Malaysia is an aberration ... it is a Third World country but it is not under-developed or impoverished. It is an Islamic country but it is liberal, peaceful and promotes multi-culturalism. Malaysia is a Muslim country that is politically stable and economically successful.

Despite these aberrations, a very senior journalist who writes front-page articles for an established New York-based daily saw fit to make this statement: How did you build this (referring to the Petronas Twin Towers) praying five times a day.

What can we say - this is hypocrisy unmasked and an example of western civility. Coming from a journalist, this statement is all the more inexcusable.

The remark was made to Khairy Jamalluddin, secretary of the Umno Youth Education Bureau, during the journalists visit to the country recently. Khairy made this known to an audience at a forum titled The Myth of an Islamic Threat: A New Global Campaign Against Islam held on Feb 21. Jointly organised by Persatuan Graduan Muda Malaysia and Persatuan Pemuda Negara Malaysia, the talk was held at the Nanyang Siang Pau office in Petaling Jaya.

The forum was held in the wake of a series articles in international news magazines implicating Malaysia in the Sept 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

Inggeris pasar

And interestingly, one of the speakers, Dr Farish A Noor (a wanted man as the forum chairman kept repeating) revealed that prior to the Newsweek article accusing Malaysia of being used as a launchpad for the Sept 11 attacks, another article had appeared in a French publication le nouvel Observateur posing the question of Malaysia possibly being the next Afghanistan.

The audience didnt react with aghast to this revelation, neither were there murmurs of disapproval. This non-reaction seems to say, Oh well, this is another day for Islam, Muslim and Malaysia bashing. So what else is new?.

But Farish said that given the circumstances, Muslims have every right to show their pain and anger.

However, he advised that this feeling of isolation and disappointment should be communicated intelligently without alienating people.

Perhaps, intelligence is asking for too much from the lot of graduan gathered at the forum, for none of whom (who spoke) could string together a single grammatically correct sentence in English.

(The writer admits digressing, but makes no apology for it. Their Inggeris pasar is an embarrassment to the universities they claim to come from.)

And perhaps this is why the writer saw more in the young Khairy (who is also, by the way, the deputy prime ministers son-in-law) more than what was deserving.

For starters, he didnt have a accent, and he spoke well. And given his connections and credentials, and the lack of competition, Malaysians may see a lot more of him from now on.

Threat to world order

Is Islam in any way a threat to world order? If it is, to what and to whom is it a threat? This was the gist of Farishs talk on Thursday.

Farish contends that there is a concerted effort to depict Islam and Muslims in a certain light; Islam as being a threat is a fiction deliberately created by the American media..

Even Hollywood is in on the campaign. Black Hawk Down was released early to capture the mood of patriotism in the US, he said.

Islam is being accorded the same treatment as was once accorded to the Communist bloc. Today, Islam is being portrayed as the new ideological enemy. But, said Farish, unlike the former USSR, there is not a single Muslim country that is able to take on the economic and military might of the US.

Why, and how then, is the Islamic world a threat to the Western world?

The relationship between the Islamic and the Western worlds goes back many centuries. The two have been neighbours for eons.

But still the West so frequently equates Islam with all that is wrong, fanatical, savage and extreme whereas itself is touted as civilised and liberalised.

Power cleavage

The relationship between Islam and the West has always been problematic. North America and parts of Europe are anti-Islam and refuse to see through the blinkers of prejudice, said Farish.

The problem is really one of economic difference. There is a power cleavage between the Islamic world and the West.

Most Islamic countries today except perhaps for Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan, were once colonised by the West. Afghanistan is now defeated and the country has been brought to its knees, by the West.

Every other Islamic country is economically dependent on the West, for example Indonesia which has lost a huge chunk of its foreign investors when US businesses pulled out. Most Third World countries are Muslim, said Farish, and it is impossible that the West does not see this.

The Islamic world has never been as weak as it is now, he added. Muslims should not simply sit and watch while visa bans are imposed on them. Nobody spoke up against this, said Farish, It is pathetic. It is a shame.

The real problem is global hegemony - political, economic and military hegemony by the Western world, he said.

A confused religion?

The master-of-ceremony, at the start of this forum, made a boo-boo is his opening remark: He said that Islam was a confused religion. The chairman of the forum made the same boo-boo prompting the speaker Dr Mohd Hatta Ramli to say, Islam is not a confused religion. People confuse us.

Perhaps Hatta was not much help there. The organiser, the writers supposes, meant that Islam was a misunderstood religion. Yes, these are the graduan Malaysia.

Hatta attributed the turmoil surrounding the Islamic world as being caused by Islams attempt at upstaging the status quo or current political system. There is competition between Islamic parties and non-Islamic parties, he said in reference to the PAS-Umno tug-of-war. Thats why Islam is seen as a threat, he said.

He suggested that the West is afraid as Islamic countries are rich with petroleum. The West wants to monopolise this oil. And until they get it, they will feel threatened.

For the West to control the world, it has to pick a fight with Muslim countries which are united under Islam. Islamic countries are a threat to Western hegemony. Hence, the Islamic terrorist bogeyman.

The competition is less ideological than it is economical, pointed out Hatta.

It is ironic that nobody refers to the IRA (Irish Republican Army) as Catholic terrorists, or the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) as Hindu terrorists, he said.

The Sept 11 attacks has legitimised action against Islam, warned Hatta.

But Islam is a religion of peace. The problem lies is how to communicate this message to the rest of the world, he concluded.

Popular viewpoint

Back to Khairy. I come representing the biggest Islamic party in Malaysia, Umno, the party that liberated Malaysia from the British, declared this new kid on the block.

Before going to the topic of the forum, Khairy castigated Hatta with this statement: PAS may be a threat (to Umno) in Kelantan and Terengganu, and on a good day in Kedah. Not more. (All this coming from a green-horn politician who left school - St. Huges College, University of Oxford - in 1997, and active in politics for less than five years. An upstart? Perhaps.)

Khairy said that Islam had been vilified by the West. The general perception is that Islam is a problem And this myth has long existed. There is a tendency to view Islam as a monolith without appreciating its diversity. There is a continued portrayal of Islam as intellectually inferior. And due to this there is a lack of empathy to the plight of the Islamic world, he said.

The West has failed to see the growth of Islam with ... Western historiography littered with the Crusades, Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein.

There is no mention of the Malaysian Islamic model, said Khairy peddling the Umno Islamic ideology of Islam in moderation.

He added the West prefers seeing Islam as a threat because that viewpoint is popular. And in turn, the Muslims views the west as a monolith.

The negative publicity of Islam over the centuries feeds into the modern day perception of the religion. And it is this that has lead to modern Malaysia being accused of harbouring (Al-Qaeda) terrorists.

There are many poor Muslim countries. And leaving these nations poor creates a gap in civilisation. These Muslim countries are unable to fulfill the aspirations of their people. With no money, no food and no education, these countries become the perfect recruiting ground for terrorists.

The schism between the Islamic world and the West has existed for 15 centuries. Little has been done to rectify it. And we are here because of Sept 11, not because of the impoverished conditions in the Islamic world, said Khairy.

Malaysian example

In a further promotion of the Umno-led government, Khairy said that Malaysia should be a showcase of an exemplary Islamic country. Malaysia has a real chance to show that Muslims dont have to view the West as a force that they need to threaten, he said.

Muslims around the world must rethink the juxtaposition of us (Muslims) and them (the West), he concluded.