The future of the Muslim world : LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 
International Herald Tribune
August 1, 2002

Mahathir is right that the Muslim world is weak, and he is to be applauded for trying to wake up his fellow believers to that sorry truth. But the venom is in the tail. Why does Mahathir regret this weakness? Because, according to him, it has made it impossible for the 1.3 billion Muslims to defeat the Jews "with just 13 million people in the whole world," and to "invent and produce weapons to instill fear in the enemy and defend ourselves."

The arithmetic and the words of Mahathir make it impossible to claim that he is targeting Israel: There are not 13 million Jews in Israel, but there are indeed 13 million Jews in the world. Mahathir might be prime minister of Malaysia, but he talks like a plain vanilla Muslim anti-Semite. Jews are used to the likes of him, but Muslims are doomed by such supposedly enlightened leaders to many more decades of obscurantism bigotry, and weakness.

Philippe Weil, Brussels

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