Malaysia Wants
Stereotyping Of Terrorism With Islam
To Stop

By Mohd Nasir Yusoff
[bernama.com]

JAKARTA, March 5 (Bernama) -- Malaysia wants the inclination of the West and their media to stereotype terrorism with Islam to stop and be eliminated immediately to prevent a jaundiced perception by the world of the majority of Muslims who have never supported terrorism.

Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar said the use of terms by Western leaders and media such as "Islamic terrorists", "Islamic extremists" and "establishing an Islamic caliphate" hurt the feelings of peace-loving Muslims.

"Similarly `Islamic jihadists', which in Islam gives a very good and positive connotation of a struggle for good or positive purpose, has been misused and misinterpreted," he told a press conference at the end of the first day of the Sub-Regional Ministerial Conference on Efforts Against Terrorism here today.

In explaining Malaysia's views on anti-terrorism efforts at the conference, attended by ministers from six countries in the region, he said Malaysia wanted the negative terms and perception not to be linked to all Muslims.

"Stereoptyping makes Muslims, particularly in the Middle East, to feel that they are being collectively penalised when in fact they practise the true Islamic teaching that never encourages terrorism," he said.

Syed Hamid said Malaysia's views were welcomed by foreign ministers who were there, including Alexander Downer of Australia, which jointly hosted the two-day conference with Indonesia. The conference was a follow-up to a similar conference in Bali in February 2004.

On the level of cooperation between the six participating countries, namely Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore, in dealing with terrorism so far, Syed Hamid said the ties were very good especially in terms of the exchange of intelligence information which enabled the preliminary steps to be taken.

"The cooperation between the police and security forces of the countries and also other Asean countries was generally very good," he said and added that the conference also discussed ways to deal with the new mass media that used Internet to spread terrorism ideology.

On the bilateral meeting with Downer, Syed Hamid said they also discussed peaceful resolution of issues in the Middle East, the United States' stance in efforts against terrorism besides agreeing that the Malaysia-Australia cooperation in various fields had been getting better.

Syed Hamid also held a bilateral meeting with Singapore's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Dr Balaji Sadasivan.

- BERNAMA March 05, 2007