It was supposed to be Malaysia's moment in the sun, at the intersection of the Muslim and Western worlds, and helping define a constructive relationship between the two.

But the non-Malaysian participants at the Third International Conference on the Muslim World and the West in Kuala Lumpar last week didn't seem to get the message, as they used their pulpit to attack the principle of free speech.

The irony in this turn of events is palpable, especially given the contradiction between the dramatic expansion of Malaysian press and social freedoms, and the course urged by the Muslim dignitaries present.

Since Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi took office after the decades-long autocracy of Mahathir Mohamed, restrictions on Malaysian media have been dramatically curtailed, to the point that, though still imperfect by Western standards, it is perhaps the most free media and social environment in the Muslim world.

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A direct beneficiary of Malaysia's media liberalization is the political opposition — a fact that Badawi acknowledges, and accepts as necessary for his country's good.

This, though, is not a risk too many non-Malaysian Muslim power holders are willing to take. It is perhaps too much to expect that the major Muslim dignitaries present at this week's Conference — a Saudi prince, a Turkish bureaucrat, and a former Pakistani prime minister — will have reflexes toward individual liberty.

None of them hail from known bastions of Jeffersonian democracy. Yet all come from known bastions of tradition, chief among them being the duties of guests to hosts. Their denunciation of free speech in Malaysia now is an act of bad guests.

The Conference opened on Monday morning with an on-the-record panel of four Muslim and three Western dignitaries. The constructive dialogue envisioned by the Malaysian hosts was swiftly subsumed by plaintive invocations of Muslim victimization.

Introductory remarks by the Malaysian Foreign Minister were followed by the Secretary-General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Ekmeleddin Ihsanouglu of Turkey, who delivered a rambling speech on the injustices of the West's portrayal of Muslims.

The litany ranged from the drearily familiar invocation of Muhammed cartoons, to Geert Wilders's Fitna film, to an otherwise obscure video game by an American college student, in which the object is apparently to kill Islam's founding prophet.

Secretary-General Ihsanouglu's solution was as simple as it was troubling — and was made the more troubling by its popularity with the assembled delegates. There is, he declared, "a campaign of incitement under the guise of freedom of expression."

Therefore, freedom of expression must go. This sentiment was warmly received. Erstwhile Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz garnered applause when he stated, "Producing cartoons on religious leaders, where sensitivities are hurt, should be discouraged — and should be opposed and not be protected under the guise of freedom."

Prince Turki al Faisal, a longtime fixture in the Saudi power structure, put it in more blunt terms: "I can never accept, in my personal view, that freedom of speech is morally right when it supersedes and offends my faith and my belief."

Thus did three of the four Muslim speakers demand an end to Western freedom of speech as the prerequisite to reconciliation with the West. The fourth preferred to denounce Israel, and the three Western panelists — a Frenchman, a Spaniard, and an Australian — raised no objection.

Indeed, it was possible to read into the latters' remarks an oblique endorsement of the notion: "Political problems have to be solved in political ways," intoned Spain's Jose Maria Ferre de la Pena, who serves as a "Special Ambassador" from Madrid to the Islamic world.

To attack freedom of speech as a root cause of the conflict between the Western and Muslim worlds is to make two grave errors. First is the implicit contention that Muslims are psychologically and culturally inert, and purely reactive to Western stimuli.

This is plainly false: Muslims have the same capacity for moral choice, and the same independent existence, as all persons — even if their conference-going, globe-trotting leaders pretend otherwise.

Second is the baleful reality that if Muslims attempt to suppress free speech, then defenders of free speech will be forced to stand up for every stupid, cruel, and vicious rhetorical attack upon Muslims. By reacting to an abuse of liberty with an attack on liberty, Muslims against free speech elevate those abuses to exercises in principle.

In that light, the eminences at the Third International Conference on the Muslim World and the West would do well, while they're in Kuala Lumpur, to stop attacking a basic freedom — and start learning from their hosts.

Joshua Treviño is founder and administrator of malaysiamatters.com. He can be reached at (joshua.trevino@trevinostrategies.com

Editor's Note: This oped will appear in the June 16 edition of The Washington Examiner.