Oleh/By : DATO SERI DR MAHATHIR BIN MOHAMAD
Tempat/Venue : TOKYO, JAPAN
Tarikh/Date : 13/12/2002
Tajuk/Title : THE SYMPOSIUM ON ISLAM AT THE
UNITED NATIONS UNIVERSITY
Versi : ENGLISH
Penyampai : PM
"Islam : Fostering Peace and Dialogue in an
Interdependent World"
A few years back, in Oxford I spoke about Islam as
the misunderstood religion. I pointed out that Islam is
not only not understood by non-Muslims but even among
Muslims there is a great deal of misunderstanding about
its message and its teachings. And because both sides
do not really understand this religion of 1.3 billion
people, we now have a serious confrontation between non-
Muslims and Muslims and also between Muslims and Muslims
themselves.
2. Yet Islam is a religion that civilised the world.
During the Dark Ages of Europe Islam was the light, the
beacon which guided the world towards rationality,
towards the aesthetics and the beauty of the arts,
towards poetry and literature, towards mathematics,
science and technology. There are enough evidence of
all these for us to see.
3. When Muhammad the Prophet of Islam received his
first message, the Arabs of the Arabian Peninsular were
the most primitive people, divided into fierce warring
tribes, who practised infanticide of female children and
other frightening pseudo religious beliefs. The Prophet
preached peace and brotherhood to these people,
converted them to Islam and a way of life that respected
the sanctity of life, tolerance for each other and
relative respect for women.
4. When he migrated to Madinah his message was the
same. He reconciled the tribes of Madinah, the Aus and
the Khazraj, the Ansars, as they are known by Muslims,
with the newcomers, the Muhajirin, from a different
tribe from Mecca, and brought peace among them. He
built a good community which included Jewish tribes and
provided the city with the first written constitution.
5. The Muslims greeted each other and even the non-
Muslims with the phrase "Peace be upon You." This is
because among the desert people, there was seldom any
peace. The yearning for peace has always been great
among them. The Jewish "Shalom" expresses the same
thing.
6. We know that in China the greeting is an enquiry,
"Have you eaten?" The reason is obvious enough in a
country which in the past was so frequently stricken
with famine.
7. People yearn for the thing that means most to them.
And for the early Muslims and also the present ones the
yearning is for Peace.
8. Peace is therefore not only the name of Islam but
also the message of Islam. Peace requires tolerance and
through the ages the Muslims have been very tolerant.
That is why historically the Jews would seek refuge from
the pogroms, the Inquisition, the persecutions by the
Europeans in Europe by migrating to Muslim countries.
When Spain was reconquered by the Christians, the Jews
preferred to migrate to North Africa with the Muslims
rather than live under Christian kings. In Eastern
Europe the Jews preferred Turkish-ruled regions than
Christian countries.
9. We know for a fact that European Christians were
very anti-Jew, confining them to ghettoes and every now
and again massacring them. The last pogrom was by Nazi
Germans and six million Jews perished. It is in order
to solve their Jewish problem that the Europeans
supported the establishment of a Jewish state in
Palestine. It is unfortunate that Palestine, a land
owned and peopled by Arabs for centuries became the
final choice. Initially Argentina and Uganda were
proposed. The consequence today would probably be less
violent.
10. What we are seeing today in Palestine is not a
religious war, for prior to the establishment of Israel,
the Arabs and the Jews lived at peace with each other in
Arab Palestine, a part of the Ottoman Empire. The
Palestinians are fighting today because the creation of
Israel was by forcibly expropriating Arab land and
property and expelling the Palestinians from their
country and their homes. The hundreds of thousands of
the Palestinian Arabs expelled from Palestine have now
multiplied into millions and they still live in
miserable refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon. They
have lived under this oppressive conditions for more
than fifty years. It is this that started the Israeli -
Palestinian conflict. For fifty years now a territorial
dispute has been misrepresented as a religious dispute.
The Muslims are not anti-Jew. The Jews, together with
the Christians, are the People of the Book, followers
and worshippers of the same God that the Muslims
worship. And in Muslim countries in the past and
presently there is nothing equal to pogroms and
inquisitions. Christians and Jews remain Christian and
Jew in Muslim ruled countries. But if the Christians or
Jews expropriate Muslim land and expel Muslims, then the
Muslims, like everybody else will fight to regain their
land.
11. Since Christians and Jews will not sympathise and
support the Muslims in their struggle to regain their
land, then they have to appeal to other Muslims. And
Muslims will support Muslims who have been deprived of
their land because there is a common bond in their
religion. Besides nobody else, certainly not the
democratic humanitarians of Europe, will help them. The
liberal democrats of Europe and America want the Jews to
keep out. The Jews are too smart for the gentiles and
can easily dominate them, despite not being numerous.
12. But Palestine is not the only cause celebre for the
Muslims. Since the end of the First World War Muslims
have been oppressed everywhere. The British and the
French who promised independence for the Arabs if they
helped the Europeans to break up the Turkish Ottoman
Empire, reneged on their promises and made colonies of
Arab lands liberated from the Turks. In Central Asia
all the Muslim countries had been conquered by the
Russians and Islam was actually outlawed. The Muslims
were forced to become atheists. Indeed at one time only
Saudi Arabia, where the two holiest Muslim places are
located, was independent. The rest of the Muslim world
was under harsh colonial rule. Only after World War Two
were most of these countries liberated. But antagonism
towards the Muslims and their countries continued. The
Christian Crusade against Islam has never really ceased.
13. In many cases, in Iraq, Iran, Chechnya, Sudan,
Libya, South Asia, Muslims were at one time or another
oppressed. Sanctions have been applied against more
Muslim countries than other countries. In Bosnia-
Herzegovina and in Kosovar, Muslims were allowed to be
massacred by the tens of thousands witnessed by millions
on T.V., before the world put a stop to it. Yet in
other countries intervention was immediate. Thus
while Iraq, Iran and North Korea are labelled as the
Axis of Evil, action is concentrated only on Iraq and
Iran, Muslim countries. It is any wonder that Iran
labelled its chief detractor as "the great Satan".
14. The Muslims fight back of course. Finding
themselves incapable of conventional war or even
conventional war of liberation they resort to any means
including terror attacks. Muslims condemn these acts
of terror as much as non-Muslims and most of them have
shown a willingness to cooperate in the fight against
terrorism. But their contribution does not free them
of suspicion and threats of attack by the people with
whom they collaborate.
15. The Muslim's claim that Islam is a religion of
Peace may sound hollow in the light of the senseless
terror attacks they have mounted. But the professed
humanitarians of the West are not averse to starving
men, women and children in order to force them to accept
the "freedom" of democracy. And historically it is the
great liberal humanitarian democrats who have killed
millions through carpet bombing and the atom bombs. And
so the claims of the democrats that they believe in
peace, freedom and justice is just as hollow. Either
the end justifies the means or desperation and
frustration justify the unjustifiable, for everyone.
16. We all should acknowledge that both the Muslim and
non-Muslim detractors are at fault. That the Muslims
have been oppressed and abused since the disintegration
of the Ottoman Empire cannot be denied. That Muslim
land have been seized in order to make way for a Jewish
state, to solve the European Jewish problem, is equally
true. That the Muslims have been expelled from their
homes and land, humiliated, bombed and killed with
impunity are equally true. The net result is anger,
bitterness and frustration among the Muslims. The net
result, simply stated, is their terror attacks.
17. These attacks were brushed off as minor irritants
by many who are supposed to oversee and police the
world. When the Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina for
example were massacred, many of their detractors felt
that it was nothing more than what they deserve. But
then came the destruction of the World Trade Centre in
New York and part of the Pentagon, the symbols of the
most powerful nation of the world. The Muslims and
their senseless terror attacks cannot be ignored any
more. Now the world is not safe from Muslim terror, and
the rest of the world have become as angry as the
Muslims, seeking to punish and avenge the deaths on
September 11. Israel of course has seized the
opportunity to terrorise the Palestinians even more.
18. Islam is a way of life. Islam prescribes the way
that everything is done by its follower. In personal,
family, communal, and "national" life, Muslims follow
the guidance of Islam as prescribed in the Holy Quran
and the traditions of the Prophet.
19. Of course not all Muslims do. Beside after the
death of the Prophet, there have been and there still
are so many different interpretations of the teachings
of Islam that the single simple religion of the Prophet
has now become many different religions, with adherents
who are sometimes so fanatical about their particular
interpretation and sects that they freely condemn other
Muslims as apostates and are willing to fight and kill
them. Indeed they are more ready to fight those Muslims
whom they consider as apostates than they are to fight
the non-Muslim enemies.
20. But Christianity too has undergone many changes and
divisions. Right from the beginning they were divided
between the Eastern Orthodox and the Christianity of the
Holy Roman Empire part of Western Europe. Then the
Western European Christians were divided and divided
again by the reforms of Martin Luther and later the
Anglicans, the Calvinists, the Puritans and others.
The Catholics produced the Jesuits, the Franciscans and
many other orders. Now of course most European
Christians are atheistic, more interested in their
European heritage than the religious beliefs of
Christianity.
21. The Jews on the other hand have never been
interested in spreading their faith to non-Jews. They
believe in being the Chosen People of God. And so no
matter where they may be they are Jews, whether they
practice Judaism or not. They invented Zionism as a
Jewish creed, more national than religious. United they
have been able to survive pogroms and inquisitions,
finally to emerge as a powerful force when democracy
gained for them equal status and their combined votes
decide who governs the powerful countries where they
reside.
22. It is impossible to discuss Islam without taking
into consideration Christianity and Judaism. Outwardly
there seems to be a religious confrontation between the
three. But religion is secondary. What is important is
territory.
23. The Europeans have always been acquisitive and
covetous of what belongs to others. In their 2000 years
of history their borders have shifted very many times as
they war with each other to enlarge their territory.
When they learnt to sail the oceans, they fought to
acquire more foreign territory for themselves. In
Europe itself they denied the Jews any land to call
their own. Periodically they were forever thinking of a
final solution to their Jewish problem. But they also
needed the Jews to finance their wars and to enrich
their countries.
24. The Holocaust failed to become the final solution.
And so they supported the Zionist idea of a homeland for
the Jews. Unfortunately their final choice was not
anywhere in Europe but in Palestine, the land of the
Arabs. It is so easy to take other people's land in
order to pay your debt to others.
25. But it was a mistake. The Arabs cannot see any
reason why they should be made to pay debts owed by
Europeans. And since then the Palestinian territorial
issue has plagued the world, has caused misunderstanding
and bitter confrontation between Arabs, Europeans and
Jews which most people attribute to differences of
religions.
26. Fear of the Muslims has plagued the Europeans, ever
since Islam began to spread in the 7th and 8th
centuries. They had mounted Crusades against the
Muslims through the centuries. Today it is safe to say
that Europeans whether Christians of free thinkers still
think of Islam as a threat. It is this thinking, that
has poisoned the relations between Europeans and Arabs,
whether they are Muslims or not. Not only have Arab
territories been seized but whenever there is an excuse
they are oppressed.
27. There is obvious confusion between religious
confrontations and territorial expropriation. There is
of course some element of religion involved but the main
issue is land expropriation and oppression when met with
resistance. Today it is nothing more than a wish for
retaliation and revenge.
28. The recent terror attack in Mombasa, Kenya,
illustrates this attitude very well. The Israelis have
vowed that they will hunt down the terrorists. No doubt
they will. But it is most unlikely that Israelis are
going to be safe after the killers are eliminated. The
anger thus and those who support their cause, will
ensure new recruits will stage new attacks. There will
be no progress in the fight against the terrorists.
Instead there will be escalation.
29. So how do we foster Peace and Dialogue in our
Interdependent world in a world of anger and rage by
everyone? The simple answer is that we will not be able
to foster Peace and Dialogue for as long as both sides
are set on seeking revenge. We can only foster Peace
and Dialogue if we try to return to sanity and focus on
the causes of terrorism instead.
30. I believe that at the root of Muslim terrorism is
the fact that they are weak and incapable of negotiating
on equal terms with their detractors. Imposing the will
of the powerful on the Muslims is not dialogue for
peace. Their Governments may be forced to agree, but
not their people, some of whom will continue to fight in
whatever way they can.
31. The second need is for the recognition of the true
causes-i.e. the expropriation of Muslim land and the
oppression of Muslims all over the world. Since
September 11 this oppression has become more widespread
and more severe.
32. If these two factors are acknowledged and the
negotiation is fairly conducted with the objective of
removing the causes, God-willing peace will ensue. It
will not be immediate as in the case of the conventional
defeat of a country. Muslim Governments are not in
complete control of the extremist elements in their
countries. But without a cause, the anger would
diminish and there would be less recruits for terrorism.
Eventually terrorism would cease for lack of support.
33. The First World War was a war to end wars. But the
peace treaties imposed on the defeated were so harsh
that they caused another war, World War II. After
World War II the victorious Allies, realising that harsh
treaties were counter productive, agreed to more
reasonable treaties. The result is erstwhile enemies
such as the French and the German are able to
collaborate in the creation of the European Union. In
the East Japan readily became the ally of the United
States. For more than half a century now, world war has
been avoided.
34. But the powers that be have not learnt how to
handle the war against terrorism. They treat it like a
conventional war. They are doing everything possible to
increase terrorism. Countries which collaborate are
being threatened. The only thing that can happen is a
loss of cooperation in the fight against terror. And
terror attacks are going to be a part of our lives,
whoever we may be.
35. The world is set for a very long and painful war
which will keep everyone in a state of fear, strangle
world economy and render most of the advances in science
and technology useless.
36. Let me once again say that Islam means peace. But
there can be no peace, no dialogue unless the true
grievances of the Muslims are acknowledged and attended
to.
37. For two thousand years the Jews were massacred
periodically to get rid of them. The Jews were very few
in number. But the attempt has obviously failed. Today
the Jews are more powerful than ever. The attempt to
force the Muslim into submission will also fail. There
are far too many of them and the human spirit in them
will overcome all adversities. In the meantime while
the attempt for a final solution of the Muslim problem
is being implemented the world will live in a state of
terror.
38. It is far better to go back to the table and to
sincerely try to understand the problem, to negotiate
and to work determinedly for peace.
39. In an Interdependent World we should all depend on
each other. It is not an Interdependent World if
everyone has to depend on just one party, or one power.
Sumber : Pejabat Perdana Menteri
|
|