Muslims stayed silent about Saddam’s brutal rule: Anwar Ibrahim

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http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_9-9-2004_pg7_42

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WASHINGTON: Anwar Ibrahim, the former deputy prime minister of Malaysia, who was recently released from prison after six years, has harshly criticised modern Muslim leaders, as well as those Muslims who hypocritically stayed silent about Saddam Hussein’s brutal rule in Iraq.

In an interview to New York Times from Germany where he underwent back surgery, Ibrahim said while such Muslims kept complaining about America’s influence in the world, they were ignoring their own troubles “This is the single biggest failure of Muslims at present,” he said. “You don’t have credible leaders. You don’t have a real voice of conscience.” He said Muslims never blame themselves for their problems. “It’s the Americans and the Jews and the Christians,” he said. “We are still in a state of denial.”

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He spoke about his years in prison, his small cell, his exercise routines and his strict reading schedule. “I finished the entire collection of Shakespeare four times,” he said. Friends sent him books, and someone gave him a subscription to The New Yorker. He read a list of books on comparative religion and the Chinese classics, as well as contemporary non-fiction. He first heard of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he said, when a prison attendant mentioned something about bombs in the towers in New York. But he has yet to see the videotape of the airliners striking the buildings. Television, not to mention telephones, the Internet and visits by anyone but close family and his lawyers, was banned in prison. “I did not watch television for the entire six years,” he said. He said he had asked his wife, Azizah, to compile a small library of videotapes. He told her: “There are a few things I need to see: the Sept. 11 video, some clippings from when I was arrested and of course ‘Fahrenheit 9/11.’ These are the priorities.”

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