 Muslim nations have the responsibility to correct the world's negative perception of Islam, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said yesterday.
| They could do that by catching the Bad Guyz and immediately killing them. |
Abdullah said since the September 11, 2001 attack in the United States, Muslims have been wrongly portrayed as violent and intolerant.
| It hasn't been Lutherans who've been chopping people's heads off. It hasn't been Episcopalians shooting up other people's churches. |
"We Muslims are still unable to break free from this profiling. The profiling must stop. It does grave injustice to a noble religion whose very name means peace," Abdullah told some 50 delegates from 15 member countries of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
| Actually, that refers to the peace of submission. Perhaps it's time for Moose limbs to start differentiating between themselves and wahhabis? |
The scholars and diplomats are attending the three-day meeting of the OIC Commission of Eminent Persons in Malaysia's administrative capital of Putrajaya.
| They have these conferences regularly. As far as I can see, nothing's ever actually happened as a result of them... |
Abdullah, who chairs the 57-member OIC, said one way to correct this misconception was to bridge the gap between the Muslim and western civilisations, and this could be done when Islamic countries begin practising moderation in their religion. "We need to close the great divide that has been created between the Muslim world and the West," he said.
| 'Tain't gonna happen until somebody works up the nerve to nail 95 Theses to the door of the Great Mosque in Mecca, and somebody else has the nerve to stop the rest of the Islamic world from cutting his head off... |
"In embarking on this crucial mission, we must guard against extreme motivations or extremist elements. It is our duty to demonstrate, by word and by action, that a Muslim country can be modern, democratic, tolerant and economically competitive," he was quoted as saying by the official Bernama agency. Abdullah said many parts of the Islamic world are in 'deep crisis'.
| I suppose that's an adequate synonym for "cesspools of self-induced ignorance and poverty." |
"There are many challenges that we need to overcome. In many parts of our world, we are in deep crisis," Abdullah said. "The OIC landscape is a distressing one. Darfur is a humanitarian disaster, two of us are occupied — Iraq completely and Palestine partially," said Abdullah. "Some of the OIC countries are rich and their people affluent.
| For the most part, only the ones with lots of oil. |
"But they are too few and far between. The OIC landscape is littered with nations that are poor and people that are hungry. They are largely at the mercy of developed nations and of forces beyond their control."
| There's the error in his reasoning. They're largely at the mercy of their holy men and forces of their own making. Had those forces not been in existence 150 or 200 years ago there would have been no colonialism. It would have been impossible. |
Nearly 50 scholars and diplomats from Burkina Faso, Egypt, Iran, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Morocco, Nigeria, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sudan, Turkey, and Yemen are attending the three-day meeting of the OIC Commission of Eminent Persons in Malaysia's administrative capital Putrajaya. The meeting in Malaysia is expected to discuss challenges facing Muslims in the 21st century and reforms to the OIC. Its recommendations will be submitted to the OIC foreign ministers' meeting in Yemen later this year. |