I do NOT like this man, but this article is well written and has some good ideas
http://www.nation.com.pk/daily/may-2003/6/EDITOR/op1.asp
Mushahid Hussain
In September 2003, the Organisation of Islamic Conference will convene for a Summit in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, in what is probably its most significant meeting for the last 30 years.
In April 1974, the OIC had held an emergency summit at Lahore, 6 months after the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War, where the PLO was first recognised as the ‘sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people’. The war coincided with the maiden deployment of oil by Saudi Arabia as a political weapon to pressure Western supporters of Israel.
While the West had routinely used its natural resources and economic aid as a political lever, it was for the first time that roles were reversed, and Third World countries were now willing and able to pay back in the same coin for a cause close to their hearts.
If the Lahore Islamic Summit marked the high point of the OIC, the current context is providing its nadir as an organisation that seems to have lost its spirit, meaning and perhaps even the purpose of its existence.
After September 11, when the entire focus is on issues that revolve around Muslims, the OIC role is conspicuous by its absence. Amidst a sense of drift and hopelessness, there is mostly cribbing, self-flagellation and outbursts of hate rhetoric, but no meaningful focus on either the present or the future as to what ought be done.
While the Muslims countries, or some of these, do have affluence in terms of vast and vital natural resources like oil and gas, or billions of dollars in reserves stashed away in Western banks, that has failed to translate into influence. The result is that the OIC, representing a fifth of humanity living in 57 Muslim countries, is a virtual non-factor in global affairs.
Regrettably, the OIC’s weakness is a reflection of the sad state in which the Muslim World finds itself today. While ‘religious extremism’ is denounced and presented as the source of all ills afflicting Muslim countries, the hard fact is that the Muslim Establishment itself is unable to tread the middle path, veering from an extreme course of confrontation often ending up at capitulation.
Most of the ruling elites in Muslim societies have a tribal mindset that is engaged in ruthless, debilitating blood feuds with their own people. For instance, the eminent Egyptian intellectual, Mohammed Hassanein Heikal, aptly summed up the conflict between Egypt’s Islamists and the Egyptian state as ‘the blood vengeance war between the police tribe and the Islamist tribe.’
The dissident Tunisian intellectual and columnist, Al Afif al Akhdar provided what is probably an accurate description of how Muslim elites act at home and abroad. He says ‘in their domestic policy, these elites dismiss all public discussion. In their foreign policy, they refuse to negotiate.’
It is in this broad Muslim World context that the institution of OIC is almost moribund, although the Muslim factor is probably the most crucial element shaping policies and perceptions among the most powerful countries of the world led by the United States. This is due to a number of reasons, factors that are likely to dominate global politics for the next couple of decades.
There is, first, the fact that the entire stability of the international political system is dependent on resolving and containing issues that emanate from among Muslim countries. These range from terrorism and terror groups, conflicts causing confrontation in key regions like the Middle East and South Asia, and weapons of mass destruction that could even be used as weapons of war. Hence, the stakes of the United States and Europe are high, because they feel their lifestyles and prosperity of the last 50 years could be threatened by developments in Muslim countries.
Second, Muslims are no longer ‘those Third Worlders’ but fast becoming an integral part of Western societies, particularly in the United States (6 million Muslims), France (5 million Muslims), Germany (4 million Muslims) and Britain (over 3 million Muslims). Take France, for instance. On May 1, the French Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, spoke strongly for Islam and Muslims being compatible with French values and society. He said ‘if you decide that Islam is incompatible in France with the values of our Republic, then what do you do with the 5 million Muslims who reside in France? Do you expel them, do you force them to convert themselves, do you ask them not to practice their religion?’
Speaking for equal rights for Muslims alongside the Christians and Jews in France, the Interior Minister underlined that ‘you just can’t accept a situation where you have, on one side, those who have the right to live their faith, and, on the other, those who are forbidden to do so.’ It is this basic premise that allows Muslims their fundamental religious, political and economic rights in Western societies, often with a greater measure of freedom than that allowed in their countries of origin.
Third, there is the unstated concern in the West, bordering even on fear, of the Muslim countries coalescing together, with the potential of forming a political bloc.
Instead of generating fear, and that too in a vacuum, the OIC’s potential to serve as a positive instrument of promoting Muslim interests needs to be harnessed.
Despite the negativism about Islam and Muslims, the voice of Muslims will be listened to with seriousness if it has something substantive to offer in an organised and collective manner. Any doable agenda will be successful only if there’s clarity of vision and quality of leadership.
For starters, prior to the Kuala Lumpur summit, perhaps a core group of Muslim countries should agree that what the OIC needs at this time is vision, will and leadership that can meet the present challenges.
Since Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohammed is going to assume the leadership of the OIC, he should be asked to take it over and run it as a CEO with a hands-on, full-time approach choosing the Secretary General and staff of his choice. This will inject vitality into the OIC, and liberate it from the bureaucratic lethargy and apathy that currently are its hallmark. Since he has already declared his intention of retiring from politics, he should be the OIC helmsman in his new assignment, and he has a proven track record of success.
The new OIC vision would require a three-point doable, multi-dimensional agenda that can protect and project core Muslim interests.
This could include:
- Since the Muslims are badly losing the ‘battle of ideas’, establishing an International think tank in Washington, DC with subsidiaries in London and Paris, to provide input to Western opinion and political leaders regarding Islamic issues;
- Establishing a multi-billion dollar fund for higher education to enable Muslim students to imbibe the best quality scientific research and learning in their own or Western countries since education is the key to success;
- A coordinated political strategy to promote policies, perceptions and responses with common positions on areas like terrorism, religious extremism, weapons of mass destruction and regional conflicts.
All these issues are vital to both the West and Muslim countries, but the latter are at the receiving end of double standards, without knowing what to do about it. Just take ‘cross-border terrorism’. The Hizbul Mujajideen, an indigenous Kashmiri liberation movement which has never attacked any American citizens or property, is declared a ‘terrorist organization’ by the State Department for allegedly fomenting ‘cross border’ violence across the Line of Control. Conversely, on April 16, the US army in Iraq does a deal with the ‘Mujahideen-e-Khalq Organization’, which the State Department certified as being a ‘terrorist group’ in 1997 just because the US wants to use MKO for ‘cross-border terrorism’ against Iran.
Or take weapons of mass destruction. The United States opposes the Syrian proposal to make the Middle East free of all WMD, because that would bring into focus the Israeli WMD arsenal that cannot be touched for reasons of domestic American politics. But, concurrently, Washington supports making the Korean Peninsula free of all WMD, since that would take care of North Korea.
Instead of meaningless rhetoric on ‘Unity of the Ummah’, only a collective and coordinated strategy via the OIC can make it a force multiplier for such Muslim issues. The OIC must also build coalitions with Europe and China, among others. The Kuala Lumpur Summit provides the opportunity to get the OIC’s act together. That moment must be seized.
E-mail queries and comments to: [email protected]