Putrajaya (Malaysia): Many parts of the Islamic world are in “deep crisis” with Muslims suffering more from militancy and terrorism than others, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said on January 27.

“There are many challenges that we need to overcome. In many parts of our world, we are in deep crisis,” Abdullah told some 50 participants from 15 member countries of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

“The OIC landscape is a distressing one. Darfur is a humanitarian disaster, two of us are occupied — Iraq completely and Palestine partially,” said Abdullah, who currently chairs the OIC.

“Some of the OIC countries are rich and their people affluent. But they are too few and far between. The OIC landscape is littered with nations that are poor and people that are hungry.
“They are largely at the mercy of developed nations and of forces beyond their control.”

An estimated 70,000 people have died and 1.5 million have been displaced in fighting between ethnic rebels and government forces and their militia allies in Sudan’s Darfur region since February 2003.

Nearly 50 scholars and diplomats from Burkina Faso, Egypt, Iran, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Morocco, Nigeria, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sudan, Turkey and Yemen attended the three-day meeting of the OIC Commission of Eminent Persons in Malaysia’s administrative capital Putrajaya.

“Uppermost in the commission’s agenda must surely be the question of how to strengthen the prospects for peace, security and stability in Muslim countries, and between Muslim countries and others,” Abdullah said.
“Equally high in the commission’s agenda would be the question of how poverty and illiteracy in the Muslim world can be eradicated.”

Islam and Muslims have also been “portrayed by their detractors as violent and intolerant” since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America, he said.

“This profiling must stop. It does grave injustice to the overwhelming majority of Muslims who live in peace,” he said.
“Indeed, Muslims suffer much more from militancy and terrorism than do others.”

On the sidelines of the conference, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Gholamali Khoshroo rejected US charges that Iran was a threat to world peace.

Reacting to a statement by President George W. Bush in which he refused to rule out military action unless Iran abandoned a nuclear energy programme which Washington believes is a cover for developing a bomb, he said Tehran would not be intimidated.

Washington was simply anxious about Tehran’s improving relationship with the rest of the world, he said, adding: “We are cooperating with the United Nations, and the rest of the countries in the world are not happy with the US taking this action.” Abdullah said Muslims must “take effective measures to deconstruct the intellectual and ideological foundations of religious extremism and sectarianism, for they do great damage to the cause of Islam and the welfare of Muslims.

“We need to close the great divide that has been created between the Muslim world and the West.

“In embarking on this crucial mission, we must guard against extreme motivations or extremist elements. It is most unfortunate that some have narrowed down the concept of jihad to... physical fighting.

At a news conference later, Abdullah condemned suicide bombers. “Any kind of action that is violent in nature and causes the killing of innocent people is something we cannot accept.”

OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu told delegates there was a need “to adopt a clear definition of jihad in Islam and to identify those who can declare jihad...

“The distortion of the true image of Islam by spreading an extremist religious ideology in some of our countries through the issuance of fatwas by self-appointed `religious authorities’ is in clear contradiction with the tolerant spirit of our centuries-old Islamic tradition,” Ihsanoglu said.

The meeting discussed reforms to the OIC, which is often dismissed by critics as no more than a talking shop. Its recommendations will be submitted to the OIC foreign ministers’ meeting in Yemen later this year.