Malaysian PM Doubts Out Loud That Osama Blew Up Towers Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit AP via Times of India - 5 December 2001 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_ID=1951708056 Malaysian PM unsure Osama behind Sept. 11 attacks KUALA LUMPUR: Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad says he's uncertain that Osama Bin Laden was behind the September 11 terror attacks in the United States, but blames him for inspiring extremists in Malaysia opposed to his government. Mahathir, in an interview with the current edition of the French magazine L'Expansion, said that simply regarding terrorists as madmen will not solve a problem he feels is rooted in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a sense of oppression among Muslims. The United States has accused Bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi radical, of masterminding the September 11 attacks, when hijackers - most of them Saudis - crashed jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing thousands. "I don't take it as a fact that these terrorists were the messengers of Osama," Mahathir was quoted as saying. "I don't dispute that he is the head of a group of terrorists," Mahathir said. "Some them had even trained Malaysians hoping to see that they would go back to our country and topple my government. So, I don't have any particular affection for Osama." Malaysia jailed 10 leaders of a radical group in August that was accused of wanting to install a hardline Islamic state. The Southeast Asian nation of 23 million people is one of the world's most economically advanced Muslim countries. Mahathir, Asia's longest-serving leader, condemned the September 11 attacks but has opposed the war in Afghanistan, saying the main victims are innocents and that the fighting will not eradicate the roots of terrorism. "Out of 1 billion Muslims, there are certainly a handful of extremists ready to kill themselves in the hope of aiding the struggle against the terrorism that they are subjected to - because, in the eyes of Muslims, attacks by Jews also constitute an act of terror, state terror," Mahathir was quoted as saying. "Talking about Palestine, no one in the West talks about ewish terrorism' the way they talk about uslim terrorists,"' Mahathir said. "And when Timothy McVeigh blew up a building in Oklahoma City, the first American reaction was to say: uslim terrorism!" One of the hijackers of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon, Khalid al-Midhar, has been identified as taking part in a meeting in Kuala Lumpur during a stopover in January 2000. At the time, no one suspected him of having any terror links. Mahathir said that he was not "make any sense" to conclude that Malaysia was harbouring terrorists. "Nobody suspects the Swiss government of colluding with terrorists," Mahathir was quoted as saying. "But some of the September 11 terrorists also stopped over in Switzerland."( AP ) * AP Via Times of India - 5 December 2001 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_ID=616970510 Book titled "Malaysia is an Islamic Country" banned KUALA LUMPUR: Fearing it may offend non-Muslims, the government has withdrawn a booklet titled Malaysia is an Islamic Country which has a picture of a jet liner on the cover, reports said on Wednesday. "The book will not be distributed again," Information Minister Khalid Yunus was quoted as saying by The Star newspaper. "It was published with the intention to give a general explanation on the Islamic country concept to Muslims," he was quoted as telling Parliament. "It was not meant to offend non-Muslims." Khalid said the 25-page booklet, published by the Information Ministry, came out three months before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, in which suspected Islamic extremists crashed passenger jets into buildings, killing thousands of people. It was not clear why a passenger plane was featured on the booklet's cover, and Khalid did not say that the cover was the reason for its withdrawal. The Democratic Action Party, an ethnic-Chinese based opposition group, had earlier urged the government to withdraw the booklet, not because of the cover but because of the contents, which it said were "insensitive and offensive" to non-Muslims. Party leaders said the booklet made disturbing references to non-Muslims as infidels and unbelievers, and that establishing an Islamic state in Malaysia was a government aim. Malaysia is a prosperous, moderate country in Southeast Asia where Islam is the official religion but secular laws are widely applied even to Muslims. Religious freedom is guaranteed by Malaysia's the constitution, which came into force when independence from former colonial power Britain was granted in 1957. But Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad worried many people in Malaysia's large ethnic Chinese and Indian communities when he said recently that Malaysia is already an Islamic state. The statement was widely perceived as a bid to win back support for Mahathir's party among the more than 60 per cent of the population who are Malay Muslims. Malays have deserted Mahathir's party in recent years in favor of a fundamentalist Islamic party which says it wants to make Malaysia an Islamic state. Ethnic Chinese and Indians are nervous that their civil and religious rights may be curtailed if formal Islamic rule in introduced in Malaysia. Mahathir told ethnic Chinese leaders that nothing changed because of his statement, but that he wanted to force the fundamentalist opposition into defining what it means by calling for an Islamic state.( AP ) [In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information see: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytas-12.06.01-01:51:20-31476