Matathir knows best

25 October 2003

Sholto Byrnes defends the Malaysian Prime Minister against his many enemies in the West

Let’s return to his infamous speech of last week in which, you may be surprised to learn, he lamented the emergence of Muslim interpreters who discouraged the study of anything other than theology. ‘They became more and more preoccupied with minor issues such as whether tight trousers and peak caps were Islamic, whether printing machines should be allowed or electricity used to light mosques. Some believe that poverty is Islamic... [that] our weakness, our backwardness and our inability to help our brothers and sisters who are being oppressed are part of the Will of Allah.’ Not him, he says. And on relations with non-Muslims: ‘We must not antagonise everyone. We must win their hearts and minds. We must win them to our side not by begging for help but by the honourable way that we struggle to help ourselves.’ Isn’t this precisely the kind of rhetoric the West would give their oil concessions to hear in the Middle East?

‘All his policies were towards making Malaysia a pluralist, secular but Islamic state,’ says Tan Sri Abdullah Ahmad, editor-in-chief of the New Straits Times and a former Malaysian ambassador to the UN. ‘His legacy is that he gave us back the dignity that we lost and a capital to reflect the modern Malaysia.’

Yes, he has his faults, some very serious ones. But if Western critics cannot see past those flaws to recognise the merits of the Mahathir approach; if they cannot allow that there may be other models of government which, while not conforming to all the standards of Western democracy, still provide hope and an example for developing nations; if they refuse to try to understand why such countries may choose to take their own paths rather than meekly accepting those laid down by powerful democracies; and if they truly think the best way to engage with a moderate Muslim country is to demonise its leader — then it is they who are, to use a word Dr M once used of George Soros, the ‘morons’. We should cherish the likes of Dr Mahathir. The alternative is not greater democracy, but the triumph of fundamentalists who throw not insults but bombs.

Sholto Byrnes writes for the Independent.