HONOLULU -- With all due respect to his office, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia got it wrong when he suggested in Tokyo in mid-December that the Japanese help Americans and Europeans to understand Islam.
More important, the prime minister missed the point of what Japan really could do for Islam: Japan could be a constructive model for turbulent, poorly-governed and poverty-ridden Islamic nations to emulate in modernizing their politics, economies, and social orders.
After delivering the keynote address to a symposium on Islam at the United Nations University, Mahathir responded to a question by saying: "I think Japan has a very good role to play. What we expect of Japan is balance. You have no quarrels against the Arabs, you have no quarrels against the Jews, you have no quarrels against anybody."