Malaysia's Former Prime Minister Again Stokes the Islamists' Fire

By Andrew Cochran

Last month, I wrote on the importance to global security of then-pending elections in Malaysia, followed afterwards by Zachary Abuza's analysis of the gains by Islamists. The ruling coalition, led by Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, has tenuously remained in power, and earlier this month demonstrated its commitment to counter-terrorism efforts by handing over two alleged members of Jemaah Islamiyah to Indonesia, as reported here by Kenneth Conboy. Badawi's predecessor, former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, is now pushing for Allawi to step down. Mahathir Mohamad was a polarizing figure during his 22 years in power, demonstrating an unsettling tendency to accept the standard lingo of Islamists in describing American and Israeli foreign policy while defending Yasser Arafat. In 2002, he remarked, "unfortunately, the U.S. has supported the action by the Israeli government, which also amounts to terrorism.'' It is precisely this demand of Arab states to define "terrorism" so as to include Israeli's defensive actions that has led to inaction by the United Nations.

Last week, in a BBC interview, Mohamad demonstrated he hasn't changed his anti-democratic and anti-Israeli views, affirming statements he made before leaving office. For instance, in June 2003, he said, "Anglo-Saxon Europeans essentially are proponents of war, sodomy, and genocide," and in October 2003, he said that "the fact is that the United States obeys what Israel wants it to do." In the new BBC interview, he predicted that the West would "wake up and forget about democracy." Like the Saudi ruling family, Mohamad was apparently tough on Islamic militants within his own country during his tenure and still publicly decries terrorism, but is clearly sympathetic to the Islamists and jihadists who seek to bury Israel and Western ideals under the weight of sharia. Let's hope his days as an influential force in Malaysia are still behind him.

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