DAKAR, March 11: Facing “Islamophobia” in the West, the world’s biggest Muslim body is seeking to re-brand itself this week as a forum for settling conflicts peacefully and for redistributing wealth to the world’s poorest states.

At a summit on Thursday and Friday in Senegal, the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) will seek to agree on a modern charter that will give it a more active, influential role as the voice of Islam in a globalised world.

OIC leaders meet in Dakar at a time when suspicion in the West about the Muslim world remains high, still coloured by the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States allegedly carried out by the Al Qaeda.

Subsequent attacks by militants in Spain and Britain, coupled with the US-led invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and the occupation of Palestine by Israel, have stoked fears of a global clash of civilisations.

OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu called for a concerted effort by the group to promote dialogue and mutual respect with the non-Muslim world to fight hatred and bigotry.

“Combating Islamophobia is and will continue to be one of the biggest challenges faced by the Muslim World,” he told OIC foreign ministers meeting in Dakar.

With its members spanning the Middle East, Africa and Asia, differences of race, language and history, and even religious observance, have often prevented the world Muslim community -- known as the Ummah -- from acting as a unified, cohesive force.

The OIC groups some of the planet’s richest countries, such as oil producers Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar, with poor African nations like Guinea Bissau, Niger and Burkina Faso who languish at the bottom of UN development rankings.

Senegal, hosting its second OIC summit in 17 years, wants the Ummah to harness its geographical reach and immense resources so it can punch at its full weight in the world arena and assist its poorest members, mostly in Africa.

“The OIC has existed for 30 years but is still trying to find itself,” host President Abdoulaye Wade told Reuters ahead of the March 13-14 summit in Dakar.

FIGHT AGAINST POVERTY: The octogenarian Senegalese leader thinks the group can do much more to foster aid, trade and investment.

“I would like to propose that this summit be the basis for a determined and effective fight against poverty,” Wade said.

Wade wants this week’s meeting to top up a special OIC fund — the Islamic Solidarity Fund for Development, initially projected at $10 billion — to finance anti-poverty projects mostly in Africa, but also in other parts of the Muslim world.—Reuters