Prof. Krugman Addresses PM Mahathir

Paul Krugman opens his latest column:

The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million. But today the Jews rule this world by proxy: They get others to fight and die for them." So said Mahathir Mohamad, the prime minister of Malaysia, at an Islamic summit meeting last week. The White House promptly denounced his "hate-filled remarks."

Indeed, those remarks were inexcusable.

Indeed they were. What the Earnest Professor writes next, then, cannot be an excuse. A rationalization, perhaps, an interpretation, an attempt to put the remarks into context, but surely not an excuse.

But they were also calculated — for Mr. Mahathir is a cagey politician, who is neither ignorant nor foolish. And to understand why he made those remarks is to realize how badly things are going for U.S. foreign policy.

The fact is that Mr. Mahathir, though guilty of serious abuses of power, is in many ways about as forward-looking a Muslim leader as we're likely to find. And Malaysia is the kind of success story we wish we saw more of: an impressive record of economic growth, rising education levels and general modernization in a nation with a Muslim majority.

He made the trains run on time! One can only wonder how the Earnest Professor, if plopped back in, oh, 1936, might have assessed the success of the various European leaders at rallying their countries from the depression.

It's worth reading the rest of last week's speech, beyond the offensive 28 words. Most of it is criticism directed at other Muslims, clerics in particular. Mr. Mahathir castigates "interpreters of Islam who taught that acquisition of knowledge by Muslims meant only the study of Islamic theology." Thanks to these interpreters, "the study of science, medicine, etc. was discouraged. Intellectually the Muslims began to regress." A lot of the speech sounds as if it had been written by Bernard Lewis, author of "What Went Wrong," the best-selling book about the Islamic decline.

So what's with the anti-Semitism? Almost surely it's part of Mr. Mahathir's domestic balancing act, something I learned about the last time he talked like this, during the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98.

We are saddened. Special Agent "Fox" Krugman, did a masterful job of unmasking Bush's conspiracy to throw the poor and elderly into the street, although with typical modesty he assured us that it was "one whose organization and goals are pretty much out in the open".

So how did he come to this interpretation of Mahathir's speech? Did Mahathir say, "we need to reform Islam to provide a better life for our children and grand-children"? Did he say, "we need to reform Islam because it is God's intention that we pursue an understanding of the world he created, as well as the people in it"?

Not exactly. Reading through Mahathir's speech, I marvel that the Earnest Prof could not detect hints of a conspiracy here, also hidden in plain sight:

...To begin with, the Governments of all the Muslim countries can close ranks and have a common stand if not on all issues, at least on some major ones, such as on Palestine. We are all Muslims. We are all oppressed. We are all being humiliated.

...We fail to notice that our detractors and enemies do not care whether we are true Muslims or not. To them we are all Muslims, followers of a religion and a Prophet whom they declare promotes terrorism, and we are all their sworn enemies. They will attack and kill us, invade our lands, bring down our Governments whether we are Sunnis or Syiahs, Alawait or Druze or whatever.

...The early Muslims produced great mathematicians and scientists, scholars, physicians and astronomers etc. and they excelled in all the fields of knowledge of their times, besides studying and practising their own religion of Islam. As a result the Muslims were able to develop and extract wealth from their lands and through their world trade, able to strengthen their defences, protect their people and give them the Islamic way of life, ...

...With all these developments over the centuries the ummah and the Muslim civilisation became so weak that at one time there was not a single Muslim country which was not colonised or hegemonised by the Europeans. But regaining independence did not help to strengthen the Muslims. Their states were weak and badly administered, constantly in a state of turmoil. The Europeans could do what they liked with Muslim territories. It is not surprising that they should excise Muslim land to create the state of Israel to solve their Jewish problem. Divided, the Muslims could do nothing effective to stop the Balfour and Zionist transgression.

We are enjoined by our religion to prepare for the defence of the ummah. Unfortunately we stress not defence but the weapons of the time of the Prophet. Those weapons and horses cannot help to defend us any more. We need guns and rockets, bombs and warplanes, tanks and warships for our defence. But because we discouraged the learning of science and mathematics etc. as giving no merit for the akhirat, today we have no capacity to produce our own weapons for our defence. We have to buy our weapons from our detractors and enemies. This is what comes from the superficial interpretation of the Quran, stressing not the substance of the Prophet's sunnah and the Quran's injunctions but rather the form, the manner and the means used in the 1st Century of the Hijrah.

I need to re-read Bernard Lewis, or perhaps Professor Krugman does. This speech certainly endorses the notion that "knowledge is power", but the objective seems a bit problematic. To me, anyway; Andrew Sullivan and the Earnest Prof are in odd alignment on their interpretation of the speech.

The balance of the column drops any attempt at even-handedness - centuries of anti-semitism are due to George Bush and the war in Iraq.

We idly amuse ourselves with a random cheap shot;

Thanks to its war in Iraq and its unconditional support for Ariel Sharon, Washington has squandered post-9/11 sympathy and brought relations with the Muslim world to a new low.

Hmm, the war in Iraq squandered post 9/11 sympathy? We can hardly dispute it - the US was surely more sympathetic as a victim. However, what was Sen. John Kerry thinking (or smoking) in Octoer 2002, or again in January 2003, when he said (the January version):

...the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but it is not new. It has been with us since the end of the Persian Gulf War. Regrettably the current Administration failed to take the opportunity to bring this issue to the United Nations two years ago or immediately after September 11th, when we had such unity of spirit with our allies.

So, targetting Saddam would have been OK in February 2002, but was too much for world opinion a year later?

Thanks for the tip, Big John.

End stray cheap shot. We resume our primary mission. The Man Without Mercy is, well, merciless. Andrew Sullivan is firmly on both sides of this, unbeknownst to him.

MORE: Honest Injun, I didn't peek - the ADL joins in with Hitler comparisons. (OK, trains were Mussolini). Dan Drezner, Don Luskin with lots of links - from Easterbrook to Krugman,

Just A Thought: We welcome comments, and have the most modest of suggestions, inspired by the realization that Krugman-bashing does not bring out the best in all of us. I am having great luck with the commenting feature, and am getting lots of useful feedback. However, sometimes I find it helpful to imagine that public figures, like P. Krugman and A. Sullivan, are on a television; my fellow bloggers and commenters are in someone's living room watching and discussing them. In that setting, I might say "Sully is a fat fool" - he's not there, and, like booing the umpires, it comes with his paycheck. However, I surely hope I would not say that about a person sitting next to me, however much I might be thinking it.

Incredibly, I am describing one of my New Years Resolutions. Really. And yes, it is often aspirational.

Comments

[Jim Glass]

Prof. K no doubt will continue to take a lot of (deserved) heat for being so understanding of anti-Semitism as long as it is used politically by a "forward looking" dictator.

But what jumped out at me from the column was that -- as PK tells it -- the thing to judge Dr. Mahathir by is not those mere 28 words in such a long speech but the *Bernard Lewis* lecture that the Dr. gave his fellow Muslims ... while the effect of recent US foreign policy is to be judged not by the *Bernard Lewis* lecture given to fellow Muslims, but those 28 words.

I'm trying to recall how many Bernard Lewis lectures were given by Muslim dictators during Ms. Albright's time on the job.

"Osama bin Laden must be enjoying this".

Enjoying having a Muslim dictator lecture his people and "castigate" (as PK said) the theocratic part of his society as per Bernard Lewis?

I didn't realize Osama was so forward looking.
~~~

A separate, and sympathetic, thought regarding PK. His first career was not as a writer and sometimes it shows. Perhaps it would help him avoid kerfuffles like this if the Times assigned him a helpful editor who could explain to him how words might unintentionally (one presumes) come across to readers.

"Paul, if you really want to illustrate the *good* side of a dictator who just indulged himself in a nasty bout of public anti-Semitism it might not be the best idea to start off by showing your respect for his intelligence by saying 'he's a cagey politician, neither ignorant nor foolish, and those remarks were calulated...'. 'Casue it might bring to mind other well-known dictators who were cagey, neither ignorant or foolish, and made good use of public anti-Semitism. So maybe we can find another way to describe this guy's up side..."

I mean, we all need editors from time to time. Hemingway did, so it's nothing to be proud about. And if someone had said to Easterbrook "Do you *really* want to talk about your boss exactly like that?" maybe he'd have refined his thoughts, written a better piece and kept his job too.

Bloggers are on their own, of course, but this is the NY Times for cryin' out loud.

[Paul Zrimsek]

Time for some second thoughts on Dan Drezner's assessment of Krugman, which I and a lot of others thought was spot-on at the time:

On politics, he’s not moving down the learning curve. Krugman, along with many economists, has some serious blind spots in his political analyses. He’s consistently shocked when politicians engage in strategic or opportunistic behavior. He’s always stunned when leaders take actions that maximize their own power rather than benefiting the greater good.

Oops! We now learn that Prof. K can shrug off politics-as-usual with a casualness that might give even Dick Morris pause. When it suits him.

[Bruce Moomaw]

"I need to re-read Bernard Lewis, or perhaps Professor Krugman does. This speech certainly endorses the notion that 'knowledge is power', but the objective seems a bit problematic."

Well, no, you need to reread Mahathir's speech:

"We also know that not all non-Muslims are against us. Some are well-disposed towards us. Some even see our enemies as their enemies. Even among the Jews there are many who do not approve of what the Israelis are doing. We must not antagonise everyone. We must win their hearts and minds. We must win them to our side not by begging for help from them but by the honourable way that we struggle to help ourselves. We must not strengthen the enemy by pushing everyone into their camps through irresponsible and un-Islamic acts...Remember the considerateness of the Prophet to the enemies of Islam. We must do the same. It is winning the struggle that is important, not angry retaliation, not revenge."

In short, as Drezner says, Mahathir was at least urging a largely non-violent campaign for the triumph of Islam, which goes considerably beyond just talking about the need for Moslems to learn to make Western-style weaponry. But his speech was still dripping with Elders of Zion-style muck, and he showed no sign that he thought Islamic societies should include Western-style political and religious freedoms -- in fact, he announced that the Jews are Homo superior and will thus inevitably rise to dominate any society in which they aren't strongly repressed.

So, contrary to Jim Glass, there's no contradiction in PK saying both that the speech contained some of Bernard Lewis' themes and that, on balance, Bin Laden would have loved it. The billion-dollar question (as Drezner points out) is whether Krugman was aware of Mahathir's decades-long record of periodic anti-Semitic rantings at times OTHER than the 1997 financial crisis or Bush's war on terror, which prove either that Mahathir really is viciously anti-Semitic himself or that he feels the need to appeal to a Malaysian anti-Semitism which is ALWAYS so intense that Bush'actions could only have slightly worsened it. If Krugman was aware of these other comments of Mahathir's, it would prove that he really was dishonestly bashing Bush; if not, it just shows that he researched Mahathir very sloppily.

But it won't be Luskin or Musil who exposes him. As I just pointed out in a long letter to the Man Frequently Without Brains in response to his ravings about Luskin's 'terrific investigation", said investigation consists of literally psychotic distortions by Luskin of what Krugman actually said in the Slate and NY Times magazine articles that Luskin himself links to. (Which is not surprising from a man whose idea of valid criticism is to drool that PK is a "nervous, stammering, shifty-eyed, twitching, ill-tailored, gray homunculus" and that Brad DeLong is a "pudgy dweeb". If I saw a guy who wrote stuff like that approaching me, I'd look for the nearest fire exit too.)

On the subject of Krugman's frequently own frequently weird comments in his recent New Yorker interview, Glass is on much solider ground. The only conceivable excuse I can make for Krugman is that he doesn't repeat any of those in his actual NY Times magazine piece on Bush's "Tax Cut Scam", which suggests that he tends to babble irrationally during interviews without doing nearly as badly when he's actually writing something.

[TM]

I would encourage folks to read the speech, read Dan Drezner's comments, and judge for themselves who has presented the more useful excerpts.

As a hint, I will pull this soundbite from Drezner:

The scary and pathetic thing is, Hamid Albar is correct -- relative to a lot of Muslims, Mahathir's position is moderate. He's not advocating the use of violence to exterminate the state of Israel. He's advocating the use of brainpower -- to exterminate the state of Israel.

I guess I am seeing this a bit differently from Bruce, and maybe Dan - my take is, Mahathir is saying, suicide bombers today are ineffective; Islam needs to modernize, industrialize, and use modern armies in fifty years.

Do we agree that Mahathir constantly refers to a triumph of Islam? Are we arguing over whether he is advocating the peaceful assimiliation of Jews, rather than their destruction?

I am not sure just how we disagree - meanwhile, I stand by my comment that the point of the speech seems to be 'knowledge is power', but the objectives are problematic. And since Drezner also reads Mahathir's objective to be the destruction of Israel, I suspect he would agree.