Next Friday, Asia's longest-serving leader, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, will step down after 22 years in power. He was not under pressure to retire. The decision was entirely his own. Dr Mahathir is known for making waves. Last week, he was at it again. Addressing the opening meeting of the Islamic Summit Conference in Putrajaya, he said that Europeans had killed six million Jews out of 12 million but 'today the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them.' This may not have been the most diplomatic way of expressing himself, but then Dr Mahathir is known for his forthrightness. He clearly thinks very highly of the Jews, even if he does consider them the enemy. He told his Muslim audience: 'We are up against a people who think. They survived 2,000 years of pogroms not by hitting back, but by thinking.' He added: 'We cannot fight them through brawn alone. We must use our brains also.' For these words, he was castigated in the United States, Europe and Australia. Since then, he has defended himself by saying that he was calling on Muslims to 'stop all this violence, all these killings, all these suicide bombings and massive retaliation'. Indeed, the thrust of his speech was that Muslims have lost their way. The early Muslims, he recalled, 'produced great mathematicians and scientists, scholars, physicians and astronomers'. By contrast, today there are Muslims who say they do not need to study anything except the Koran. His was a call, not to arms, but to pause and think, to plan, to strategise and, if necessary, to retreat. It was vintage Dr Mahathir. Interviewed in Indonesia on Thursday, he identified his greatest achievement as 'the fact we have been successful in uniting the different races that are usually confrontational towards each other. We unite them and show them to work together to develop Malaysia'. This may well be but, in the international arena, Dr Mahathir can also point to some successes, one of which is the emergence of East Asia as a force to be reckoned with. Dr Mahathir had wanted to set up an East Asia Economic Caucus in the 1990s, but was blocked by the US. At the time, Japan backed officials in Washington but today Japan, together with China and South Korea, is part of the Asean-plus-three process - exactly the same countries Dr Mahathir had wanted to form the East Asia Economic Caucus. Dr Mahathir has been described as a visionary, and he is. And yet, much of his vision is an attempt to recapture the past. He yearns not only for the glory days of Islam, when as he said: 'Europeans had to kneel at the feet of Muslim scholars.' He yearns also for a more simple age, when the US could be counted on to help the weak and to send Peace Corps volunteers to developing countries. He even yearns for the return of the gold standard, when currencies were not subject to speculative attack. It is doubtful if any of these things will ever come back, and so it is perhaps appropriate that Dr Mahathir steps down and makes way for someone who is more forward-looking. But one must never forget the past and the lessons it holds. So it is reassuring, in a way, that the good doctor says that, even after leaving the cabinet, he will 'still be a party member, and if my advice is sought, I will give it'. Given these uncertain times, it is more than likely that his advice will be sought for a long time to come. Frank Ching is a Hong Kong-based journalist and commentator frankching1@aol.com
