KARACHI, July 5: The terrorist attack in Quetta in which scores of people were killed on Friday was deplored at a seminar during which concern was also expressed at attempts to weaken religious moorings of the Ummah and its ineffectiveness in the contemporary world order.

The seminar on “Islam and the Muslim identity —the Ummah” was organised by the Karachi Women’s Peace Committee on Saturday.

Speaking on the occasion, former ambassador Mahdi Masud emphasized that in order to meet the grave situation, major Islamic states should harmonize their perceived conflict of interests in favour of a genuinely coordinated approach in concert with China, Russia and major European powers whose interests also lied in a multilateral world order.

He said that with the loss of the counterpoise provided by superpower competition during the cold war, the need for a closer Third World cooperation assumed high urgency for counteracting arbitrary pressures and threatened intervention.

He was of the view that if Islamic states should promote complementarity of economic interests amongst themselves.

He pointed out that the increased consciousness of Islamic identity and the rise of populist Islam, which marked the last quarter of the twentieth century, had turned into the greatest threat to the Islamic identity itself because of the western search for an enemy to replace the former Soviet Union and the western identification of Islamic populism as the new threat.

The rise of Islamic fundamentalism had served as the cover under which Hindu, Jewish, and right-wing Christian fundamentalisms had asserted their extremist agenda without any check from the world community which had been training all its guns on the Islamic world, said Mr Masud.

He said that Islamic states had an important role to play in global politics. Despite this potential, he said, the OIC had been tragically ineffective due to the perceived conflict (apparent or real) between the interests of the ruling regimes in pivotal Islamic states.

Dr Fazalur Rahman, director Hamdard University, explained the context and meaning in which reference was made to the Ummah and also dealt with its different facets.

He was of the view that the first major setback to political unity of the Ummah was caused by the rise of nationalism after the first World war. That is why, he contended , the OIC had been ineffective since its inception and had been reduced into a debating society.

He said that the attitude on Afghanistan and Iraq wars was in fact a betrayal of the Ummah and supportive of those who had imposed those war. He claimed that those wars were fought against the Muslims with their money.

He also regarded secularism as a tool being used by the western world to further attack the religious moorings of the Ummah. He said that democracy was also in conflict with Islamic beliefs because it dealt with relativism. He claimed that owing to this conflict western democracy had not flourished in Muslim countries.

He was concerned about moves to attack the religious unity of the Ummah from within and outside.

Dr Mohammad Ali Siddiqui also referred to the evolving international political situation and also touched upon differences and polemical disagreement on religious beliefs which had become a major source of conflict and violence both within and outside the country.

Earlier, Narqis Rahman, chairperson of the KWPC, and Mrs Siddiqueh Hidayatullah spelt out the objectives of the organization.