The OIC Summit

Al-Jazeera has a story up about Malaysian Prime Minister Muhammad Mahathir's recent speech noted in the American media for its anti-Semitism. The story inspires two separate thoughts. One is that al-Jazeera lists all his anti-Semitic remarks without comment, but then moves to: "However, Mahathir controversially appeared to suggest it was time for an end to violence against the Israelis." Something seems wrong with that picture.

The other thing I thought of is that CBS at least went straight from anti-Semitism to applause. I thought at the time that was probably meaningless...there is definitely anti-Semitism in much of the Islamic world, but applauding long speeches is just part of these sorts of meetings. Now I learn that his speech also contained references to the Qur'an and Muhammad supporting the peace process with Israel and an end to terrorism. His main theme overall was that the Islamic world needed to become stronger. I really feel that I don't know much about what people were thinking and saying at this meeting.

One additional note: Vladimir Putin attended this meeting as an observer. Russia is seeking membership in the Organization of the Islamic Conference due to its large Muslim population. RFE-RL recently had an interesting article on post-communist Russian Islam, another sign that the term "Islamic world" may not always mean what you think it does.