Malaysian Official Urges Ending 'Islamophobia'

(Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar spoke at a seminar on Islam and international politics and stated that the image of Islam has been hurt by association with terrorists. Consequently, he wants the West to try harder to "curb misconceptions" and learn more about Islam.

"It is imperative that the phenomenon now widely known as 'Islamophobia' is stopped dead in its tracks," Syed Hamid said. "In this regard, more inter-civilisational dialogues should be organised to foster deeper understanding and bridge the gap."

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"The negative profiling of Islam needs to be changed," he said. "Islam and Muslims must not be viewed with suspicion or as an enemy of the West. It is a religion of peace and justice."

Unfortunately, probably at the very same time that the Foreign Minister was spewing political pearls of heart-felt Kumbaya-ism, his "peace and justice" buddies in al-Qaeda detonated eight car bombs in Iraq, killing dozens.

Nevertheless, it's not that the West needs to learn about Islam because it wouldn't make a difference. Learning about Islam won't stop the explosions nor the corpses. Muslims need to start pointing the finger at themselves and recognize that their religion of peace and justice has been hijacked by extremists. Islam has become the religion of murder and suicide. That's not a perception problem, that's a fact.

On a different note, the Foreign Minister mentioned that the Muslim world has many fatwas, religious edicts, being issued by many sources and that there is no regulation nor consistency in interpretation. His concern is that a fatwa-palooza situation of differing interpretations makes Muslims vulnerable to outside propaganda. As a remedy, Hamid recommends the adoption of a "common fatwa." In my opinion, the problem is that anyone within the hierarchy of Islam can issue a fatwa and, with so many people dictating policy, there is no unique and singular message. The result is confusion.

One final note - the Foreign Minister cites the need for "more inter-civilisational dialogues." In this regard, he apparently believes that Muslims are much more than culturally different from the rest of the world. Forget culture, Islam is a different civilization.