WASHINGTON, Oct 13: The United States supports President Pervez Musharraf’s vision of an enlightened moderation for the Muslim Ummah and will be keenly watching Pakistan’s efforts at promoting this concept at the OIC summit, diplomats told Dawn on Monday.

The sources said that President Musharraf discussed his views on the subject with President George W. Bush when the two leaders met in September in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session.

Pakistani officials, who helped develop this theory, said that President Musharraf would urge the Organization of Islamic Conference to play a pro-active role in combating religious militancy and extremism, an objective that supported the global war on terrorism.

But unlike the US strategy, which so far has relied mainly on military might to crush real and perceived threats to its interests, President Musharraf’s proposal focuses on two major aspects of unrest in the Islamic world: poverty and deprivation and a widespread feeling of isolation.

A key element of the president’s strategy for fighting religious extremism is the need to resolve political issues that continue to pitch the Islamic world against the West, particularly against the United States.

The foremost among these issues was the Arab-Israeli dispute and developers of the theory of enlightened moderation argue that the US and other Western powers should double their efforts to resolve the issue if they really wish to curb extremism in the Middle East.

The theory also highlights the Kashmir issue and argues that it can cause a nuclear conflict in South Asia if it remains unresolved.

Presidential adviser Sharifuddin Pirzada and a team of key legal and political experts played a key role in developing the theory, diplomats said.

Some of them, who accompanied President Musharraf and Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali during their recent visits to the United States, said that the theory urges world leaders to consider why its only the Muslims whose issues remain unresolved and what affect does it have on the thinking of the ordinary Muslims.

The international community’s failure to resolve these issues, it argues, causes many in the Islamic world to believe that they are being unjustly treated by the world powers, allowing religious extremists to exploit Muslim masses and recruit volunteers for their violent causes.

The theory, however, rejects the concept of clash of civilization, which it says, has become a tool in the hands of the extremists wanting to further exacerbate the situation. Instead it proposes closer cooperation and understanding between the Islamic and Western civilizations, with a view to promoting international peace and harmony.

It also urges Muslim governments to work jointly to discourage militant groups within their ranks and cooperate with the international community in dealing with this menace.

It invites Western nations to invest in development projects across the Islamic world with the aim to creating jobs and promoting prosperity.

Without jobs and prosperity, it argues, it will be difficult to combat extremists.

Diplomatic observers in Washington say that senior US officials have closely studied this theory and would be keenly watching how far does Pakistan go in promoting these concepts at the OIC summit in Malaysia.

Observers say that the US would definitely welcome any OIC move to help resolve its differences with the Islamic world and would be watching the summit’s proceedings with great interest.