Muslim nations and scholars must speak out against militant extremism or take some blame for the West's misunderstanding of Islam, the chairman of the world's largest body of Islamic nations said on Thursday. Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, chairman of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), said Muslims must speak up when extremists misrepresent Islam and attempt to build religious militancy on intellectual foundations.
He said Muslims were as much to blame as non-Muslims for misinterpretations of jihad, or holy struggle, which is often distorted as a religious justification for violence.
"If Muslims themselves can make this mistake, what more can we expect from others?" Abdullah told an OIC summit in Putrajaya, Malaysia's administrative capital.
The Muslim world, or "ummah", has not been very successful in engaging the Western media, Abdullah added.
"We have not made our presence sufficiently felt or our views sufficiently heard in the Western media.
Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, Islam and Muslims had been portrayed by detractors as violent and intolerant, he said.
"Despite vigorous efforts taken to correct this ignorant and extremely damaging perception, we Muslims are still unable to break free from this profiling," he said. Abdullah said it was unfortunate that some people had narrowed the concept of jihad to mean physical fighting.
"It is even more unfortunate that this is the only meaning commonly understood by the general public. This meaning is in turn conveyed to the wider world," he said.
The 57-nation OIC is the largest gathering that represents the views of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims, but is largely ignored by the West due to its scant means and lack of an institutional framework for action.
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