KUALA LUMPUR, 28 August 2004 — The world is failing to win the war on terrorism and anti-Islamic bias by some countries could lead to a clash of civilizations, Malaysia warned yesterday as it launched a regional anti-terrorism center.
Despite military action and tightened security, acts of terrorism had increased since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar told foreign diplomats.
At the same time “there is a widespread perception that terrorism is equated with Islam,” he said at the formal opening of the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Counter-Terrorism.
“Malaysia is concerned that the actions taken by some countries such as profiling by religion or ethnicity heightens the possibility of a world polarized along religious and ethnic lines.”
These actions “would only lead to unfolding a clash of civilizations, providing avenues for extremist elements to propagate further unrest and violence,” Syed Hamid said.
The world must tackle “the environment that breeds terrorism — such as foreign occupation, injustices, exclusion, poverty and economic disparity” while “winning the hearts and minds of the terrorists and their sympathizers,” he said.
The anti-terrorism training center was initially proposed by US President George W. Bush in a meeting with then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, but Malaysia rejected a proposal that Washington help fund it.
The move was attributed to political sensitivities in this mainly-Muslim country that strongly opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq.
The government has made it clear, however, that it welcomes US collaboration and input for the center, which is designed to bolster the defenses of the 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
The center has already held several training programs, with the focus on capacity-building, skills development and exchange of information to fight terrorism in the region, where the main threat comes from the Al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) network.
Meanwhile, Malaysia’s Islamic opposition party said yesterday it would not drop its goal of turning the multifaith country into a strict Islamic state despite crushing defeat in general elections in March.
In his first major speech since the polls, Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS) chief Abdul Hadi Awang also criticized the United States for trying to cripple Islam’s rise and seize control of oil reserves in its war on terror.
Opening his party’s annual meeting, Hadi said PAS still aimed to turn Malaysia into an Islamic state governed by literal interpretations of laws written centuries ago when the religion began. “The principles and basis of PAS is Islam and that will not change,” Hadi said in the party’s stronghold of northern Kelantan state.
In the March elections, the conservative Islamic party, formerly the main opposition force, was wiped out in one of the two states it controlled and came within a whisker of losing the other.
The election was won by the long-ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and its coalition partners who run a secular government. Islam is Malaysia’s state religion.
“We will not change according to the tide unlike the Barisan Nasional,” the 56-year-old cleric said, referring to Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s coalition. “We hold fast to what we have said to the people. Our struggle has not failed. Our struggle has not ended,” Hadi said.
PAS and UMNO compete for votes of the country’s Muslim ethnic Malays who make up just over half of the population of 25 million. The country also has ethnic Chinese and Indian minorities, most of whom follow other faiths.
PAS has traditionally drawn its support from rural Malays but it fared badly in the March polls as Muslim voters abandoned it for Abdullah’s brand of moderate Islam.
The arrests of some PAS members for suspected militancy also hurt PAS.
