Aziz unveils roadmap for Muslim renaissance: Address at Islamic Economic Forum
By Our Reporter
KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 1: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Saturday unfolded a 10-point strategy for leveraging the collective social, economic and political potential of Muslim countries for their emancipation by restructuring their economies and improving delivery of social services, and creating necessary intellectual environment for the renaissance of the Muslim world.
He gave the roadmap for the renaissance of the Ummah while delivering key note address on “Leveraging Economic Potential of Muslims: The Forward” at the inaugural session of the three-day World Islamic Economic Forum meeting which was also attended by President of Maldives Mamoon Abdul Gayoom, former deputy prime minister of Malaysia Tan Sri Musa Bin Hitam, Foreign Minister of Malaysia Hamid Bin Syed Jaafar Albar and several businessmen, traders and investors from 44 countries.
Mr Aziz got a rousing applause for his thought provoking address in which his thrust was that without attaining economic self-reliance and huge investment for promotion of education, especially in the field of science and technology, the Muslim countries, whose economies were weak, would not be able to be on their own.
He called upon economically weak Muslim countries to stop looking towards the rich countries — Muslims or non-Muslim — for aids and grants, and instead create a conducive environment for attracting investment at home.
Mr Aziz said the conference has been convened at a time when the Ummah was faced with several challenges, especially Iraq and Afghanistan, which were confronting the menace of violence and turmoil and terrorism was being associated with their faith.
“The Muslims of Palestine and Kashmir are continuously being denied freedom. In these conditions, it has become imperative for the Muslim Ummah to unite in order to overcome these challenges,” emphasized Prime Minister Aziz.
The greatest challenge the Muslims faced today, he said, emanated from the ‘insidious linkage that is made between terrorism and Muslims. We are being dubbed as fundamentalists, extremists and fanatics and theory of clash of civilization has been put forward. We can negate this negative image and prevent people from behaving irrationally by leveraging our potential and improving their standard of living,” said the prime minister.
Unfolding his roadmap for the Muslims, Prime Minister Aziz said: “We must promote greater unity, cohesion and cooperation within the Muslim Ummah. This requires us to address and resolve dissentions within our societies as well as the disputes that embroil us.”
He pointed at the need for ‘implementation of reforms to restructure our economies through de-regularisation, liberalisation and privatisation to leverage the full potential of productive capacities of Muslim states which would ensure a sustained high growth trajectory to raise living standards of their people.’
Mr Aziz also urged them to encourage cooperation ‘to share best practices with each other’ and ‘create complementarities’ between them in the economic and trade fields to ensure a win-win situation for all. He emphasized the ‘need to move forward towards an eventual Islamic Economic Union.’
Calling for urgent reorganization of the OIC, the sole voice of Ummah, the prime minister said it should be reinvigourated and repositioned as a forum for empowerment of the Muslims to meet the challenges of the new millennium.
Mr Aziz stressed the need for reforms in the Islamic world as ‘our faith enjoins us to adapt change through Ijtehad.’
He observed that there was no substitute for good governance, empowerment of people, effective management, structural reforms, consistency of policies, transparency and accountability.
Later responding to various questions, Mr Aziz held that education was much more important than the arms, however, he added, it would only be possible when these lingering disputes were resolved.
He noted that while many Muslim states had developed and prospered yet 24 per cent of the Muslim population earned less than a dollar a day and an average of 39 per cent lived below poverty level. Muslims, he said, constituted 19 per cent of the world’s population but only 6 per cent of its income.
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said Malaysia was the leading example and successful model of how the Muslim Ummah could meet the challenges of the 21st century.
He also referred to the various structural reforms being made by the regime in Pakistan for rejuvenating and repositioning across the entire spectrum of governance to meet the challenges of development and progress.
Earlier, in his address, the Malaysian foreign minister observed that the OIC members with a population of 1.25 billion possessed 70 per cent of the world’s total energy and 40 per cent of the raw material, but Muslims all over the world were weak and vulnerable due to many challenges they were facing.
He said the solution of those problems lay in collective efforts, especially in the fields of economic growth, science and technology, technical education and women empowerment.
He expressed the opinion that Islam encouraged trade which had played an important role in spreading Islam in the world.
