PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia, 28 January 2005 — Washington has earned some credit among Muslims for its aid to victims of the Asian tsunamis but must change its foreign policy to counter the perception that it is anti-Islam, the leader of the world’s biggest Islamic group said yesterday.
Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who heads the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference, told AFP in an interview that US actions were not always consistent with its insistence that it does not target Muslims.
“If you are talking about relationships with the Muslim countries it is not just providing aid in the way they have provided it now — which is very good, I’m not suggesting it is not good — but there has to be more than that,” Abdullah said.
“The whole foreign policy stance has to be corrected.”
President George W. Bush and incoming Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have made it clear they believe US aid for victims of the Dec. 26 tsunamis which killed more than 280,000 people — most of them Muslims — would ease the widespread dislike of the US in the Islamic world.
“I think in a way it will help,” Abdullah said in his office in this new administrative capital. “But they have to do something more on a permanent basis, not just on these particular occasions.
“I think the whole stance of the policy of the US toward Muslims —- there is something that could be construed as negative profiling. President Bush says he is not anti-Islam or anti-Muslim. But his policy toward some countries, which are Muslim countries, OIC countries, can be interpreted as an example of not being consistent with the policy of not being anti-Islam and not anti-Muslim.”
Abdullah, whose country strongly opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq, criticized Washington for now threatening possible military action against Iran.
Earlier opening an OIC meeting of scholars and diplomats, Abdullah said many parts of the Islamic world are in “deep crisis” with Muslims suffering more from militancy and terrorism than others.
“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. 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.”
The meeting is expected to discuss reforms to the OIC. Its recommendations will be submitted to the OIC foreign ministers’ meeting in Yemen later this year.
