Tag: OIC

  • Turkey ready to host 2016 OIC summit

    Turkey ready to host 2016 OIC summit

    With this year’s OIC summit set to kick off in Cairo on Wednesday, Ankara expresses willingness to host Islamic organisation’s 2016 meeting, diplomatic source tells MENA

    Ahram Online , Monday 4 Feb 2013

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    Delegates from Iran attend a foreign ministers meeting ahead of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit in Cairo February 4, 2013 (Photo: Reuters)

    Turkey is willing to host the next summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in 2016, a diplomatic source told Egyptian state news agency MENA on Monday.

    At a Monday foreign ministers’ meeting, held in advance of this year’s OIC summit in Cairo, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu called on OIC member-states to back the Turkish proposal, the same source revealed.

    Turkey has not hosted an OIC summit since 1969.

    Leaders of OIC member-states are scheduled to meet in Cairo on Wednesday where they will tackle regional crises ranging from the French-led crusade against Islamist militants in Mali to the ongoing civil war in Syria.

    On Monday, foreign ministers began a two-day meeting in Cairo to prepare for the summit, which will be attended by the leaders of 26 out of 57 OIC member-states.

    At Wednesday’s summit, Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first Islamist president, will assume the organisation’s rotating presidency.

    The summit had originally been slated to take place in 2011, but was postponed due to a series of regional uprisings that saw four Arab heads of state – including Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak – overthrown.

    OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, a former Turkish diplomat, told AFP that the upcoming summit “will discuss the major conflicts in the Islamic world.”

    The event would also provide OIC members with different foreign policies with a chance “to coordinate positions and support the states’ sovereignty and territorial integrity,” he added.

    “Personally, I am very concerned about violence and religious extremism in Islamic countries, which face economic problems and political corruption, as is the case in Mali,” Ihsanoglu was quoted as saying.

    via Turkey ready to host 2016 OIC summit: Diplomatic source – Region – World – Ahram Online.

  • FM: Turkey against unilateral intervention in Mali

    FM: Turkey against unilateral intervention in Mali

    Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has stated that Ankara is against the unilateral intervention in Mali, adding that all efforts to restore Mali’s territorial integrity should be carried out under the United Nations umbrella.

    Davutoglu_230811French ground troops last Wednesday pressed northward in Mali toward territory occupied for months by militants in the start of a land assault that came after five days of air strikes that did little to erode rebel gains.

    Speaking as a guest speaker of the semi-official Anatolia news agency Editorial Desk on Friday, Davutoglu assessed current topics from Turkey’s foreign policy, including the Syrian crisis, to the French military intervention in Mali, the latest developments from Iraq as well as Turkish-Israeli relations.

    Davutoglu’s remarks regarding the intervention in Mali were the first comments by a Turkish official since the French-led military operation in Mali, aided by the country’s African neighbors and Western powers to fight against rebels who occupied the northern provinces, began eight days ago.

    Northern Mali fell under rebel control after a March military coup in Bamako triggered a Tuareg-led rebel offensive that seized the north and split the West African nation in two.

    The minister’s Mali remarks came a day after the Foreign Affairs Ministry released a diplomatically written statement with no clear position on Ankara’s stance on the issue.

    Turkey on Thursday said Ankara is closely monitoring the developments in Mali and it will continue supporting international efforts to restore national reconciliation and democracy through free elections as fighting raged on the eighth day of the French-led military intervention to wrest back

    via FM: Turkey against unilateral intervention in Mali – Trend.Az.

  • Turkey blocks EU from NATO summit unless OIC also attends

    Turkey blocks EU from NATO summit unless OIC also attends

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    European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso (L), EU President Herman Van Rompuy (R) (Photo: EPA)

    30 April 2012 / SERVET YANATMA, ANKARA

    Ankara says it will block EU participation in an upcoming NATO summit unless the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is also allowed to be present.

    EU member states had proposed participation by some of the top EU bureaucrats, including European Commission President José Manuel Barroso and President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy, who are now unsure whether they will be able to attend the summit taking in Chicago on May 20-21 as representatives of the union due to the objections from Turkey, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Friday. Raising the EU’s commitment to a NATO peace mission in Afghanistan, EU member countries including France had argued that the EU should be represented, while Turkey is maintaining that there should only be member state participation in the summit, the WSJ claimed.

    “If non-NATO members will also participate, the OIC should be represented [in the Chicago summit] first and foremost,” Turkish diplomatic sources said in explaining Ankara’s position, speaking to Today’s Zaman on Sunday. The sources claimed that the OIC’s commitment exceeded the EU contribution in the Afghanistan peace mission.

    The EU has exerted efforts for the reconstruction and democratization of Afghanistan in preparation for the post-NATO-mission period in the country. The EU launched a rule of law mission (EUPOL) under the banner of the European Security and Defense Program (ESDP) in June 2007. The union has also initiated a program for justice reform and is helping to fund civilian projects in NATO-run Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs).

    Meanwhile, the OIC, a bloc of 56 countries, is also taking a growing interest in the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and in 2010 it accepted a proposal by member states Turkey and the United Arab Emirates to appoint an OIC permanent representative for Afghanistan.

    The US administration has joined the push for greater OIC involvement in Afghanistan for the last couple of years, which would bring benefits in efforts towards reconciliation between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

    The Turkish diplomatic sources also noted that the different proposals coming from NATO members on who will participate are still being discussed and there is not an ultimate decision yet. They added that there are also objections from other non-EU NATO members to the proposed EU participation in the Chicago summit.

    The background to Turkey’s objection to EU participation in NATO activities involves a more long-standing dispute. Greek Cyprus, representing the entire island as a full member of the EU, blocks Turkish participation in European defense institutions such as the European Defense Agency (EDA). Turkey, a NATO member, has responded by obstructing the EU’s integration in NATO activities.

    Rejection of Israeli partnership in NATO

    Turkey has also blocked Israel’s participation in the summit in a sign of Turkey’s determination to prevent its new foe from cooperating with the alliance following a deadly ship raid.

    Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said during a NATO meeting in Brussels on April that Turkey will not allow Israel, a member of the Mediterranean Dialogue, a NATO outreach program including seven non-NATO nations, to take part in the alliance’s new “Partnership Cooperation Menu (PCM).

    Turkish-Israeli relations worsened in May 2010 and have remained strained since then after Israeli naval commandos stormed the Mavi Marmara, a ship carrying humanitarian aid to breach Israel’s Gaza blockade, killing nine Turkish civilians.

    Turkey insists that NATO-Israel relations cannot be restored until Turkey-Israel relations are normalized.

    via Turkey blocks EU from NATO summit unless OIC also attends.

  • Islam versus Europe: “The increasing role of the extreme right in Western politics is beyond our abilities to counter them”

    Islam versus Europe: “The increasing role of the extreme right in Western politics is beyond our abilities to counter them”

    “The increasing role of the extreme right in Western politics is beyond our abilities to counter them”

    12:02 | Posted by Cheradenine Zakalwe

    JEDDAH, 8 Safar/Jan 3 (IINA)-Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary-General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) said that the European Union offered to host the third meeting of the ‘Istanbul Process’, which deliberates, in a series of meetings, on developing mechanisms to implement UNHRC Resolution 16/18 on combating intolerance, discrimination and incitement to violence based on religion ore belief.

    The Secretary General of Islamic Cooperation in his office in Jeddah on Tuesday 30 January 2012 pointed out that the EU’s offer to host the meeting represents a qualitative shift in action against the phenomenon of Islamophobia, which spread in many European countries, targeting the Muslim communities there.

    The phenomenon of Islamophobia is found in the West in general, but is growing in European countries in particular and in a manner different than that in the US, which had contributed to drafting Resolution 16/18. The new European position represents the beginning of the shift from their previous reserve over the years over the attempts by the OIC to counter “defamation of religions” in the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly of the United Nations.

    Officials in the Cultural Affairs Department of the OIC said that the European Union’s offer to host the third meeting (the first was in Istanbul in July and the second in Washington DC in December) is considered a promising new possibility of solving this problem. The ‘Istanbul Process’ will have an added momentum by holding the meeting in Europe, which is more affected by the phenomenon of Islamophobia and hostility towards Islam.

    However, Ihsanoglu said that the growing role of the extreme right in politics in several European countries has become stronger than the capacity of the Organization, explaining that the extreme right, who hates Muslims, became leverage in the hands of politicians. He added that the rise of the extreme right through elections has become an issue that cannot be countered, considering the democratic way in which these extremist reach their positions. He pointed out to the referendum held in Switzerland, as an example, which resulted in suspending the construction of minarets there following a vote by the Swiss people.

    Source

    Labels: Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Istanbul Process, OIC, Organisation of the Islamic Conference, Organisation of the Islamic Cooperation

    via Islam versus Europe: “The increasing role of the extreme right in Western politics is beyond our abilities to counter them”.

  • OIC enhances Muslim women’s role

    OIC enhances Muslim women’s role

    JEDDAH, 28 Muharram/24 Dec (IINA)-Secretary General of the Organisation of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Prof. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, has praised the Muslim women role in bringing about socio-political changes in the Middle Eastern countries, assuring that his organization was all out to provide ample opportunities for broader women social role.

    “What has been achieved in those (Arab) countries was possible because women stood side by side with their male partners” he remarked. On Friday in his statement at the “Change in Muslim Societies and the Role of Women International Conference” in Istanbul, Ihsanoglu stressed that only through women’s increased participation in political, social and other spheres the societies will make headway towards dynamic progress, says an OIC report Friday.

    He on the occasion highlighted the major efforts by OIC to enhance the role of Muslim women in member countries of his 57-state Organisation.

    In this connection he referred to the first ever Ministerial Conference on Women’s Role held earlier in Istanbul establishment of the functional Department of Family Affairs in the OIC General Secretariat as part of implementation of the Ten Year OIC Program of Action was another forward step. It is the OIC’s commitment for advancement of women in Muslim societies, he reminded.

    He also referred to the establishment of an OIC Independent Permanent Commission on Human Rights (IPCHR) as a very significant development in the Organisation which constitutes a welcome sign for mainstream human rights, including rights of women.

    Four of the total 18 members of the Commission are women, a testimony to the OIC’s gender equality commitment. “I firmly believe that the four women members of the IPCHR can play a commendable role in strengthening the rights of women in Muslim societies” he asserted.

    AH/IINA

    via OIC/Women: OIC enhances Muslim women’s role.

  • The Obama Administration’s Islamist Whitewashing Campaign

    The Obama Administration’s Islamist Whitewashing Campaign

    The Obama administration continues to deny that we are at war with Islamist jihadists. Indeed, the word “jihad” itself is forbidden in Obama-land if used to describe the Islamist warriors. At its highest levels, the Obama administration insists on using bland euphemisms rather than accurate language describing the Islamist ideology we are fighting.

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    As far as the Obama administration is concerned, the global war against Islamist killers is an “Overseas Contingency Operation.” The Fort Hood massacre, in which thirteen people were killed and dozens more wounded by an Islamist jihadist, is described by Obama officials as “workplace violence.”

    In one of the most recent examples of political correctness gone amok, Paul Stockton, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, refused to acknowledge that we are fighting a radical ideology that has anything to do with Islam. Asked during a joint Senate-House committee hearing last week, conducted by Rep. Peter King (R-NY) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), whether “we are at war with violent Islamist extremism,” Stockton said “No sir. We are at war with al-Qaeda, its affiliates.” Stockton was then asked to at least concede that al-Qaeda is acting out violent Islamist extremism. Refusing to answer the question directly, he stuck to his talking point that “We are not at war with Islam.”

    Stockton was spewing his nonsense at the same time as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s State Department hosted a three-day international conference in Washington, D.C., which included her friends from the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), representatives from the Office of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and representatives from countries and international organizations “selected on the basis of their geographic, religious, and political diversity.” It turns out that more than a third of the countries selected were Muslim. The Arab League was represented in addition to the OIC. Religious diversity was not enough, however, to secure the Jewish state of Israel an invitation.

    The purpose of the D.C. conference was to discuss ways to implement the provisions of a new United Nations resolution, the product of a deal reached between the OIC and the Obama administration, entitled “Combating Intolerance, Negative Stereotyping and Stigmatization of, and Discrimination, Incitement to Violence and Violence Against, Persons Based on Religion or Belief.”

    The deal was for the OIC to at least temporarily put on hold its annual campaign to have the United Nations pass its “defamation of religions” resolutions, in favor of the “compromise” resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Council in March of this year and then passed by the UN General Assembly in November.

    The title of the new “compromise” resolution may be different from the OIC’s “Combating defamation of religions” resolutions that the OIC has successfully steered through the UN over the last ten years or so. However, the net effect is that with the new UN resolution in hand and the full cooperation of the Obama administration, the OIC will actually be closer to achieving its objective, which to stamp out speech deemed offensive to Muslims.

    Continuing the Obama administration’s submission to the OIC’s wishes, Clinton met with OIC officials in Istanbul last July, at a conference she co-hosted, to embark on what has become known as the “Istanbul Process.” The ostensible purpose of the Istanbul Process is to work with Muslim majority countries, the OIC and other interested nations on exploring specific steps to combat intolerance, negative stereotyping, discrimination and violence on the basis of religion or belief.

    Clinton, in full spin mode, insisted that the new UN resolution was totally consistent with the free speech protections of the First Amendment, as opposed to the “defamation of religions” resolutions that the OIC was willing to have replaced. At the same time, Clinton assured the OIC that she was perfectly on board with using “some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming, so that people don’t feel that they have the support to do what we abhor.” She also invited OIC representatives to Washington, D.C. to begin implementing the Istanbul Process, which culminated in last week’s three-day closed door conference.

    The OIC, meanwhile, is engaging in a bait and switch game. Reporting after the meeting in Istanbul on what it expected to happen next, the OIC stated: “The upcoming [Washington] meetings . . . [will] help in enacting domestic laws for the countries involved in the issue, as well as formulating international laws preventing inciting hatred resulting from the continued defamation of religions.” In other words, banning “defamation of religions” was still on the OIC’s agenda, even if it had to be achieved through indirection.

    About a month after the Istanbul meeting, OIC secretary general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu insisted that “no one has the right to insult another for their beliefs or to incite hatred and prejudice.”

    Is Hillary Clinton so obtuse that she fails to understand the OIC’s true intentions? Alternatively, is she trying to publicly assure American citizens that their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and press are safe, while working behind the scenes with her OIC partners to find acceptable ways to stifle speech offensive to Muslims? I think the latter is the case, as the Obama administration examines employing legal mechanisms such as hate speech laws and vigorous enforcement of very broadly interpreted anti-discrimination laws, as well as using the “shaming” campaign Clinton talked up in Istanbul. Her actions are right in line with Barack Obama’s vow to the Muslim world in his June 2009 Cairo speech: “I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam whenever they appear.”

    Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom and serving as a commissioner on the official but independent U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, was invited to attend just the opening and closing sessions of last week’s conference. That was bad enough.

    Shea was very concerned about the conference after it was first announced last July, seeing right through the OIC’s maneuvering. She came away even more concerned after she heard what was being said at the conference, beyond Hillary Clinton’s platitudes about the importance of free expression and religious tolerance. “It is a scandal that the US is partnering on an issue regarding free speech with an organization like the OIC that is committed to undermining free speech,” Shea concluded.

    Here, in Shea’s own words, are some of the things she heard:

    [L]egal and security officials of a delegation which will remain unnamed gave a sweeping overview of American founding principles on religious freedom and how they have been breached time and again in American history by attacks against a broad variety of religious minority groups — including now against Muslims. A raft of current cases was mentioned; America’s relative exemplary and distinctive achievement in upholding religious freedom in an emphatically pluralistic society was not. That same speaker reassured the audience, which was packed with diplomats from around the world, that the Obama administration is working diligently to prosecute American Islamophobes and is transforming the U.S. Justice Department into the conscience of the nation, though it could no doubt learn a thing or two from the assembled delegates on other ways to stop persistent religious intolerance in America.

    As mentioned above, the three-day Washington, D.C. conference was closed to the public, with very little reporting on what went on – particularly on what transpired between the opening and closing sessions that Nina Shea attended. However, I did manage to learn of one illustrative closed break-out session that confirms Ms. Shea’s concerns. The session consisted of a review by U.S. Department of Homeland officials regarding the training that the department delivers to federal, state, and local law enforcement on “Countering Violent Extremism,” together with a mock training session. It was an exercise in multi-cultural and diversity training. Ignoring the Islamist source of the most dangerous acts of “violent extremism” today, the session showcased the kind of misleading, politically correct training that the Obama administration is pushing, including community outreach programs, guides for community interaction and discussion of purported stereotypes of religious communities.

    The Obama administration is helping the OIC to immunize Islamist ideology and law from critical scrutiny, under the banner of combating “Islamophobia.” As a result, our First Amendment right of free expression – starting with expression that the Obama administration and the Islamists “abhor” – are in jeopardy.

    By Joseph Klein
    Frontpage Magazine