MICHAEL DANBY, a member of the Australian House of Representatives for Melbourne Ports, and secretary of the National Security, Foreign Affairs and Defense Policy Committee of the parliamentary Labor Party, writes in the WSJ about Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad, head of Malaysia and his comments on the Jews and the West and reveals the anti-semitism and anti-Western attitutude.

If we had to ask which leader of an Islamic country has done the most, in practical terms, to crack down on organizations which support, fund and carry out terrorist attacks, the answer would have to be the prime minister of Malaysia, Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad.

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Dr. Mahathir is not doing these things, however, to oblige the United States, or Australia, or the West in general. Although Malaysia has a dynamic, if managed, capitalist economy and a reasonably free parliamentary system, Dr. Mahathir has a profoundly un-Western, indeed anti-Western, view of the world.

Dr. Mahathir opposes Islamist terrorism not because it harms the West or kills Westerners, but because he thinks it is un-Islamic and harmful to the Islamic cause. Some tough-minded analysts loathe Dr. Mahathir but judge him to be politically "useful," if aesthetically revolting. The West should, of course, be pleased that Dr. Mahathir is helping to curb terrorism, but it should not be under any illusions about his motives.

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He is willing to cause serious damage to Malaysia's diplomatic interests by indulging his anti-Semitic and anti-Western fantasies; clearly he believes most of what he says.

Recently Dr. Mahathir gave the most systematic outline of his view of the world, in his opening address to the Islamic Summit Conference in Kuala Lumpur. This was the speech in which Dr. Mahathir made his widely-reported comment that "today the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them."

This remark drew condemnation from all over the world, and rightly so. But Dr. Mahathir had much more to say. His speech showed that he sees the entire Islamic world engaged in a war against the West, a war which has been going on for centuries. And behind the West, Dr. Mahathir said, stand the real enemy, the Jews.

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So Dr. Mahathir, elected leader of a nation of 22 million people, has signed on to a full-blown anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that dates back to the publication of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," a notorious anti-Semitic forgery published by the Okhrana, the Russian secret police, in 1905. He believes that "socialism, communism, human rights and democracy" were all invented by the Jews, as part of a dark and ancient Jewish plot to rule the world.

This is, of course, not the first time Dr. Mahathir has given vent to his anti-Semitic views. Although he is an intelligent man, with a Western education including a medical degree, he seems willing to swallow the most absurd conspiracy theories if they reinforce his prejudices.

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In his recent speech, Dr. Mahathir said, in passing; "the Europeans killed six million Jews out of 12 million." So he does not deny that the Holocaust happened. He just thinks that the Jews are not entitled to any "sympathy" over this unfortunate incident, particularly if that might "tarnish" the reputation of the much-maligned Germans.

Dr. Mahathir accepts the basic thesis of the Protocols and of all anti-Semites since the 19th century: that "the Jews" are a single conspiratorial entity, which acts together in secret to further its objectives.

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One of the objectives of the Jewish conspiracy, according to Dr. Mahathir, is to weaken and eventually colonize the Muslim world, in order to overthrow the one true religion, Islam. Despite this, Dr. Mahathir is not an Islamist: he vigorously opposes the Islamist PAS party in Malaysia. He also opposes suggested laws which would restrict Malaysan women, or damage Malaysia's attractiveness to Western investment and Western tourism. Dr. Mahathir believes that Muslim countries can only compete with the West by becoming richer and more powerful, not by retreating into virtuous Islamic poverty.

Nor does Dr. Mahathir support Islamist terrorism against the West, or even against the Jews. Speaking of Islamist terrorism in his Kuala Lumpur speech, he asked, "Is there no other way than to ask our young people to blow themselves up and kill people and invite the massacre of more of our own people?

"We fight without any objective, without any goal other than to hurt the enemy because they hurt us . . . We sacrifice lives unnecessarily, achieving nothing other than to attract more massive retaliation."

Dr. Mahathir opposes terrorism, not because it is wrong, but because it is futile. He does not disagree with the Islamist view that the Western world and the Islamic world are fundamental enemies, he merely disagrees with the Islamists on tactics. [emphasis mine]

Some might say that, from the West's point of view it doesn't really matter why Dr. Mahathir opposes terrorism, so long as he does. But the danger in this is that at some point Dr. Mahathir, or his successor, may change his mind and decide that terrorism is not futile. So long as this is the case, Malaysia can never be a fully reliable ally in the war against terrorism.