On Israel, still in denial

Another disturbing asymmetry is this. In several non-Muslim countries (such as the US, UK, France, Germany, other European Union countries, Australia, etc), significant minority Muslim populations have come into being due to migration and naturalisation. But when it comes to Muslim countries, they almost as a rule disallow permanent immigration and granting of citizenship to non-Muslims. The OIC has not even begun discussing how to remove these asymmetries. Unless it does so, it will continue to carry the accusation of practicing double-standards.

Its double-standards were also evident in the manner in which it yet again sided with Pakistan by demanding the “right of self-determination” for the “Muslim” people of Kashmir. Not that its stand has any impact on the ground, but it is galling how the OIC continues to view the Kashmir issue as a Muslim problem. No less hypocritical is its silence on the condition of Kurds in Iraq and Turkey or that of Uighur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang proince.

Ahmedenijad’s shocking statement on Israel

Finally, no analysis of the Mecca summit will be complete without looking at the news that grabbed the most attention all over the world. Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Iran’s newly elected president, yet again lived up to his reputation of being both irrepressible and irresponsible. Of course, a satirist would say that, for someone who had as recently as in October called for “wiping Israel off the map of the earth”, he was more lenient this time. In a news conference on the sidelines of the summit, and perhaps heeding the summit’s call to Muslims around the world to inculcate the virtue of “moderation”, Ahmedinejad decided to temper his diatribe against the Jewish nation. This time he only demanded that Israel be shifted from its present location in the midst of Muslim countries, where he described its presence to be a “tumour”, to Europe. To good measure, he even asked European countries, particularly Germany and Austria, to give land for the relocation of Israel, if they really believe that over six million Jews were killed in the Nazi Holocaust during World War II. Within less than a week, he repeated his outlandish ranting, this time asking for Israel to be relocated in Alaska or some other place in North America!

Ahmadinejad belongs to that disquietingly large set of people in West Asia who do not believe that Hitler killed so many innocent Jews, and instead think that exaggerating the Nazi crime is a ploy to justify the creation of the Jewish state on what they consider to be an exclusively “Muslim” land. Such reckless rhetoric from the president of a major country will surely make resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict, already intractable, far more difficult. It has been roundly condemned by people in the non-Islamic world.

However, the response from the heads of states who participated in the Mecca summit is unlikely to be too critical. While one cannot condone Israel’s expansionist and aggressive conduct, often resulting in unspeakable brutality towards innocent Palestinians, it is equally true that the OIC has never taken a constructive approach to resolving the Israel-Palestine imbroglio. Some of its member-states (like Turkey and Egypt) may have established diplomatic ties with Israel, but collectively the OIC has neither accepted Israel’s existence nor given up its stridently anti-Israel stance. Indeed, the Mecca Declaration calls for preservation of “Jerusalem’s Islamic and historic identity”. It even appeals for a donation of one dollar from every Muslim in the world to preserve Jerusalem’s Islamic identity.

This begs the question: does Jerusalem have only an Islamic identity? As is well known, the city of Jerusalem is held sacred by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest mosque for Muslims, is located there. But, for the Jews, the adjoining Temple Mount, which has a much longer antiquity, is the most sacred place in the world. Clearly, the highly complicated dispute over Jerusalem, which is perhaps the knottiest of part of the Arab-Israel problem, requires for its resolution flexibility, pragmatism and an attitude of looking to the future rather than being a prisoner of the past. So far, the OIC, for all its recent discovery of the virtue of moderation, has not shown these qualities. Ahmadinejad’s utterances are only an extreme form of this illiberalism.

In sum, the message from Mecca is a mix of the refreshing and the disturbingly familiar. How the OIC will evolve itself in future will be keenly watched.

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