IF there is an outfit less relevant than the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to today’s issues and problems, I have not heard of it.
True, the South Asian club (Saarc) must count as a close second, but at least it has the potential to develop into something meaningful once the poisonous Indo-Pak rivalry subsides. The OIC, on the other hand, is like a person all dressed up for a party, with nowhere to go.
As I write this, our newspapers are full of the earnest entreaties for tolerance and harmony emanating from the OIC’s ‘extraordinary session’ in Makkah. Speaker after speaker has denounced violence and urged unity. Kings and dictators have followed each other to the rostrum to denounce terrorism in the name of Islam.
This conference was called to address the issues arising from the poor image Islam has acquired after 9/11. But as far as I know, nobody has called for reforming the political institutions in the member states of the OIC. There has been no ringing appeal for freedom, democracy and civil liberty.
It is the lack of these factors that has caused much of the unrest, turmoil and violence that is giving the Muslim world and Islam itself a bad name. While discussing issues like educational reforms and image-building, the delegates at the OIC conference are all pretending to ignore the elephant in the room.
When people are denied the opportunity to air their grievances freely, they go underground and turn to violence. In a democracy, competing interest groups can press their demands in parliament, the press and in public rallies. But when all these avenues are blocked — as they are in virtually every Muslim country — people have no recourse but to turn to violence.
This is not to condone or justify terrorism. However, if we are serious about exploring the causes underlying the rage we see in so many young Muslims today, we need to look within. It has become convenient to blame issues like Palestine, Kashmir and Chechnya for terrorism resorted to in the name of Islam. But this is a cop-out: while these intractable conflicts no doubt fuel the anger on the Muslim streets, much of the fury is directed towards authoritarian rule in most Muslim countries.
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has appealed for educational reforms: “Developing the curriculum is essential to building a tolerant Muslim personality... and to having a society that rejects isolation”. This will make a refreshing change in a country that, for decades, has been supporting the most extreme brand of Wahabi/Salafi Islam through the hundreds of madressahs and mosques it has been financing across the world.
For King Abdullah to have discovered the virtues of tolerance is good news indeed. Thus far, the schoolchildren in his kingdom have been fed a steady diet of disdain and hatred of other beliefs, as well as for strands of Islam other than the ruling creed of Wahabism. No religion but Islam can be openly practised (and certainly not preached) in Saudi Arabia. And yet, taking advantage of the tolerance of western societies, the Saudi government has been funding the construction of mosques from Los Angeles to London to Lisbon.
Thus far, successive OIC conferences have produced nothing to show for their efforts apart from hot air. The Organization has a well-staffed and well-paid secretariat, a sheaf of declarations and pronouncements, and pious intentions. Alas, it lacks the political will, the vision and the sense of direction to transform it from a moribund talk shop into a dynamic agent of change. Over the years, it has failed to put a stop to the rivalry and bloodshed that strain relationships among so many of its member states.
Perhaps the most sensible statement to emerge from the current conference was from Abdullah Badawi, Malaysia’s prime minister who pointed out that the Muslim world “is faced with grave problems that affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people across the globe.” He went on to declare: “We can no longer neglect these problems or expect others to solve them for us... Muslims of the present age appear hopelessly divided... We can no longer afford to be in a state of denial...”
And yet a state of denial is precisely what defines the Muslim world today. Unable to cope with the relentless pace of change that is transforming the world, we hark back to an imagined past where things were more static, and when Muslims enjoyed military domination over much of the world. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia echoed this kind of wishful thinking when he said at the conference:
“It is here that the Islamic Fiqh Academy, with its overhauled make-up, comes to assume its historic role and responsibility in all walks of life ... to reach a stage of solidarity and, God willing, to a true and fortified unity ... to restore the Ummah to its rightful place in the balance of power.”
With deep respect and humility, let me be the first to say that I am not going to hold my breath in the expectation that the Islamic Fiqh Academy, whether overhauled or not, will miraculously “restore the Ummah to its rightful place in the balance of power”.
A few weeks ago, when I wrote about the futility of current misguided efforts to restore the caliphate, I received many e-mails from indignant readers. “Why,” they demanded. “cannot Muslims unite when the Europeans had come together on the European Union platform, and the Americans had united as the US?” One answer is geographical proximity; another is common interests; and a third is shared history, values and culture. Above all, the two examples are both secular enterprises.
Even in the Middle East where there are many contiguous Muslim countries, they often do not make good neighbours. Another problem is that all of them are net importers of technology, and lag far behind the West in science. Thus, they can (and do) buy and sell oil, but very little else from each other. There is thus little basis for any kind of economic free trade union.
Another issue Muslims are in denial about is the whole concept of the ummah: the idea of a supra-national religious community contradicts the notion of the nation-state. Which aspect of identity has prior claim on an individual’s loyalty? Perhaps the OIC conference could more fruitfully discuss this conundrum.