8th to 13th centuries, while the western world came under the authoritarian control of the Catholic church, one which discouraged any kind of critical thinking, Islamic scholars were developing science, technology, medicine, mathematics to new heights, taking seriously the Quran (Koran)'s injunction: "Seek knowledge, from the cradle to the grave."

One Muslim leader talks about how this golden age was reversed: "Halfway through the building of the great Islamic civilization came new interpreters of Islam who taught that acquisition of knowledge by Muslims meant only the study of Islamic theology. The study of science, medicine etc. was discouraged. Intellectually the Muslims began to regress. With intellectual regression the great Muslim civilization began to falter and wither…"

That passage comes from a recent speech by former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, the very same speech attacked by the western press for carrying anti-Semitic (anti-Jewish) remarks. I was able to track down the full text of the speech and realized, after reading it, that it was in fact more of a harsh critique of what Muslims had done to Islam.

"Today," Mahathir lamented, "we, the whole Muslim ummah are treated with contempt and dishonor. Our religion is denigrated. Our holy places desecrated. Our countries are occupied. Our people starved and killed."

It was in this context that Mahathir called on Muslims to shape up. He cites examples of strategizing by the prophet Mohammed, and decries the present: "We fight without any objective, without any goal other than to hurt the enemy because they hurt us. Naively we expect them to surrender. We sacrifice lives unnecessarily, achieving nothing other than to attract more massive retaliation and humiliation."

He goes on to deliver the controversial paragraph: "We are actually very strong. 1.3 billion people (Muslims) cannot be simply wiped out. 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."

As well as another passage where he claims Jews "invented and successfully promoted socialism, communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong…" There Mahathir goes off track, but I can see his point arguing that Muslims have lagged far behind the world, and need to introduce reforms.

Mahathir can be offensive but his trenchant critique of fellow Muslims shows that Islam is not a monolithic and dogmatic community. Muslims themselves are urging reforms, and that includes the area of women's rights, another favorite excuse of Bush and other western leaders to justify their interference with Muslim affairs

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[HR]