Putrajaya, Malaysia, — Women in many Muslim countries continue to be marginalized and discriminated against, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi told a conference of the Non-Aligned Movement yesterday.
Abdullah, who is current chairman of both NAM and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), said some people used religion to oppose the empowerment of women for their own narrow purposes.
“Despite the fact that women in many parts of the world have become more emancipated, women in many Muslim countries continue to be marginalized and discriminated against,” he said.
“I find it most lamentable, that although women are certainly no minority in terms of numbers, they cannot be said to have gained the status that they are entitled to, in terms of rights, equality and justice,” he added.
Abdullah was speaking at the opening of a NAM ministerial meeting on “Empowering Women in Facing the Challenges of Globalization”.
While globalization had brought benefits, it had led to the further impoverishment of millions of already poor people, in particular women, he said.
Greater internationalization had provided women with employment opportunities but the majority of them suffered from increased poverty because they lacked education and skills.
“The world economy continually presents many challenges to the empowerment of women and the achievement of gender justice and equity,” Abdullah said.
“The expansion of global markets primarily focus on economic, and not social gains. Furthermore, the fruits of globalization are often tilted in favor of the powerful and wealthy and not enough to the poor and impoverished,” he said.
Abdullah said NAM was dismayed by the state of millions of women and children around the globe who live in unacceptable conditions due to poverty and war.
“In wartorn and armed conflict countries, many women and children have been raped, tortured and maimed,” he said.
The main challenge now for NAM was to nurture an environment that promotes both economic justice and gender justice to restore women’s security and dignity.
“It (globalization) compels us to become more competitive, dynamic and innovative. In these trying times, the cost of women’s exclusion is too high for us to bear,” he said.
Badawi also said Malaysia will not become an extremist state but will maintain its moderate and progressive government.
“I don’t believe we are on the verge of becoming an extreme Islamic state, we are a very moderate Islamic country,” Abdullah was quoted as saying by the official Bernama news agency.
“Certainly, we reject and condemn terrorism.”
Abdullah was responding to a question posed by former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew during a recent visit to Malaysia, Bernama reported.
He said that in multiracial, multireligious Malaysia “We respect the non-Muslims. We share the government, we have power-sharing which doesn’t happen in other places.”
Since taking over as premier in November 2003, Abdullah has presented a vision of moderate Islamic practice in his governance with the message that Islam is a religion for development
Malaysia, meanwhile, is considering a billion dollar arms deal that calls for it to commit part of the country’s gold reserves to help finance the purchase of warships and other defense equipment, a report said yesterday.
Under the deal, British defense contractor BAE Systems PLC would arrange financing for the arms purchases with a loan secured by gold certificates issued by the Malaysian government, the Asian Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the plan.
Other aspects of the BAE-initiated proposal, such as the tenure of the proposed loan and the specific details of the equipment Malaysia intends to purchase, have not been finalized, it said.
Commenting on the report, Defense Minister Najib Razak told the official Bernama news agency Malaysia had not made any decision on the proposal but it would not be out of the ordinary if the government were to consider an arms deal with a loan secured by gold certificates.
“It’s still very initial and unsolicited,” Najib said of the proposal.
A spokesman for BAE Systems in London acknowledged that the company was in discussions with the Malaysian government over its defense requirements, but declined to elaborate or to discuss the arms-financing proposal, the newspaper said.
Malaysia, which has announced a major arms buildup in stages over the past few years, said last July that it had set aside an extra 1.609 billion ringgit ($423 million) in 2004 for weapons purchases, including submarines, tanks and helicopters.
Najib said then that a large slice of the money — 731.1 million ringgit — would go toward upgrading the Royal Malaysian Navy’s power with Scorpene submarines, Fennec and Super Lynx helicopters and new patrol vessels. Another 523.6 million was for the army, which would acquire main battle tanks and air defense systems, Najib said.
Malaysia has already announced agreements to buy Russian fighter jets for $900 million, French submarines for $972 million, British and Russian missile systems for $364 million and Polish attack tanks worth $368 million.
The naval upgrade comes against the background of increasing concern over the possibility of terrorism in the Malacca Strait, one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world which funnels 50,000 vessels a year between the biggest economies of the West and the East.
The narrow waterway slicing peninsular Malaysia from Indonesia’s sprawling Sumatra island, a hunting ground for pirates from ancient times until today, carries a third of global trade and most of the oil needs of Japan, South Korea and China.
Malaysia has denied that its weapons buildup could spark an arms race in the region, saying the purchases were simply designed to upgrade its defenses and that it had no aggressive intentions.