Paul Krugman (NYT): Listening to Mahathir

[Dudley_DUright]

The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million. But today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them." So said Mahathir Mohamad, the prime minister of Malaysia, at an Islamic summit meeting last week. The White House promptly denounced his "hate-filled remarks."

Indeed, those remarks were inexcusable. But they were also calculated — for Mr. Mahathir is a cagey politician, who is neither ignorant nor foolish. And to understand why he made those remarks is to realize how badly things are going for U.S. foreign policy.

The fact is that Mr. Mahathir, though guilty of serious abuses of power, is in many ways about as forward-looking a Muslim leader as we're likely to find. And Malaysia is the kind of success story we wish we saw more of: an impressive record of economic growth, rising education levels and general modernization in a nation with a Muslim majority.

It's worth reading the rest of last week's speech, beyond the offensive 28 words. Most of it is criticism directed at other Muslims, clerics in particular. Mr. Mahathir castigates "interpreters of Islam who taught that acquisition of knowledge by Muslims meant only the study of Islamic theology." Thanks to these interpreters, "the study of science, medicine, etc. was discouraged. Intellectually the Muslims began to regress." A lot of the speech sounds as if it had been written by Bernard Lewis, author of "What Went Wrong," the best-selling book about the Islamic decline.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/21/opinion/21KRUG.html

[Monte Carlo]

1. Interesting points; Wait for the 'anti-Semite' labels to come.

For Krugman has dared interpret and explore the reasons why Mahathir has said what he said, and it might not be pure bigotry. Calling Mr. Donald Lushkin...

It is the sign of the intellectual that one can divine observations about something from it's tell-tales. When mainstream politicians resort to crude bigotry in their speeches, there is something else, larger, that has alread gone wrong.

[wellst0nev0ter]

2. Fact: Anyone Who Criticizes Krugman Is An Anti-Semite

Just "elevating" the level of discourse here. . .

[bemildred]

3. Nice piece.

It seems rather obvious that Mr. M did not say those things
by accident, and I suspect, as he keeps repeating them when
asked to, that they are serving his purposes well.