By IPS Correspondents
ISLAMABAD, Oct 19 2003 (IPS)

U.S. President George W Bush should be happy with his hat trick of foreign policy successes within just a week, starting with a unanimous vote from the U.N. Security Council on Iraq.

This week too, the U.S. Congress approved Bush’s request for a whopping 87 billion U.S. dollars for Washington’s adventure in Iraq.

Likewise, Washington ought to be pleased that the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) lived up to its well-deserved reputation for masterly inaction in the face of the biggest challenges facing the Muslim world post Sep. 11.

On the eve of the Islamic summit, Malaysia’s Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, stated that the OIC’s 10th summit in Kuala Lumpur, held on Oct. 16-17, would dare to ‘defy the expectations’ of its detractors.

He said: ”They expect us to be disunited and disorganised. They expect to be able to continue to divide us and dominate us.” Regrettably, far from even a feeble attempt to ‘defy expectations’, the OIC lived up to the expectations of its critics.

The end result of the OIC summit is in effect a commitment to continued non-action through a series of platitudes and pious pronouncements of intent, but without the vision and will to act.

Rather than examining what the OIC summit achieved, it would be more instructive to examine what it did not achieve, since the summit apparently took a strategic decision to do nothing.

First, the OIC summit failed to agree on a new secretary general, postponing this vital decision on the person who would run the organisation for its next term.

Second, the summit did not take much action on the two most important issues facing the Muslim world – Palestine and Iraq.

The OIC ignored the ‘intifadah’ or resistance of the Palestinians, which is at the core of Muslims’ discontent and the pervasive feeling of victimhood at the hands of Washington and the West. On Iraq, the OIC merely endorsed the U.N. Security Council resolution without coming out with its own independent formulation.

Third, the OIC summit resorted to intellectual dishonesty by masquerading its inability to act through a so-called ‘Action Plan’. The verbiage of this ‘plan’ is matched by inaction on concrete issues like the image of Islam and Muslims, and the lack of any organised thinking or strategy on Sep. 11 challenges or even a feeble attempt to change the OIC’s style of work.

Fourth, the only institution the OIC has talked about is the ‘Islamic Fiqh Academy’ to ”minimise differences among member nations” through ”dialogue among Muslims”, although nobody has heard about this academy or the work it is supposed to be doing.

Fifth, on the core issue of revitalising the OIC, the summit referred to the ”ongoing comprehensive review of the OIC Secretariat which would be completed by the current consultants”. It is as if this is a technical decision by paid experts rather than a political decision at the highest level to rebuild and rejuvenate a moribund organisation.

In truth, the First Ladies Dialogue that ran concurrently with the summit seemed to have more substance than the summit itself.

This dialogue referred to ”quality education and the creative use of knowledge for socio-economic development” as the ”true wealth of a nation”. The first ladies urged Muslim countries to ”invest extensively in education, particularly science and technology rather than spending fortunes on their military budgets, but still succumbing to pre-emptive and unilateral strikes”.

Regarding the role of women, participants pointed out that ”while the Koran advocates equality between men and women”, there are Muslim countries where this is the not the case.

If the OIC summit, the first after Sep. 11, will be remembered for being so ineffectual at the height of the challenges facing the Muslim world, an important event did mark this gathering: the speech of Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.

With characteristic candour, he provoked controversy during his address. Although the international media focused on his remarks on Jews, what he had to say regarding Muslims are the issues that really need to be studied.

He rightly traced the fall of Muslim civilisation to ”intellectual regression” and the failure to acquire modern knowledge.

Mahathir’s prognosis is correct when he says that ”we (Muslims) are worse off than before (and) … whether we like it or not we have to change”, adding that Muslims ”are more concerned with the form than the substance” of Islam.

In his brutally honest and realistic assessment, Mahathir said: ”Our only reaction is to become more and more angry – and angry people cannot think properly” and ”we must not antagonise everyone”.

He urged a policy ”to plan, strategise and then to counterattack” since ”we have sufficient assets to deploy against our detractors”, referring to economic assets like oil and cash reserves of over 500 billion dollars stashed away in Western banks.

He urged Muslim regimes and rulers to ”identify them (these assets) and to work out how to make use of them to stop the carnage caused by the enemy”.

It was in this context that he urged Muslims to learn from the example of the Jews since ”they survived 2000 years of pogroms not by hitting back, but by thinking”, adding that ”we must use our brains also”.

His remarks regarding Jews being a ”world power” whose strength and influence is disproportionate to its numerical size is something that almost all Muslims fervently believe but few say so publicly.

For Muslims and their governments, it is now no secret that the Iraq war was largely pushed by the pro-Israeli neo-conservative cabal now dominant in Washington. These remarks, therefore, are certainly not synonymous with ‘anti-Semitism’.

However, Mahathir was wrong both factually and in his historical narrative to describe ”socialism, communism, human rights and democracy” as something ”invented and successfully promoted” by the Jews.

That is giving ‘credit’ where it does not belong and this falls within the realm of conspiracy theories, instead of historical fact.

The editorial of ‘The New York Times’ newspaper on Oct. 18 was on target when it concluded: ”Most Muslims have been shoddily treated – by their own leaders who gather at feckless summit meetings instead of offering their people what they most need: human rights, education and democracy.”

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