PUTRAJAYA, March 9 — The so-called war on terrorism was fabricated by the US and its allies to expand their global hegemony, according to a number of academics at the International Conference on New World Order presided by Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad today.

In the conference organised by Dr Mahathir’s Perdana Global Peace Foundation (PGPF), the speakers insisted that jihadist groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State were funded by the US and its allies, which included the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Israel.

“They say Muslims are terrorists, but it just so happens that terrorists are made in the America. They’re not the product of the Islamic society, and that should be abundantly clear to everyone on this floor,” said Dr Michel Chossudovsky, the University of Ottawa’s Emeritus Professor of Economics.

“The global war on terrorism is a fabrication, a big lie and a crime against humanity,” added the editor of conspiracy theory website Global Research.

The founder of the Centre for Research on Globalisation said the global war on terrorism was then used as justification for Islamophobia and to enact anti-terrorism laws that he claimed inadvertently demonised Muslims in the Western world through methods such as racial profiling.

Chossudovsky claimed that NATO and the Turkish High Command were also responsible for recruiting members of IS and al-Qaeda’s affiliate Nusra Front, while Israel is funding “global jihad elements inside Syria”.

Agreeing with the assertions was local social activist Dr Chandra Muzaffar, who said that Israel can now easily label anybody who do not agree with its occupation in Palestinian territories as “terrorists”.

PGPF adviser and former minister Tan Sri Dr Rais Yatim also blamed the Western world for tarnishing Islam by calling the militant group Islamic State, claiming that the rest of the world had unquestioningly followed suit.

Former prime minister Dr Mahathir said in 2010 that the September 2011 attacks in the US were possibly staged by the superpower, claiming that “if they can make (the movie) Avatar, they can make anything”.

The conference today said there was a “New World Order”, where an allegedly secret group of elites are conspiring to rule the world via globalisation and a world government, replacing sovereign nation-states.

In November, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak tabled a White Paper in Parliament titled “Addressing the threat of Islamic State”, in which he outlined the history of IS, the threat the group poses and the impact it has on Malaysians, as well as the danger in allowing its skewed Islamic teachings and practice of violence to spread in Malaysia.

The police revealed last week that in total, there are 61 Malaysians in strife-torn Syria fighting for jihadist groups, including 10 women and five children aged between one and 12 years-old.