I am presently living in the US after having lived in Malaysia for several years. Having worked and lived among Malaysians and hearing Dr Mahathir Mohamad's rhetoric throughout that time, I have nothing but respect for the country and its people.

Contrary to most people in the West, I do view Dr Mahathir as one of the most insightful and competent leaders in the world today. His policies internally have made Malaysia grow in leaps and bounds compared to its neighbours, and I think the country is very lucky to have him as its leader for the last 22 years.

That being said, the comments that the PM's speech at the OIC were merely misconstrued do not hide the fact that the speech was anti-Semitic. Let me not say that the Christian world (or the Jewish one) is really any better. Comments like the ones by Lt Gen William Boykin last week are completely out of step with the views of any enlightened person and give all of us a black eye.

And I will agree that the Western newspapers did group together different parts of the speech in order to make things seem even worse. However, the use of 'our enemies' and the statement that the 'Jews get others die for them' or that 'Jews run the world by proxy', even in isolation from each other, seem to me to be rather nonsensical.

Much as Syed Hamid Albar can try to clean up the mess, even the most unbiased view of the full text of Dr Mahathir's speech would yield the same conclusion. Believe me, given my fondness for Malaysia, I would like to give the benefit of the doubt.

This is why I read papers such as Utusan Malaysia and Berita Harian for the Malay text before making a judgement on the speech. However, generalisations were made about a certain ethnic group that were untrue and point to a much greater danger in the Muslim world.

There is no question that the general gist of Dr Mahathir's rhetoric was positive and he points to some excellent issues in a coherent manner that few others in the Arab world would care to articulate. But he invites criticism through many of his other comments. This is not new. In being so frank, the prime minister could easily be criticised for not being the most diplomatic of leaders. Sometimes the truth needs to be told, but it can be told without getting hateful in its language.

In fact, the "world", as Dr M. views it, is not run by Jews at all. Rather, US foreign policy is actually guided by a very inward-looking and not altogether very tolerant Christian right-wing in the US. That the US has used Israel as its key ally in the Middle East is of no surprise.

The US in particular has seen a rapid rise in the Christian right-wing in recent years as ushered in by President George W Bush and his band of merry Republicans (after all, 48 percent of all Americans actually voted these guys in). This is an unfortunate step back and plays into some of the anti-West views of Muslims.

This is not to say that Christians have an endemic hatred for Muslims. Most do not and aside from this radical right-wing, pretty much all American Christians in particular have a high degree of tolerance for people who practice Islam. Of course, that being said, there will always be outliers and this is unfortunate.

To simply generalise and say that all Christians and Jews are enemies of all Muslims is unfair. Islamic countries may have complaints about countries such as the US or Australia for any number of reasons, but to simply pin it on an easy scapegoat of 12 million people seems a tad much for a supposedly logical person like myself to stomach. Even among Christians that I know, very few see Muslims as enemies. For those that do, well, I have very little respect for them. However, the right-wing Christian lobby (much like the right-wing Muslim lobby) is a very dangerous force.

Even more interestingly, the Jews form an electoral force in only a few states in the US. These states (New York, Massachusetts, Florida and California) all voted against Bush in the last election (except for Florida and the jury is still out on that one). So even the Jewish lobby is now no stronger than the Muslim lobby in Michigan and New Jersey, the Hispanic lobby in California and Texas, or the Cuban lobby in Florida.

At the same time, Bush did win all of the "Bible Belt" states in the last elections such as Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia and Texas. These are the very states where the right-wing Christian lobby is at its strongest. As such, to say that Jews pull the strings of the president cannot logically be true. There must be other forces at work here.

As for the Jews, there are rich Jews in the US and around the world, just as there are rich Christians, rich Muslims and rich Buddhists. In countries as varied as the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and others, there is constant talk that the Chinese run the country by proxy. Poor Chinese citizens in these countries face similar discrimination when they are classified as part of a ruling class although they themselves in fact have no power. This is quite similar to the situation in which Jews in the US find themselves.

At the same time, my exposure to Islam in Malaysia and my exposure to Jewish friends in North America has led me to believe that there are so many similarities between Judaism and Islam that it is unfathomable to me that the two religions cannot live side by side. The concepts of special dietary requirements, an abhorrence of pork, similar fasting customs, similar calendars and even similar prayer customs are all just a small portion of the means through which both sides share common ties. Jews and Muslims lived peacefully over the last milennium in Spain, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, Iraq, US and Canada and even today in communities as close to Malaysia as Singapore, Indonesia and India.

In Canada, it is not uncommon to see a mosque and a synagogue built right next to each other. In the US, Muslim students routinely buy kosher meat when halal products are unavailable. So this is clearly not a religious issue and, as such, Dr Mahathir's views that Muslims and Jews are 'enemies' is incorrect. However, to say that the Arab world has a major disagreement with Israel would be far more accurate.

So although Arabic and even Malay and Indonesian do not differentiate between the Jews and Israelis in the words used in their language (Yahudi), the difference must certainly be understood. Unfortunately, in most cases, it suits Arab leaders better to simply group the two together for their own particular needs.

Contrary to popular opinion, more than ever, corporate America contributes a large portion of the funds required for election and thus carries much of the sway related to US politics, both domestic and foreign. From a financial standpoint, the truth is that hardly any of the companies based in the US and contained within the Fortune 500 are run by Jews. I did my own brief personal survey of a few major industries pointed to by many detractors of my arguments.

Out of the top seven national banks in the US, only one has a Jewish CEO or significant Jewish representation (three or more members) on its board of directors. Out of the top 10 newspapers and media corporations, three have Jewish CEOs.

Thirty percent of the largest companies hardly seems a compelling argument that Jews control the financial and media wherewithall of the US. In terms of the oil and gas industry, none of the top five have Jewish CEOs (but there are lots of friends of George Bush, just ask Ken Lay and his Enron buddies).

Automobile companies? The answer again is zero. Computer and internet companies? Again the answer is one out of the top seven (after those seven, nobody else really matters and even the one is still primarily non-Jewish). Aerospace industry? None. After a while, this whole idea of a Jewish conspiracy starts to wear a bit thin.

Of course, the Arab countries would applaud these comments as they see this scapegoating as a convenient way to deflect criticism from endemic problems within their own states. Dr Mahathir's speeches have always been insightful in spurring the Arab world in particular (to say that African and Asian Islamic countries are the same would also be a poor generalisation) to become more open, more transparent and more encouraging of new ideas.

However, just as one could easily say that Bush has used Iraq and Afghanistan to deflect criticism away from endemic problems in the US economic structure that have led to recession and jobless recovery as well as a widening of the gap between rich and poor, one could say that Arab countries use this issue to deny that they also have horrific human rights and economic development records within their own countries.

A recent report to the UN on economic and social development in the Arab world (written by Arab scholars no less), decried the records of these governments and pointed to a systematic blaming of others for the express purpose of deflecting blame from the shortcomings of their own administrations. Even the Palestinians, given considerable autonomy in the mid to late 90s, found that their government, led by Yassir Arafat, was corrupt and inept.

Have the Isrealis been clean themselves? Certainly not, and there is a wide swath of the Jewish community worldwide (and many even within Israel) that do not agree with the measures that have been taken by the Israeli government.

I would like to point out one fact to which Dr Mahathir has alluded in many of his previous speeches but chose to ignore this time around. In the last 50 years, the largest perpetrator of crimes against Muslims have been the Muslims themselves. When you think of the Palestinian conflict, you need to temper the fact that the number of Palestinians killed in the last two years in clashes with the Israelis have been about 1,700 (including those who have blown themselves up).

However, consider that in Algeria, more than 500,000 Muslims have been killed in a civil war initiated by Muslims. In Afghanistan, more than 620,000 Muslims were killed both before and during the rule of the Taliban. During the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, more than 375,000 Muslims died on the Iraqi side and 300,000 Muslims died on the Iranian side. During the first Yemen civil war, 102,000 Muslims died at the hands of their 'brothers'. Take those instances alone (this is not an exhaustive list) and you have close to two million casualties.

This ignores the number of Muslims who are living in poverty or in refugee camps as a result of the policies and war-mongering of their own governments. The Palestinian crisis is not a minor event to any extent, but when compared against the aggression of Muslims against their own people, you need to look at things relatively. These wars were not stoked by the "Jewish media" (which as evidenced by the above arguments does not really exist) but rather by Muslims fighting amongst themselves.

Dr Mahathir's message that Muslims must unite and use their brains makes a great deal of sense. But to point at Jews and others as the enemy is to dismiss the reality of the situation. Arab leaders and anti-Israel proponents may say that the Jews have a 'monopoly' on sympathy based on the events of the Holocaust. But if that is the case, the Arabs in particular then must have a monopoly of misplaced anger and resentment toward others. This anger stems from the feeling that they have been left behind somehow and dominated.

Let me close by saying this. In his own articulate way (albeit perhaps overly frank), Dr Mahathir's speech has laid out a very positive agenda for the Arab world. My only issue remains with this point: it would be a crying shame if Malaysia, with such a terrific history of balancing racial and religious differences in its own country, chose to poison the thoughts of its citizens and those of the Muslim world, with a one-sided and inaccurate view of racial, ethnic and religious differences in the rest of the world.

There is absolutely no question that the US in particular has done an atrocious job in handling its own PR with the Muslim world. Sometimes, people in America rally around this cause in a fit of nationalism. I was in Malaysia two months ago and saw everyone rally around Merdeka. But to simply rally to the call of the nation (on either side) for the purposes of creating an 'us versus them' situation is not constructive.

Somebody needs to stand up and be proactive and I just wonder whether the insertion of the Jews, even if only for domestic political consumption, was quite the most beneficial way to lay out what was otherwise a very compelling call to political and philosophical arms for the Muslim world and to challenge those American policies.