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OIC: Organized
irrelevance
By Phar Kim Beng
HONG KONG - As the prospect of a US-led invasion
of Iraq looms ever larger, bypassing the will of a
majority of members at the United Nations, the Arab
League, if not the world writ large, the Organization of
Islamic Conference (OIC) has belatedly joined the fray,
calling an "emergency" meeting on Iraq in Kuala Lumpur
on Wednesday.
The question is, however, can the
OIC, a grouping representing some 57 Muslim countries,
of which Iraq is a member, deter the war plans of the
United States? The quick and easy answer is: No.
In fact, until Wednesday's meeting was cobbled
together by OIC members already in Kuala Lumpur for the
Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit, the organization had
not even been scheduled to hold a summit until October,
also in the Malaysian capital. Had the OIC been an
effective organization, it would have convened an
emergency session to discuss the fate of Iraq long
before now.
Ironically, the OIC summit in Kuala
Lumpur will be the swan song of Malaysian Prime Minister
Mahathir Mohamad, a Muslim leader who has gained a
reputation for his hard-hitting rhetoric against the
West. And it was Mahathir, who spoke out eloquently
against a US invasion of Iraq in his role as host of the
NAM summit, who chaired Wednesday's OIC meeting. The
current chairman of the OIC is Qatar, which of course is
actually hosting US troops poised to strike Iraq and
wanted to put off a meeting until next month.
What then is the role of the OIC, if any?
The OIC was formed in 1967 as a reaction to the
burning of Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem (Baitul Muqaddis,
to Arabs), in what was then seen as an act of sabotage
to smite the Muslim world. Because of the impact of the
Cold War, national rivalry and internal disunity, the
OIC has had very little impact throughout its existence.
To this day, violent conflicts involving Muslim
interest remain resistant to any form of solutions. Be
it Kashmir or Palestine, there has been no end to the
bloodletting. During the Bosnian conflict in 1992, while
the OIC tried to be actively involved, its role was
marginal at best.
Stifled by the United States
and the European Union, the OIC found itself immobilized
on many fronts. The arms embargo on Bosnia-Herzegovina
was not lifted. In the end, members of the OIC took to
illegally shipping caches of arms into Bosnia, in
defiance of the United Nations.
Although the OIC
tried to serve as a mediator between Manila and Mindanao
in the conflict in the southern Philippines, its
intervention there was ineffective too. Instead,
Indonesia and Malaysia have had a more prominent role in
persuading the warring factions to negotiate. To the
extent Libya played a role as a mediator in the
conflict, it did so as an attempt to trump up the
international standing of its leader, Colonel Moammar
Gaddafi.
Nor was the OIC able to play any role
in ending the Aceh conflict in Indonesia that lasted for
26 years. It was only this past December that Indonesia
ended the separatist war with the Acehnese rebels. Both
sides have since agreed not to increase their military
strength during the confidence-building period.
Because of the OIC's dismal record, some have
alluded to it as a case of "oh, I see," a dysfunctional
organization whose meetings, some OIC observers have
confided, are occasionally marked by such tedium as
whether smoking should be allowed during the
deliberations.
In the face of the problems in
Iraq, coupled with the attempts by the United States to
subjugate various elements thought to belong to Muslim
terrorist networks, the OIC has had very little to say
on the issue of terrorism as well. Indeed, after the
attacks of September 11, 2001, it took the OIC two
months to protest the actions perpetrated by radical
Muslims. Nor has the OIC, to the chagrin of many, taken
a stance against suicide attacks, a military tactic
clearly banned in Islam.
In its April 2002
meeting in Kuala Lumpur, the OIC's 13-member ministerial
committee did not agree on the definition of terrorism.
Mahathir told the gathering that all attacks on
civilians - either by government forces or by suicide
bombers - should be classified as terrorism: "Whether
the attackers are acting on their own or on the orders
of their governments, whether they are regulars or
irregulars, if the attack is against civilians then they
must be considered as terrorists."
However,
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi was among the
many delegates at that meeting who argued that
Palestinian suicide bombers were not to be deemed as
terrorists. Said Kharazi: "In Palestine, the lands of
these people who are committing suicide have been
occupied. So in general, the resistance is a legitimate
one. To resist against occupation is quite different
from the terrorist attack on New York, which was
condemned by everyone, including the Islamic Republic of
Iran."
In the end, the committee sought to
convene a UN conference to consider the issue. But OIC
delegates admitted privately that they doubted the
United States and other permanent members of the UN
Security Council would support the idea of such a
conference. This was because the debate would invariably
be enlarged to criticize the iron-fist tactics of
Israel, an ally of the US, one of the contributing
causes of the suicidal attacks.
Be that as it
may, the current weakness of the OIC, an institution
meant to represent the interest of the Muslim states,
should not lead one to brush off political Islam as an
insignificant force in international politics. If
anything, anyone who ignores political Islam, otherwise
known as Islamic revivalism, does so at his or her own
peril. This is because, whether one sees political Islam
as a geopolitical expression - therein a religion
controlling various choke points in different parts of
the world - or a potential revolutionary movement
quietly on the march to reclaim the state, it is
undeniable that political Islam cannot be suppressed
indefinitely. It is a political force, not by virtue of
its sheer numbers throughout the world alone or due to
the mineral assets the Islamic world controls in West
Asia, but the demographic trends with which the Islamic
world is undergoing too.
Up to 70 percent of the
people in Algeria, for instance, are below the age of
40. Their frustration with the political system, which
has been evident in decades, coupled with their youthful
exuberance, makes for an explosive combination. As has
been shown from the French Revolution down, idealism
mixed with frustration, once allowed to combust, makes
for potential revolutionary excesses, both during and
after the authorities have been overturned.
Indeed, this demographic profile is the defining
characteristic of North Africa and other parts of the
Muslim world, Indonesia and Malaysia included. In other
words, they are the Muslim world's Generation X. What
makes them different from their Western counterparts is
their growing angst, not affluence.
Whether the
OIC can function or not, political Islam is a "pole" in
world politics that cannot be ignored. Although the
present balance of power does not require anyone to seek
allegiance with the OIC, nor does the current
preponderance of the United States require Washington,
DC, to pay heed to the views of the OIC, it is
nevertheless the case that the Islamic world is becoming
more frustrated and impatient than ever before. Some are
trying to alter the parameters of debate on political
Islam.
Malaysia, for one, has tried to cultivate
a more moderate Islam, what in official circles in
Malaysia is defined as "liberal Islam"; an Islam, in
other words, that favors the use of democratic
procedures to register dissent.
Last June, a
conference on "Liberal Islam" was held. The
deliberations of liberal Islam drew on the thoughts of
various leading scholars, of whom Dr Ahmet Davutoglu, a
leading Turkish intellectual who is now the chief
advisor in international affairs to the prime minister
of Turkey, was one. The conference will now be a leading
annual Track 2 event in Kuala Lumpur. The goal is to
influence the intellectual climate to highlight a more
pacific side of Islam.
Unsurprisingly,
Wednesday's meeting of the OIC came up with very little.
The idea of an oil embargo was raised, but no decision
was made. Mahathir warned that oil is "a double-edged
sword", noting that poor countries would be hurt by such
an action as well as the wealthy West.
But the
weakness of the OIC does not logically imply that the
larger Islamic world can take things sitting down.
Silence is not consent in the Muslim world. If the
United States overplays its hand in its invasion of Iraq
and other Muslim countries, there is no dearth of
radical-thinking Muslim youths to represent or project
the power of political Islam.
The OIC may be
dead in its tracks. The march of aggrieved Muslim
youths, while disorganized and unsteady in their steps,
is nevertheless also ineluctable if the Muslim world
remains under siege.
(©2003 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
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