The biggest summit of Muslim leaders in three years kicked off on Thursday with calls for the Islamic nations to unite against "a few million Jews" who control the world by influencing the world's major powers.
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said Muslims for years believed mistakenly that Islam rejected new technology and progress.
"We need guns and rockets, bombs and warplanes, tanks and warships for our defense," Mahathir told leaders from 57 states, The AP reported.
"But because we are discouraged from learning of science and mathematics ... today we have no capacity to produce our weapons for our defense," he said.
Mahathir, chairman of the two-day summit, launched a strong attack on what he described as Jewish domination of the world and Muslim nations' inability to adequately respond to it.
"The Europeans killed six 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 2000 years of pogroms not by hitting back but by thinking," Mahathir said. "They invented Socialism, Communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so that they can 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."
Mahathir said that "1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews. There must be a way."
He suggested new tactics other than lashing out violently against "the enemy," including leveraging the political, economic and demographic forces at the disposal of Islamic nations.
Meanwhile, UN Secretary-general Kofi Annan urged leaders of Islamic countries on Thursday to reject suicide bombings against Israel.
Annan described the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory as harsh, with “disproportionate military force, destruction of houses and crops, unjust expropriation and closures, illegal settlements, and a fence being built on land that does not belong to the builders.”
But he said suicide bombings damaged even the most legitimate cause and “must be condemned, and must be stopped.”
Annan's speech to the OIC leaders was read by Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN’s special envoy to Afghanistan. (Albawaba.com)
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
