PUTRAJAYA, Oct 16: President Gen Pervez Musharraf on Thursday proposed a commission of eminent persons drawn from OIC member states to develop a plan of action to help the Ummah meet challenges of the 21st century.
The commission, he suggested, should evolve recommendations for the restructuring of the OIC system to infuse dynamism in its working.
Addressing the 10th session of the Organization of Islamic Conference, the president called on Muslim leaders to pressure New Delhi to move ahead with peace talks over Kashmir.
He said the proposed commission should consider establishing an Islamic development fund for financing OIC programmes through mandatory contributions as a percentage of the GDP of each member state.
He proposed convening of an extraordinary session of the Islamic summit conference to approve recommendations of the commission by the end of 2004.
Referring to the Kashmir issue, Gen Musharraf sought to rally his counterparts by describing the conflict as a “core Islamic cause”.
He pleaded for the OIC to help persuade India to enter talks based on an action plan for peace he delivered at the United Nations last month.
“This conference should ask India to reconsider its rejectionist and belligerent posture,” he said, adding India’s confrontation with Pakistan was dangerous and pointless.
The president said attempts to equate Islam with terror was leading to a widening gulf between Muslims and the West. Rejecting the confrontationist militant stance, he feared that such an approach would amount to playing into the hands of those who desired a clash of civilizations.
He said the crisis confronting the Muslim world was not only external. “It is also internal. It is rooted in our own weaknesses and vulnerabilities.”
“A clash of civilizations is inconceivable for Muslims,” he said and added that it was in the interest of the Muslim world as well as the global society that the world must join hands to avert this clash.
EXTREMISM REJECTED: Elaborating his vision of “enlightened moderation”, the president said as a first prong, the Muslims would have to overcome internal weakness of the Islamic world and reject militancy and extremism.
In this regard, he underlined the need for developing human resources to reduce poverty. “Poverty and illiteracy breed extremism and orthodoxy.”
Unfortunately, he said, neither Islam nor the Muslim world today was known with reference to true Islamic teachings, our glorious past, or our core humanistic values.
The president said the image of Islam was being tarnished by the extremist actions of a tiny minority. He said some of the madressahs were being misused to propagate the extremist version of our moderate religion.
“Their acts of violence, perpetrated in the name of our noble faith, are abhorrent and unacceptable. Those who pay for the acts of these extremists are the majority of Muslims who are moderate and tolerant, as prescribed by Islam,” he said.
“We must break our silence. We must reclaim our faith from these usurpers and project the real moderate and tolerant spirit of Islam to the world.”
The president said that just and peaceful resolutions of disputes, involving Muslim peoples, would automatically marginalize those extremist groups who preached violence and terrorism as the means of vengeance against the West.
He said the OIC had a critical role to play in the execution of the strategy of enlightened moderation.
The president said the OIC had not lived up to the objectives and added that a considerable measure of the onus of failure rested with the member states.
President Musharraf emphasized that the OIC needed reform and restructuring to enable it to respond to the challenges and opportunities facing the Muslim world.
“The Organization of Islamic Conference should become the catalyst for the Ummah’s re-generation. It must transform itself into a dynamic functional organization,” he said.—APP
Dear visitor, the comments section is undergoing an overhaul and will return soon.