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Malaysia’s former premier Mahathir Mohamad said on Wednesday there was “strong evidence” the US faked the September 11 terror attacks as an excuse to go to war against Muslims.

“There is strong evidence that the attacks were staged. If they can make Avatar, they can make anything,’ Mahathir told the Conference for the Support of Al-Quds (Jerusalem), as quoted by local media.

The former premier also blamed Jews for hindering progress in US foreign policy. Voicing his disappointment that Barack Obama had not yet ended the war in Afghanistan or closed the US terror detention center at Guantanamo, he explained that “there are forces in the United States which prevent the president from doing some things. One of the forces is the Jewish lobby.”

Jews “had always been a problem in European countries. They had to be confined to ghettoes and periodically massacred. But still they remained, they thrived and they held whole governments to ransom," Mahathir said.

"Even after their massacre by the Nazis of Germany, they survived to continue to be a source of even greater problems for the world."

Mahathir, who led Malaysia from 1981 to 2003, has long been known for anti-semitic and anti-US statements.

Meanwhile, police in Kuala Lumpur said on Thursday that vandals tried to torch a Muslim prayer room, one of the few attacks on an Islamic place of worship after nearly a dozen churches were firebombed amid a dispute over the use of the word “Allah” by Christians.

Religious tensions have risen after a court ruled on Dec. 31 that non-Muslims can use “Allah” as a translation for God in the Malay language. Many among the country’s ethnic Malay Muslim majority believe the word should be exclusive to Muslims, and that its use by others could confuse some Muslims and even entice them to convert.

Since Jan. 8, there have been assaults on 11 churches, a Sikh temple and a mosque.

Police this week arrested eight suspects believed to have orchestrated the most serious attack, which partially gutted a church in Kuala Lumpur.

On Thursday, vandals apparently set fire to a curtain in a small building designated for Muslim prayers in southern Johor state, that state’s police said.


JG, AP