Oleh/By : DATO' SERI DR.MAHATHIR BIN MOHAMAD
Tempat/Venue : PUTRAJAYA CONVENTION CENTRE, PUTRAJAYA
Tarikh/Date : 16/10/2003
Tajuk/Title : THE OPENING OF THE TENTH SESSION OF
THE ISLAMIC SUMMIT CONFERENCE
Versi : ENGLISH
Penyampai : PM
Alhamdulillah, All Praise be to Allah, by whose Grace
and Blessings we, the leaders of the Organisation of
Islamic Conference countries are gathered here today to
confer and hopefully to plot a course for the future of
Islam and the Muslim ummah worldwide.
2. On behalf of the Government and the people of many
races and religions of Malaysia, may I extend a warm
welcome to all and everyone to this Tenth Session of the
Islamic Summit Conference in Putrajaya, Malaysia's
administrative capital.
3. It is indeed a great honour for Malaysia to host this
Session and to assume the Chairmanship of the
Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC). I thank
the members for their confidence in Malaysia's
Chairmanship.
4. May I also take this opportunity to pay a special
tribute to the State of Qatar, in particular His
Highness Shaikh Hamad Bin Khalifa AI-Thani, the Emir of
the State of Qatar, for his outstanding stewardship of
our Organisation over the past three years.
5. As host, Malaysia is gratified at the high level of
participation from member countries. This clearly
demonstrates our continued and abiding faith in, and
commitment to our Organisation and our collective wish
and determination to strengthen our role for the dignity
and benefit of the ummah.
6. I would also like to welcome the leaders and
representatives of the many countries who wish to become
observers at this meeting because of their substantial
Muslim population. Whether they are Muslims or not,
their presence at this meeting will help towards greater
understanding of Islam and the Muslims, thus helping to
disprove the perception of Islam as a religion of
backwardness and terror.
7. The whole world is looking at us. Certainly 1.3
billion Muslims, one-sixth of the world's population are
placing their hopes in us, in this meeting, even though
they may be cynical about our will and capacity to even
decide to restore the honour of Islam and the Muslims,
much less to free their brothers and sisters from the
oppression and humiliation from which they suffer today.
8. I will not enumerate the instances of our humiliation
and oppression, nor will I once again condemn our
detractors and oppressors. It would be an exercise in
futility because they are not going to change their
attitudes just because we condemn them. If we are to
recover our dignity and that of Islam, our religion, it
is we who must decide, it is we who must act.
9. To begin with, the Governments of all the Muslim
countries can close ranks and have a common stand if not
on all issues, at least on some major ones, such as on
Palestine. We are all Muslims. We are all oppressed. We
are all being humiliated. But we who have been raised by
Allah above our fellow Muslims to rule our countries
have never really tried to act in concert in order to
exhibit at our level the brotherhood and unity that
Islam enjoins upon us.
10. But not only are our Governments divided, the Muslim
ummah is also divided, and divided again and again. Over
the last 1400 years the interpreters of Islam, the
learned ones, the ulamas have interpreted and
reinterpreted the single Islamic religion brought by
Prophet Muhammad S.A.W, so differently that now we have
a thousand religions which are often so much at odds
with one another that we often fight and kill each
other.
11. From being a single ummah we have allowed ourselves
to be divided into numerous sects, mazhabs and tarikats,
each more concerned with claiming to be the true Islam
than our oneness as the Islamic ummah. We fail to notice
that our detractors and enemies do not care whether we
are true Muslims or not. To them we are all Muslims,
followers of a religion and a Prophet whom they declare
promotes terrorism, and we are all their sworn enemies.
They will attack and kill us, invade our lands, bring
down our Governments whether we are Sunnis or Syiahs,
Alawait or Druze or whatever. And we aid and abet them
by attacking and weakening each other, and sometimes by
doing their bidding, acting as their proxies to attack
fellow Muslims. We try to bring down our Governments
through violence, succeeding to weaken and impoverish
our countries.
12. We ignore entirely and we continue to ignore the
Islamic injunction to unite and to be brothers to each
other, we the Governments of the Islamic countries and
the ummah.
13. But this is not all that we ignore about the
teachings of Islam. We are enjoined to Read, Iqraq i.e.
to acquire knowledge. The early Muslims took this to
mean translating and studying the works of the Greeks
and other scholars before Islam. And these Muslim
scholars added to the body of knowledge through their
own studies.
14. The early Muslims produced great mathematicians and
scientists, scholars, physicians and astronomers etc.
and they excelled in all the fields of knowledge of
their times, besides studying and practising their own
religion of Islam. As a result the Muslims were able to
develop and extract wealth from their lands and through
their world trade, able to strengthen their defences,
protect their people and give them the Islamic way of
life, Addin, as prescribed by Islam. At the time the
Europeans of the Middle Ages were still superstitious
and backward, the enlightened Muslims had already built
a great Muslim civilisation, respected and powerful,
more than able to compete with the rest of the world and
able to protect the ummah from foreign aggression. The
Europeans had to kneel at the feet of Muslim scholars in
order to access their own scholastic heritage.
15. The Muslims were lead by great leaders like Abdul
Rahman III, AI-Mansur, Salah El Din AI Ayubi and others
who took to the battlefields at the head of their forces
to protect Muslim land and the ummah.
16. But halfway through the building of the great
Islamic civilisation 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.
17. Intellectually the Muslims began to regress. With
intellectual regression the great Muslim civilisation
began to falter and wither. But for the emergence of the
Ottoman warriors, Muslim civilisation would have
disappeared with the fall of Granada in 1492.
18. The early successes of the Ottomans were not
accompanied by an intellectual renaissance. Instead they
became more and more preoccupied with minor issues such
as whether tight trousers and peak caps were Islamic,
whether printing machines should be allowed or
electricity used to light mosques. The Industrial
Revolution was totally missed by the Muslims. And the
regression continued until the British and French
instigated rebellion against Turkish rule brought about
the downfall of the Ottomans, the last Muslim world
power and replaced it with European colonies and not
independent states as promised. It was only after World
War II that these colonies became independent.
19. Apart from the new nation-states we also accepted
the western democratic system. This also divided us
because of the political parties and groups that we
form, some of which claim Islam for themselves, reject
the Islam of other parties and refuse to accept the
results of the practice of democracy if they fail to
gain power for themselves. They resort to violence, thus
destabilising and weakening Muslim countries.
20. With all these developments over the centuries the
ummah and the Muslim civilisation became so weak that at
one time there was not a single Muslim country which was
not colonised or hegemonised by the Europeans. But
regaining independence did not help to strengthen the
Muslims. Their states were weak and badly administered,
constantly in a state of turmoil. The Europeans could do
what they liked with Muslim territories. It is not
surprising that they should excise Muslim land to create
the state of Israel to solve their Jewish problem.
Divided, the Muslims could do nothing effective to stop
the Balfour and Zionist transgression.
21. Some would have us believe that, despite all these,
our life is better than that of our detractors. Some
believe that poverty is Islamic, sufferings and being
oppressed are Islamic. This world is not for us. Ours
are the joys of heaven in the afterlife. All that we
have to do is to perform certain rituals, wear certain
garments and put up a certain appearance. Our weakness,
our backwardness and our inability to help our brothers
and sisters who are being oppressed are part of the Will
of Allah, the sufferings that we must endure before
enjoying heaven in the hereafter. We must accept this
fate that befalls us. We need not do anything. We can do
nothing against the Will of Allah.
22. But is it true that it is the Will of Allah and that
we can and should do nothing? Allah has said in Surah Ar-
Ra'd verse 11 that He will not change the fate of a
community until the community has tried to change its
fate itself.
23. The early Muslims were as oppressed as we are
presently. But after their sincere and determined
efforts to help themselves in accordance with the
teachings of Islam, Allah had helped them to defeat
their enemies and to create a great and powerful Muslim
civilisation. But what effort have we made especially
with the resources that He has endowed us with.
24. We are now 1.3 billion strong. We have the biggest
oil reserve in the world. We have great wealth. We are
not as ignorant as the Jahilliah who embraced Islam. We
are familiar with the workings of the world's economy
and finances. We control 57 out of the 180 countries in
the world. Our votes can make or break international
organisations. Yet we seem more helpless than the small
number of Jahilliah converts who accepted the Prophet as
their leader. Why? Is it because of Allah's will or is
it because we have interpreted our religion wrongly, or
failed to abide by the correct teachings of our
religion, or done the wrong things?
25. We are enjoined by our religion to prepare for the
defence of the ummah. Unfortunately we stress not
defence but the weapons of the time of the Prophet.
Those weapons and horses cannot help to defend us any
more. We need guns and rockets, bombs and warplanes,
tanks and warships for our defence. But because we
discouraged the learning of science and mathematics etc.
as giving no merit for the akhirat, today we have no
capacity to produce our own weapons for our defence. We
have to buy our weapons from our detractors and enemies.
This is what comes from the superficial interpretation
of the Quran, stressing not the substance of the
Prophet's sunnah and the Quran's injunctions but rather
the form, the manner and the means used in the 1st
Century of the Hijrah. And it is the same with the other
teachings of Islam. We are more concerned with the forms
rather than the substance of the words of Allah and
adhering only to the literal interpretation of the
traditions of the Prophet.
26. We may want to recreate the first century of the
Hijrah, the way of life in those times, in order to
practise what we think to be the true Islamic way of
life. But we will not be allowed to do so. Our
detractors and enemies will take advantage of the
resulting backwardness and weakness in order to dominate
us. Islam is not just for the 7th Century A.D. Islam is
for all times. And times have changed. Whether we like
it or not we have to change, not by changing our
religion but by applying its teachings in the context of
a world that is radically different from that of the
first century of the Hijrah. Islam is not wrong but the
interpretations by our scholars, who are not prophets
even though they may be very learned can be wrong. We
have a need to go back to the fundamental teachings of
Islam to find out whether we are indeed believing in and
practising the Islam that the Prophet preached. It
cannot be that we are all practising the correct and
true Islam when our beliefs are so different from one
another.
27. Today we, the whole Muslim ummah are treated with
contempt and dishonour. Our religion is denigrated. Our
holy places desecrated. Our countries are occupied. Our
people starved and killed.
28. None of our countries are truly independent. We are
under pressure to conform to our oppressors' wishes
about how we should behave, how we should govern our
lands, how we should think even.
29. Today if they want to raid our country, kill our
people, destroy our villages and towns, there is nothing
substantial that we can do. Is it Islam which has caused
all these? Or is it that we have failed to do our duty
according to our religion?
30. Our only reaction is to become more and more angry.
Angry people cannot think properly. And so we find some
of our people reacting irrationally. They launch their
own attacks, killing just about anybody including fellow
Muslims to vent their anger and frustration. Their
Governments can do nothing to stop them. The enemy
retaliates and puts more pressure on the Governments.
And the Governments have no choice but to give in, to
accept the directions of the enemy, literally to give up
their independence of action.
31. With this their people and the ummah become angrier
and turn against their own Governments. Every attempt at
a peaceful solution is sabotaged by more indiscriminate
attacks calculated to anger the enemy and prevent any
peaceful settlement. But the attacks solve nothing. The
Muslims simply get more oppressed.
32. There is a feeling of hopelessness among the Muslim
countries and their people. They feel that they can do
nothing right. They believe that things can only get
worse. The Muslims will forever be oppressed and
dominated by the Europeans and the Jews. They will
forever be poor, backward and weak. Some believe, as I
have said, this is the Will of Allah, that the proper
state of the Muslims is to be poor and oppressed in this
world.
33. But is it true that we should do and can do nothing
for ourselves? Is it true that 1.3 billion people can
exert no power to save themselves from the humiliation
and oppression inflicted upon them by a much smaller
enemy? Can they only lash back blindly in anger? Is
there no other way than to ask our young people to blow
themselves up and kill people and invite the massacre of
more of our own people?
34. It cannot be that there is no other way. 1.3 billion
Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews. There
must be a way. And we can only find a way if we stop to
think, to assess our weaknesses and our strength, to
plan, to strategise and then to counter attack. As
Muslims we must seek guidance from the Al-Quran and the
Sunnah of the Prophet. Surely the 23 years' struggle of
the Prophet can provide us with some guidance as to what
we can and should do.
35. We know he and his early followers were oppressed by
the Qhuraish. Did he launch retaliatory strikes? No. He
was prepared to make strategic retreats. He sent his
early followers to a Christian country and he himself
later migrated to Madinah. There he gathered followers,
built up his defence capability and ensured the security
of his people. At Hudaibiyah he was prepared to accept
an unfair treaty, against the wishes of his companions
and followers. During the peace that followed he
consolidated his strength and eventually he was able to
enter Mecca and claim it for Islam. Even then he did not
seek revenge. And the peoples of Mecca accepted Islam
and many became his most powerful supporters, defending
the Muslims against all their enemies.
36. That briefly is the story of the struggle of the
Prophet. We talk so much about following the sunnah of
the Prophet. We quote the instances and the traditions
profusely. But we actually ignore all of them.
37. If we use the faculty to think that Allah has given
us then we should know that we are acting irrationally.
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.
38. It is surety time that we pause to think. But will
this be wasting time? For well over half a century we
have fought over Palestine. 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
that can win us final victory. Pausing and thinking
calmly is not a waste of time. We have a need to make a
strategic retreat and to calmly assess our situation.
39. We are actually very strong. 1.3 billion people
cannot be simply wiped out. The Europeans killed 6
million Jews out of 12 million. But today the Jews rule
this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die
for them.
40. We may not be able to do that. We may not be able to
unite all the 1.3 billion Muslims. We may not be able to
get all the Muslim Governments to act in concert. But
even if we can get a third of the ummah and a third of
the Muslim states to act together, we can already do
something. Remember that the Prophet did not have many
followers when he went to Madinah. But he united the
Ansars and the Muhajirins and eventually he became
strong enough to defend Islam.
41. Apart from the partial unity that we need, we must
take stock of our assets. I have already mentioned our
numbers and our oil wealth. In today's world we wield a
lot of political, economic and financial clout, enough
to make up for our weakness in military terms.
42. We also know that not all non-Muslims are against
us. Some are welldisposed towards us. Some even see our
enemies as their enemies. Even among the Jews there are
many who do not approve of what the Israelis are doing.
43. We must not antagonise everyone. We must win their
hearts and minds. We must win them to our side not by
begging for help from them but by the honourable way
that we struggle to help ourselves. We must not
strengthen the enemy by pushing everyone into their
camps through irresponsible and unIslamic acts. Remember
Salah El Din and the way he fought against the so called
Crusaders, King Richard of England in particular.
Remember the considerateness of the Prophet to the
enemies of Islam. We must do the same. It is winning the
struggle that is important, not angry retaliation, not
revenge.
44. We must build up our strength in every field, not
just in armed might. Our countries must be stable and
well administered, must be economically and financially
strong, industrially competent and technologically
advanced. This will take time, but it can be done and it
will be time well spent. We are enjoined by our religion
to be patient. Innallahamaasabirin. Obviously there is
virtue in being patient.
45. But the defence of the ummah, the counter attack
need not start only after we have put our houses in
order. Even today we have sufficient assets to deploy
against our detractors. It remains for us to identify
them and to work out how to make use of them to stop the
carnage caused by the enemy. This is entirely possible
if we stop to think, to plan, to strategise and to take
the first few critical steps. Even these few steps can
yield positive results.
46. We know that the Jahilliah Arabs were given to
feuding, to killing each other simply because they were
from different tribes. The Prophet preached the
brotherhood of Islam to them and they were able to
overcome their hatred for each other, become united and
helped towards the establishment of the great Muslim
civilisation. Can we say that what the Jahilliah (the
ignorant) could do we, the modern Muslims cannot do? If
not all at least some of us can do. If not the
renaissance of our great civilisation, at least ensuring
the security of the ummah.
47. To do the things that are suggested will not even
require all of us to give up our differences with each
other. We need only to call a truce so we can act
together in tackling only certain problems of common
interests, the Palestine problem for example.
48. In any struggle, in any war, nothing is more
important than concerted and coordinated action. A
degree of discipline is all that is needed. The Prophet
lost in Jabal Uhud because his forces broke rank. We
know that, yet we are unwilling to discipline ourselves
and to give up our irregular and uncoordinated actions.
We need to be brave but not foolhardy. We need to think
not just of our reward in the afterlife but also of the
worldly results of our mission.
49. The Quran tells us that when the enemy sues for
peace we must react positively. True the treaty offered
is not favourable to us. But we can negotiate. The
Prophet did, at Hudaibiyah. And in the end he triumphed.
50. I am aware that all these ideas will not be popular.
Those who are angry would want to reject it out of hand.
They would even want to silence anyone who makes or
supports this line of action. They would want to send
more young men and women to make the supreme sacrifice.
But where will all these lead to? Certainly not victory.
Over the past 50 years of fighting in Palestine we have
not achieved any result. We have in fact worsened our
situation.
51. The enemy will probably welcome these proposals and
we will conclude that the promoters are working for the
enemy. But think. We are up against a people who think.
They survived 2000 years of pogroms not by hitting back,
but by thinking. They invented and successfully promoted
Socialism, Communism, human rights and democracy so that
persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so they may
enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have now
gained control of the most powerful countries and they,
this tiny community, have become a world power. We
cannot fight them through brawn alone. We must use our
brains also.
52. Of late because of their power and their apparent
success they have become arrogant. And arrogant people,
like angry people will make mistakes, will forget to
think.
53. They are already beginning to make mistakes. And
they will make more mistakes. There may be windows of
opportunity for us now and in the future. We must seize
these opportunities.
54. But to do so we must get our acts right. Rhetoric is
good. It helps us to expose the wrongs perpetrated
against us, perhaps win us some sympathy and support. It
may strengthen our spirit, our will and resolve, to face
the enemy.
55. We can and we should pray to Allah S.W.T. for in the
end it is He who will determine whether we succeed or
fail. We need His blessings and His help in our
endeavours,
56. But it is how we act and what we do which will
determine whether He would help us and give us victory
or not. He has already said so in the Quran. Again Surah
Ar-Ra'd verse 11.
57. As I said at the beginning, the whole world is
looking at us, the whole Muslim ummah is placing their
hopes in this conference of the leaders of Islamic
nations. They expect us not just to vent our
frustrations and anger, through words and gestures; not
just to pray for Allah's blessings. They expect us to do
something, to act. We cannot say we cannot do anything,
we the leaders of the Muslim nations. We cannot say we
cannot unite even when faced with the destruction of our
religion and the ummah.
58. We know we can. There are many things that we can
do. There are many resources that we have at our
disposal. What is needed is merely-the will to do it, As
Muslims, we must be grateful for the guidance of our
religion, we must do what needs to be done, willingly
and with determination. Allah has not raised us, the
leaders, above the others so we may enjoy power for
ourselves only. The power we wield is for our people,
for the ummah, for Islam. We must have the will to make
use of this power judiciously, prudently, concertedly.
Insyaallah we will triumph in the end.
59. I pray to Allah that this 10th Conference of the OIC
in Putrajaya, Malaysia will give a new and positive
direction to us, will be blessed with success by Him,
Almighty Allah, Arahman, Arahirn.
Sumber : Pejabat Perdana Menteri
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