Mahathir is an urbane pacifist calling for self-defence
Dr. Mahathir was a journalist. In Malaysia, he secured the support of the rest of the journalists in his long march to power. He still has that headline writer's flair for theatre and timing.

He told the Muslim world to arm itself and called Blair, Bush and Howard re-elected killers. Sri Lankan Muslims had just named him the recipient of the first Adam's Peak Award.

He must have seen the photograph of Saddam Hussein half-nude and in his briefs, which was carried with the Sun headline "Tyrants in his pants.'' The US army had also later this week, made the admission that desecration of the Koran was practised in the Guantanamo Bay detention facility even though "there were no instances of the Koran being flushed down the toilet" as Newsweek had reported.

This then was the week that the clash of fundamentalisms reached Star Wars proportions of dark and almost galactic zeitgeist. In Sri Lanka, Mahathir's words had done-in the news value of the startling pronouncement by the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) that "if bombs fall on the LTTE airstrip, we pull out.'' Ouch.

But Mahathir could well have been from another planet for the Americans, who received this week an Amnesty International certificate as masters of torture.

In those early days of Eelam war, a Sri Lankan Editor used to shove before me a document called the US State Department Human Rights report. State Department officials who put together that report which was always written in stern and preppy language never failed to take the Sri Lankan army to the cleaners. The way the government handled the Tiger war was way too gross for these prim State Department policy wonks.

The Editor I remember defended the Sri Lankans, at least in an attempt to convince me, if I was too young and impressionable reading these reports and judging the Sri Lankan army too harshly in their light. He turned another page of the same report and said ''the Indian army had been accused of pushing raw red chilli up the anuses of arrested rebels.'' "We are not so bad,'' he intoned. "Do you want our guys to go beyond even the anus?''

Too gross, but torture was reprehensible even then, in my book, even if the Sri Lankan army did sometimes use torture tactics. But the State Department chastised the Sri Lankan army for things much less than torture.

Amnesty International last week said things to the effect that it's difficult to eliminate torture in the present context, since the US forces are institutionalising torture tactics in their facilities. Does the US State Department report now say anything about its own government? It looks like the State Department wants a monopoly on torture and coercion, and the desecration of the Koran. The Department ignores its own government's violations, chastises other governments and therefore infers that America should have a monopoly on these tactics of violence humiliation and intimidation.

When Mahathir called the Muslims to arm themselves in his Colombo speech this week, he sought to deprive the Americans this monopoly on violence. That sent people into a touch-me-not carapace about the dangers of rousing the religious rabble. Touché!

They didn't know the first thing about the clash of fundamentalisms, in which, as Tariq Ali had written — the pipsqueak bombardier of Britain, Tony Blair together with Tsunami Bill Clinton "are personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of small children, slaughtered to save their joint credibility (...in Iraq.)'' (Page 152, the Clash of Fundamentalisms, Crusades Jihads and Modernity.)

Mahathir, looking almost fresh as a daisy in his retirement in this backdrop is talking in the big league — he is not asking for Muslim paramilitaries to arm themselves in Sri Lanka, but his message clearly is for the Muslim world to unite in this atmosphere of Koran-cussing fundamentalism that's allegedly being practised by American troops.

CNN reports that no one in the Arab world quite seems to believe the retraction of the Newsweek story of the ''Koran being flushed down the toilet'' to be genuine. Newsweek senior Editors retracted the story in a word-tripping frenzy.

But, that hasn't stopped American spokespersons from announcing in public that there indeed have been instances of desecration of the Koran in Guantanamo Bay — short of flushing the holy book down the commode.

Mahahthir is not calling the Muslims to jihad, he is but one angry Muslim with a Western-minded economic bent at that. But he is the ultimate detractor of America and the West.

When he clasps the Adam's Peak award and let's fly against the Bush Blair and Howard axis, he is in effect making a last stand for the embattled developing world against the fundamentalisms that emanate from the White House.

That's why his words sound even more resonant when it comes in a week when the Norwegians say 'if Sri Lankans bomb the LTTE airstrip, we cut out.''

Bombing the LTTE airstrip is no doubt a ceasefire violation, but couldn't a Norwegian ceasefire monitor have had a better choice of words to convey the idea that the Sri Lankan government is being prevented from exercising its sovereign prerogative?

From the government of Sri Lanka, there has been no indication whatsoever that there are any plans to carpet bomb the airstrip, which means that the SLMM's pronouncements are pre-emptive. What are they saying in that case?

In effect, though there is a great deal of tearing of hair on the part of the SLMM chief about ''the threat to India and South Asia with the Tigers possessing an airstrip,'' he comes to the Tigers rescue in the final analysis, saying that if the airstrip is touched, we are out of here. Clearly, what's seen here is the subtlety of foreign influence which Mahathir always talks about without breaking a sweat in his disarming almond shaped countenance.

He doesn't want the Americans to cry ''Hey clash of civilisations'' when the Muslims take up arms in self-defence. He doesn't want anyone to raise the religious bogey, when all he wants to do is stop defenceless Korans from being flushed down toilets.

So, there is no reason for Sri Lankan ham-religionists to go into hysterics when Mahathir makes an impassioned plea which says ''unite against the other - do not fight among yourselves.''

His message will echo to Sri Lankans in general that Tigers, Southerners, Muslims should all unite, because it's the Norwegians and other proxies and principals who want a finger in the pie. They chastise the Tigers saying "they are a threat to South Asia with their new airstrip'' and then say that "Sri Lankans shouldn't bomb the airstrip'' "under pain of our abandoning the monitoring role.'' On all counts, they look like the interloper and the irritant. But as it is often said in these parts "what to do?''. We brought this upon ourselves in our disunity. That's the clear and only message that underpins Mahathir's Adam's Peak speech.

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