Speech by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia
to the Tenth Islamic Summit Conference
Putrajaya, Malaysia, October 16, 2003
Prime Minister Mahathir
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 ...
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.
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.
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. ...
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. ...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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? ...
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. ...
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.
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.
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.
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. ...
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.
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.
