Global IssuesTHE ISLAMIC WORLD: STRENGTH THROUGH UNITY
Before Islam, Arabia lived for centuries under "asabiya", variously defined as Arabism, tribalism, or clanism, which led to many long wars. Prophet Muhammad challenged this order and introduced a community of values, the Umma, based on the tenet that "there is no difference between an Arab and a non-Arab, or between a white and a black, except in degree of piety". But only 30 years after Mohammed's death, the values he had taught were violated, and asabiya prevailed again. This was the beginning of a long decline of Muslim society, write Abbas Aroua, adjunct professor at the Lausanne Faculty of Medicine and director of the Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies at the Cordoba Foundation in Geneva, and Johan Galtung, founder of TRANSCEND, a Peace, Development and Environment Network, and author of "50 Years - 100 Peace and Conflict Perspectives".
The authors ask in this analysis, Could an Organisation of the Islamic Community institutionalise a vision of a peaceful Islam, the dar-al-Islam, opposed to the rest, the dar-al-harb, the realm of war? The EU is also built on the vision in which inter-state wars are "unthinkable". But this argument leaves out the third realm: the dar-al-ahd of treaties, pacts, for example, between a future OIC and the EU, in a regionalising, potentially more mature world.
Of the five present Security Council veto powers, four are Christian (the US, UK, France, and Russia), and one, China, is Taoist-Confucian-Buddhist. Yet the OIC has a larger population than any of them, even China. This is not only totally unfair, considering that the borders fragmenting the Islamic community were mainly drawn by those Western powers, but also makes UN Security Council resolutions against Muslim countries illegitimate. Muslim veto power could have saved many human lives, kept the US-West from adopting unwise policies, and opened the way to a more balanced UN and more regional action. A reformed Security Council should assign two of its permanent seats to the OIC and the EU.
(*) Abbas Aroua, born in Algeria, is adjunct professor at the Lausanne Faculty of Medicine and director of the Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies at the Cordoba Foundation in Geneva. Johan Galtung is founder of TRANSCEND, a Peace, Development and Environment Network, and author of "50 Years - 100 Peace and Conflict Perspectives". (www.transcend.org/tup).
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