Muslim world considers the west immoral: Karzai

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Thursday, after balking a bit, that the Muslim world feels the west has exhibited a "lack of morality when it applies to dealing with the rest of the world."

Karzai, who was speaking at the second-day plenary of the Clinton Global Initiative meeting, said his country suffered at the hands of the same people who brought down the twin towers in New York. They murdered thousands of Afghans, destroyed mosques, and brought down thousands of vineyards with grapes handing on vines. He said he kept coming to the west, pleading for help. "But no attention was paid. It was only us, and it did not matter," he said. "That is wrong."

Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, moderated the panel discussion -- Managing Diversity in a Globalised World -- in which Queen Rania Al-Abdullah of Jordan and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu participated along with Karzai.

Queen Rania drew applause for her candid analysis of why, of late, extremist ideology, earlier relegated to the sidelines, has started getting resonance. The reasons are the world's failure to see the diversity among Muslims (a more sophisticated and nuanced approach is needed, she said), and the grievances that have not been addressed.

"The Israeli-Palestine conflict acts like almost a blockade," she said. The issue is at the heart of every Arab, and "the extremists tend to feed off this despair."

People need to see the dividends of moderation and peace, Queen Rania said. They have to see justice and honest engagement "We're seeing that military action is not the way to go about it," she said, inviting claps from the audience.