Reinventing OIC

Thirty-six years after its establishment, a new generation of men has taken over the affairs of the Organization of Islamic Conference, OIC, known to insiders as "O I see". This expression sums up the organization in a rather succinct way, for since its somewhat ad hoc establishment in 1969, the organization has done nothing but "seen with concern" the horrendous crimes committed against Muslims by the West as well as by their own rulers. Its establishment was ad hoc because it took the actual arson of Islam's third holiest site, the Al-Aqsa mosque, and the military occupation of Jerusalem by the Zionist state, for the heads of the then twenty-three Muslim states to gather in Rabat on September 22-25, 1969. Its inception was flawed right from the beginning because instead of gathering an army of Muslims to liberate Jerusalem and protect Islam's sacred site, this gathering of kings, military dictators, presidents, prime ministers, and despots merely issued a declaration stating the obvious: "the damage to Al-Aqsa Mosque has plunged over six hundred million followers of Islam throughout the world into the deepest anguish."

This sterile beginning had no chance of growth save expanding its own infecundity. What followed is, as they say, history: The decision by the meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Muslim states held in March 1970 to establish a permanent secretariat at Jeddah "pending the liberation of Jerusalem"; the adoption of a formal charter of the organization by the Third Conference of Foreign Ministers held at Karachi in 1972; the turning of the Jeddah secretariat into a cesspool of intrigues and bureaucratic hurdles; the incessant issuance of declarations and recommendations by the self-appointed heads of Muslim states at each of their summits; and the sheer paper-pushing of hundreds of men and women in the OIC sections of the offices of their ministries of foreign affairs.

The plenitudinous Charter of the Organization, adopted in March 1972, is perhaps the only document of the Organization that has some truth in it, for it designated the liberation of Jerusalem as the pivotal matter of importance--but it sought a liberation through "the assistance of the United Nations and other powers". As if Jerusalem was occupied by the Zionist state without the prior approval of the "other powers," and as if the United Nations was an organization representing the oppressed and wronged! These heads of states obviously had no heads on their shoulders.

Thirty-six years later, the six hundred million followers of Islam on whose behalf OIC was supposed to have been established have grown to 1.5 billion; not only Jerusalem, but all of Palestine is now practically under Zionist occupation, and instead of being an Islamic cause, Palestine has become a Palestinian issue. In addition, the United States of America has established the foundation of a long-term military, economic, and cultural occupation of the entire Muslim world. The presence of the American military bases and/or client rulers in Iraq, Afghanistan, the entire Persian Gulf, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the whole of Central Asia, Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, and Morocco, has effectively recolonized the entire Muslim world.

It is in this changed geo-political environment that the new generation of men (there are hardly any women) which has taken over the reigns of OIC is attempting to reinvent it. These men are different in many ways from the generation of old kings, military dictators, and self-appointed presidents who had gathered in Rabat in 1969: they are better educated, better informed about the realities of the world, and in some cases, as in the case of the Secretary General of the Organization, have research and scholarship added to their credentials. But they share a foundational handicap with the founding fathers of OIC: they represent no one but their own selves. The Organization is, therefore, essentially a club of the unelected, unrepresentative rulers of the Muslim masses.

This club has no clout and knows it, as was obvious in the recent gathering of the Foreign Ministers in Sana, where a late call had hardly been made for a permanent Muslim seat in the UN Security Council when one of the foreign ministers present exclaimed: "it is not doable"! This impotence stems from their own shallow character, for if the body were a true representative of the Muslim masses, it would not care even for the United Nations; it would be much stronger than that body.

Fortunately, it is too late in the day for this new generation of men to fool the Muslim masses. It is not 1969 but 2005, and there is a vanguard of brave Muslims who have taken upon themselves to fight the recolonization of their land and civilization at all fronts. There are enough Muslim intellectuals in this vanguard to expose the designs of the dreamers of the American Century as well as their own corrupt and colonized rulers. Trenches are not empty anymore, and there is a gradual awakening in the Muslims themselves to the true nature of Islam.

Literally millions of men and women are being redrawn to the message of the Qur'an with a fervor and devotion that has not been seen in the Muslim world in the last three hundred years. These men and women know that the message of their Noble Book is a complete message, revealed by the All-Knowing to the noblest of men for their guidance, and that it encompasses the entire range of beliefs and actions for this earthly life. This new generation of Muslims is acutely aware of the corruption and deviations that have tarnished the Islamic tradition and customs at all levels, and this awareness is producing correctives.

This process of revival and correction is neither new nor a passing fashion; it is built into the very unfolding of Islam in human time through the twin concepts of Islah (correction of deviations) and Tajdid (revival). A Mujaddid (Reviver) of the new century has not yet appeared, but the Prophetic tradition that tells us that Allah will send a Mujaddid to his Ummah in every century has always proven to be true, and there is no reason to believe that this century will be without one. It is, therefore, a foregone conclusion that the Light of Allah cannot be extinguished by falsehood (Baatil), at least for believers in the Divine Word, the Qur'an.

What is required of Muslims at this stage is, therefore, a twin approach to contemporary realities: they need to have trust and hope in Allah, and they need to be aware of the hypocrites who gather in their name under tight security, often provided by FBI and ex-military men of the United States' army, in fortified capitals of their lands, who wish to reinvent Samari’s golden calf to allure 1.5 billion men and women now awakening to the call of their profound faith.

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