EDITORIAL: AT WAR: The Moderate from Malaysia.(Prime Minister Mohamad Mahathir)(Editorial)

The prime minister of Malaysia, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, is an international superstar -- a toast of the Davos forum, a darling of Western correspondents and analysts. He is thought to be the Great Muslim Moderate, and in certain respects he is -- which can be most disheartening. Think of his famed political prisoner, Anwar Ibrahim, the former deputy prime minister. Ibrahim has become a rallying point for anti-Mahathir opposition; the prisoner's wife, Dr. Wan Azizah Ismail, has proven a tireless and graceful campaigner for his freedom - - a descendant, in a way, of Avital Shcharansky, or Yelena Bonner.

Mahathir is ending his rule, after 22 years. But he has gone out with a bang, delivering the keynote address at the recent Organization of the Islamic Conference powwow, held in his country. At the beginning of his speech, he welcomed non-Muslim "observers at this meeting," saying their "presence . . . will help towards greater understanding of Islam and the Muslims." Perhaps it did -- but perhaps not in the way Mahathir intended.

The prime minister delivered an almost perfect example of what has long ailed the Muslim world; it was as though he had set out to confirm the writings of Bernard Lewis and our own David Pryce-Jones. First and foremost, there was the presentation of Muslims as perpetual victims, oppressed by forces possibly not seen, but certainly non-Muslim, and almost certainly Jewish and Western. "We are all Muslims. We are all oppressed. We are all being humiliated." The "enemy" will "attack and kill us, invade our lands, bring down our governments," etc., etc.

The speaker then went into history, sounding, for a moment, actually very much like Professor Lewis: "At the time the Europeans of the Middle Ages were still superstitious and backward, the enlightened Muslims had already built a great Muslim civilization, respected and powerful." Why, "the Europeans had to kneel at the feet of Muslim scholars."

But then The Turn took place, and, "intellectually, the Muslims began to regress." The West wrapped its tentacles around the Islamic world, and "apart from the new nation-states, we also accepted the Western democratic system" -- a calamity. (If only it were true -- that the Muslim world had been forced to accept the "Western democratic system.")

About mid-speech, Mahathir delivered his strongest ...