ISLAMABAD, June 2: The two-day international seminar on "OIC Challenges and Response - Enlightened Moderation" which concluded on Wednesday has recommended to the OIC leadership to revitalize , reinvigorate and restructure the organization through a coherent response to the challenges faced by its member states.

The recommendations of the seminar would be presented in the next summit of the OIC foreign ministers conference being held in Istanbul on June 13-16 as a new vision to the organization.

The seminar concluded that "Ummah was faced with grave security and foreign occupation crises like in Palestine, Kashmir, Nagorno Karabakh, the Golan and Iraq and the international community has failed to resolve these festering crises which in turn were producing extremist tendencies within a minority of the Ummah because of the feelings of injustice, hopelessness and desperation".

Speaking at a joint press briefing at the Foreign Office, Mushahid Hussain Syed, convener of the seminar and a member of the OIC Commission of Eminent Persons; Dr Hassan Kamal, Malaysian Islamic University rector and a member of the commission; and Masood Khan, FO spokesman, released recommendations of the seminar.

The OIC, they said, should implement a new vision based on inter-faith and inter-region dialogue. Countries like Russia, Philippines and India with large Muslim population should associate themselves with the OIC which may also be considered by the organization.

The recommendations said: "The Muslim countries have failed to develop economic cooperation amongst themselves at the regional or Ummah level apart from the fact that their vast natural resources were exploited by foreign powers to their disadvantage.

"The Ummah has failed to present a united stand in the face of the challenges of globalization and has played a marginal role in the deliberations on the international economic fora.

"The Muslim world has failed to cope with the challenge of 'the battle of ideas' by not presenting an alternative which would cover political, economic, social and cultural assets of life in the modern world.

The intelligentsia and opinion leaders in the Islamic world must present their perspectives to the various ideological and intellectual challenges and also open doors of dialogue with non-OIC countries and their civil societies.

"The OIC countries must strive to end backwardness in scientific and technological advancement by enhancing allocations in these field in which West posed a formidable challenge."

The OIC recommendations stressed projection of the true picture of Islam and its values through media to counter the western media which has cast the Muslim world and Islam in a negative light by stereotyping and demonizing them.

"The OIC should formulate a coherent response which could inter alia include, strengthening of unity and solidarity of Ummah, adopting common positions and strategies in dealing with major security issues facing the Ummah such as Palestine and Kashmir."

It asked for establishment of a ministerial group of troikas of OIC summit and ICFM, carry out internal reforms to encourage and support representative government, avoid the policy of either confrontation or capitulation in dealing with the West, urging West to resolve outstanding disputes of concern to Muslim countries, to ensure that the struggle of Islamic peoples for their inalienable right to self-determination resisting foreign occupation and alien domination was not equated with terrorism and to encourage the promotion and projection of human rights in member states.